This evening I cleared some of our clutter, yes even though we came with a couple of suitcases and we live in a space we could do backflips in, we've created clutter. Anyway I had to do some organizing and found a stack of beautiful cards our loving family and friends sent to us over the winter holidays, and I thought it would be cute to display some of them on our table once again. Thomas took the rest and played post office. Fast forward to dinner. Mouth full of burrito, Thomas grabs the cards and starts telling us about the love you pictures, love you birds, love you trees, love you hearts, and when Chad & I didn't understand he simply said, "These are LOVING PICTURES!"


A couple of years ago I heard a recording featuring Anis Mojgnai, and I lost the clip featuring it. His publicity at the time was rather underground & not really featured on the web. I just found him on youtube. His words copied below are only half of the beauty that is his work, so if you plan to listen to him, don't read the lines below.

SHAKE THE DUST

This is for the fat girls,
this is for the little brothers,
this is for the school yard wimps,
this is for the childhood bullies that tormented them,
this is for the former prom queen,
this is for the milk crate ball players,
this is for the Night Time cereal eaters,
and for the retired elderly Wal-Mart store front door greeters…
Shake the Dust..



This is for the benches and the people sitting on them,
for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns,
for the men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children, for the nighttime schoolers, and for the midnight bikers who are trying to fly
...Shake the Dust...
This is for the two year olds who can not be understood because they speak half English and half God, shake the dust,
for the girls whose brothers are going crazy!
For those gym class wall flowers and for the twelve year old kids afraid of taking public showers,
for the kid whose always late to class because he forgets the combination to his locker,
for a girl who loves somebody else shake the dust.
This is for the hard men...the hard men who want love but know it won't come...
For the ones who are forgotten,
for the ones the amendments do not stand up for,
for the ones who are told to speak only when spoken to and then are never spoken to.
Speak every time you stand so that you do not forget yourself,
never let a moment go by you that doesn't remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day...
That there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean.
Do not settle for letting these waves that settle and for the dust to collect in your veins.
This is for the celibate pedophile who keeps on struggling,

for the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacation alone, and for the sweat that drips off of a Mick Jaggers singing lips, and for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner's shaking hips,

and for the heavens and for the hells for which Tina has lived. This!
Is for the tired and for the dreamers, for those families that want to be like the Cleavers, with perfectly made dinners with songs like Wally and the Beaver. This! Is for the bigots, this is for the sexists, this is for the killers, this is for the Big House; pin sentenced cats becoming redeemers, and for the springtime that always shows up right after the winters, this is... This is for you...Make sure that by the time the fishermen returns you are gone, because just like the days I burn at both ends, every time I write, every time I open my eyes I'm cutting out a part of myself to give to you. So Shake the Dust, and take me with you when you do none of this...What has this has fucking ever been for me, that pushes and pulls.. pushes and pulls for you! So grab this world by it's clothes pins and shake it out again and again and jump on top for a spin and when you hop off shake it off for this is yours. Make, Make my words worth, make it not just another poem that I write not just like another poem like another night, make it like it's heavy about us all, walk into it breath it in let it crash through the halls of your arms like the millions of years of millions poets coursing like blood pumping, pushing and making you live, shaking the dust! So when the world knocks at your front door clutch the knob and open on up, running forward into it's wide spread greeting arms with your hands before you your fingertips trembling, though they may be. -Anis Mojgani