Here am I

So I went to talk to elementary school kids today again about poetry. They got excited when previously they thought poetry was boring.

As I was driving away, I thought it would be good to have more poems from Anis Mojgani, but sometimes I feel like he cusses too much. But from his poem, "Here am I," I saw down and transcribed the ending which builds with a great crescendo. I replaced one bad word that isn't suitable for elementary school kids and now I think it's ready to quote and share:

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 budilling

because the days can erase something that I never saw.
What all of us wanted and what none of us got.
What we all hadn’t have and what we all forgot.
That we all wanted to be something.
That we all became something.
And it may not be the shit we always thought we’d be when we were kids
but something is still something.
And like some cats say, something is better than nothing.

Feet are stronger than an engine and dreams are stronger than thighs.

And Questions are the only answers we need to have to know that
we are alive as I am when I have the mind of a child.
Asking Why is 2 plus 3 always equal to 5?
Where do people go to when they die?

What made the beauty of the moon, the beauty of the sea?
Did that beauty make you?
Did that beauty make me?
Will it 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.