Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
You have been given a direct order to rock the *** out.
Rock out like you were just given the last rock and roll album on earth and the minutes
are counting down to flames.
Rock out like you just won both showcase showdowns.
Rock out like the streets are empty except for you, your bicycle and your headphones.
Rock out like your lips where just placed on a breakdancing muse with legs that go all
the way up.
Rock out like Publisher's Clearing House is ringing your front door.
Rock out like you'll never have to open up a tax book again.
Rock out like you get paid to disturb the peace.
Rock out like music is all that you got.
Rock out like you're standing on a roof top and the city is as lound and glowing as a
river flowing below you.
Rock out like the plane is going down and there are one hundred and twenty people on
board and one hundred and twenty one parachutes.
Rock out like the streets and the books are on fire and the only way to extinguish them
is by doing the electric slide.
Rock out like it's Saturday afternoon and Monday is a national holiday.
Rock out like somebody's got a barrel pointed at your temple saying 'Rock out like your
life depended on it, fool,' because it does.
Rock out like your eyes are fading, but you still got your ears but, you don't know for
how long so -
Rock out like five o'clock time meant pop 'n lock time.
Rock out like you got a pants full of tokens and you've got nothing to do but everything.
Rock out like you where the international Skee Ball champion of the entire universe.
Rock out like you just escaped an evil orphanage to join a Russian circus.
Rock out like your hero has fallen and you are spinning your limbs until they burst into
a flaming pyre of remembrance.
Rock out like you are enslaved in the south and dancing is all that you have to know who
you are.
Rock out like your dead grandfather just came back to take a drive with you in your new
car.
Rock out like the table was full.
Rock out like the neighbors are away.
Rock out like the walls won't fall but, dammit, you're going to die trying to make
them.
Rock out like the stereo's volume *** is the figure 8 of infinity instead of merely
numbers.
Rock out like it's raining outside and you've got a girl to run through it with.
Rock out like you're playing football, football in the mud and your washing machine's not
broken.
Rock out like you throwing your window open on your honeymoon because you want the whole
world to know what love is.
Rock out like you just got a book published.
Rock out like you just went to your high school reunion to find everyone, even the women,
are all overweight and bald, except for the former homecoming queen, who you just found
out, got divorced from her impotent husband and only has eyes for.. YOU!
Rock out like you have a date with Heidi Klum
Rock out like a shadow man passes behind you, drops you to your knees. You're buckling
in sweat, cold metal's pushed to your forehead, the trigger's pulled and the gun jams.
Rock out like you got an empty appointment book, and a full tank of gas.
Rock out like Jimmi has returned carrying brand new guitar strings.
Rock out like the mangos are in season.
Rock out like the record player won't skip.
Rock out like this was the last weekend, like these were the last words, like you don't
ever want to forget how.
We all wanted that high school sweetheart. We wanted to be young in the 50s with meatloaves
and sock hops and lawns Lawns so perfect they looked like Clark Gable
was kissing them
We wanted to be 13 and alive and meet a girl that was 13 and alive
And walk with her past the grandstands To sit and hold hands with
To sit and kiss with To sit and sit with
Like it was something you would miss, but that never was
We once went to bed Like between the bed sheets was a valley with
dinosaurs still breathing And how we capture these triceratops and brontosauruses
But even they were opened up with the smoke that rose out of the homes and the corners
that we once climbed through The streets and the footballs, which we once
threw The school desks upon, which we once drew
The windows that sat open, through we once flew
Before the outside world of parking spaces and dead friends came flooding on in
And we forgot what we wanted And we became what we become
Waitresses and bartenders, city employees and temp positions
We are junkies and one kiss poems and we cry the stars
As we write our scars onto dumpsters and electric boxes
Because the only thing that we can hear is our hearts
And the only ones listening are the streets That the blood that breaths through the letters
we leave And we dream to rise ourselves up out of these
burning buildings But instead we get buried somewhere beneath
Because I know my life is like some high school kids notebook
A high school kid that shuffles back and forth between school and home
Stacking the letters and the pictures too close for anyone outside of his own imagination
to read Because it's through the ink that his heart
beats, that his heart breaths And we all just wanted to write these notes
Check if you like me Check if you don't
Check if you'll date me Check if you won't
Because we all wanted the love songs to be true
And we did love dinosaurs once And we wanted the stars to hold our hands
To lick the teeth, to *** us But they ended up *** us
So, let your smile twist Like my heart dancing precariously on the
edge of my fingertips Staining them like that same high school kid,
licking his thoughts Using his sharpie tip writing
I was here I was here, ***
And ain't none of y'all can write that in the spot that I just wrote it in
I'm here, ***, and we all here, ***, and we all ***, ***
Because every breath I give brings me a second closer to the day that my mother may die
Because every breath I take, takes me a second further from the moment she caught my father's
eye Because every word I carry is another stone
to put into place in the foundation that I'm building
Because the days can erase something that I never saw
What all of us wanted and what none of us got
What we all had and have and what we all forgot That we all wanted to be something
That we all became something And it might not be the *** we once though
we'd be when we were kids, but something is still something
And like some cats say: something is better than nothing
Feet are smarter than an engine And dreams are stronger than thighs
And questions are the only answers we need to know that we are alive as I am when I have
the mind of a child Asking, why is two plus three always equal
to five? Where do people go to when they die?
What made the beauty of the moon? And the beauty of the sea?
Did that beauty make you? Did that beauty make me?
Will that make me something? Will I be something?
Am I something?
And the answer comes: already am, always was, and I still have time to be.
[Applase]
This is for the fat girls. This is for the little brothers.
This is for the school yard whimps. 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 nighttime cereal eaters
And the retired, elderly, front store WalMart 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 child
and half God.
Shake the Dust
This is for the girls whose brothers are going crazy
For those gym class wall flowers and the twelve year olds afraid of taking public showers.
For kid whose always late to class because he forgets the combination to his lockers
For the 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 nine hundred 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 celebate pediphile that keeps on struggling
For the poetry teachers and the people who go on vacations alone
For the sweat that drip off of Mick Jagger's singing lips and the shaking skirt on Tina
Turner's shaking hips For the heavens and for the hells through
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 biggots and the sexists This is for the killers
This is for the big house pen sentence cats becoming redeamers.
And for the spring times that always shows up after the winters.
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 ***
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 *** 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.