Ben Cullimore

“I’m thirty years old and 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 colour anymore, but I did when I was a kid, and back then that colour was blue, and back then I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be an architect, an artist, a secret agent, a ranger for the World Wildlife Fund, and a hobo. And when I was six years old I used to always throw my clothes into my blue and yellow Hot Wheels car carrying suitcase and run away to beneath the dining room table. I’ve made out with more girls than I wish I’ve had and not nearly as many as I’d like to. I’ve been in love four/five times so I doubt I’m going to 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 I don’t write enough, and I’m trying to find God everywhere, trying to figure this thing he made called a man. And the television tells me that that’s bare-knuckled bombing, and if I had a tank or was a movie star, my penis would be huge. And that’s what I want because that’s what being a man means, or at least that’s what they keep telling me…

My Pops, he takes care of us. He puts the garbage out twice a week. He drives forty-five minutes just to water flowers.

I’m sitting on the bus when a seven year-old boy carrying a book of Robin Hood, he 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 want to read with me?”

So, tell me what my fists are writing. My fingers, they open up like gates when I write 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 Quentin, this world hates your eyes. 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 that you left behind, simply because you are still learning to do so. I don’t drink, fight, or fuck but these days Quentin, it’s only two out of those three I don’t do. And I fall in love six, seven, eight, nine, ten times, 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 a child so that they may stay forever an angel, and stay forever full of night and light 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 see what he sees if only for a little while, and I do. 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 he says to me he’s going to show me the world, and starts reading me the sentences himself, his hands dancing back and forth, across the pages stumbling over words, skipping over lines, because his fingers are moving faster than what they’re showing his eyes.

I wanna 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 and hold what you see just a little bit longer.”

For 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.”