I’m 29 years old and am trying to figure out most days what being a man means
I don’t drink fight or love
but these days I find myself wanting to do all three
and I don’t really have a favorite color anymore
but I did when I was a kid and back then that color was blue
and back then
I wanted to be an architect an artist an astronaut a secret agent
a ranger for the world wildlife fund
and a hobo
when I was six years old or so I used to always throw my clothes
into my blue and yellow
plastic vinyl
Hot Wheels
car carrying suitcase
and run away
to beneath the dining room table

I’ve made out with more girls then I wish I’ve had
and not nearly as many as I’d like to
I’ve been in love 4 or 5 times
so I doubt I’m gonna try that much more often
and I spend most days making pictures or thinking about making pictures
or masturbating
or thinking about masturbating
and I dream too much and don’t write enough
and I’m trying to find God everywhere
trying to figure out this thing He made called a man

and the television set tells me that it’s bareknuckled bombing
and if I had a tank or was a movie star my penis would be huge I guess
cuz that’s what they keep telling me
and that’s what I want cuz that’s what being a man means
or least that’s what they keep telling me

my pops
takes care of us

he puts the garbage out twice a week

he drives forty five minutes to water flowers

I’m sitting on the bus on Valentine’s Day
when a seven year old boy carrying a book of Robin Hood
sits down next to me and asks me my name
Anis.
That’s a nice name.
Thank you what’s yours?
Quentin.
Anis? Do you wanna read with me?

so tell me what my fists are writing

my fingers open like gates when I type
and the wind is swinging in the wake
I lift bridges with poems
and forests grow
in my mother’s eyes
I am looking for GOD
Quentin
while this world tries to forget you for trying
for this world hates your eyes Quentin
for they are simple and pure

and Quentin
this world hates your fingers
little like the stems of flowers
for not being able to pick up the things you have left behind
because you are still learning to do so
I don’t drink fight or love but these days Quentin
it’s only two out of those three that I don’t do
and I’ve fallen in love 6 7 8 9 10times Quentin so I don’t want to want to
but I still do
and I want to find GOD
in the morning
and
in the tired hands of dusk
at the mouth of the river and down by its feet
but instead
I drive sixty
through residential streets
praying to hit children
so that they may stay forever angels
and may stay forever full of night and light and red and crayons
and simple outstretched limbs trying to pick up way too much way too fast
forgetting what it means to be a person
in a world
where egos are measured with tabloids
where automobiles double for morals
where beliefs are like naps
you leave them behind when somebody touches you
and in a place where oil always takes precedence over life
I find myself sitting on a bus watching a small boy float down like fresh
water
carrying a book I used to
asking if I want to share what he sees if only for a little while
and I do
and then asks if I want to give to him what I see if only for a little while
and I read to him
and then says to me he is going to show me the world
and starts reading me the words himself
moving his hands beneath the sentences
not noticing all the time what is written
sometimes skipping whole lines
because his fingers are moving faster then what they are showing his eyes
and I want to tell him
slow
down Quentin

slow down

you don’t have to touch and go
you can see it all if your finger whispers on one word

slow down Quentin
and hold what you see just a little bit longer

for you are already holding my attention

and in a world of fast faces
I’m looking for God everywhere
trying to figure out a little better
this little thing He made called a man

“For Those Who Can Still Ride An Airplane For The First Time” is excerpted from Solomon Sparrow’s Electric Whale Revival by Anis Mojgani, Derrick Brown, Mike McGee, Buddy Wakefield, Dan Leaman. Copyright © 2007 by Anis Mojgani. Revised version used by permission of the author and Write Bloody Publishing. All rights reserved.