(for the unknown You) –
Sweep up a mound of achievements;
layer dogwood and newspaper beneath;
find a small, secluded shoreline to sleep an endless sleep;
shovel money (in at least twenty currencies),
some status and fame
onto the funeral pyre’s unremembering flame;
write furiously with computer or pen,
fill out the days’ whitespace with enthusiastic fantasy;
revel on a fallacy (or three);
win the gladiatorial games in the Corporate Arena;
rediscover a bit of ancient folklore;
set up nice altruistic societies to make orphans feel infinite;
plant a little garden – give guidance in its growth;
build four or five fine-but-small boats
with richly decorated keels;
fight for something worth believing,
though I’m still unsure what that means…
A(my) guess: lyricism and poetry and prose,
musical composition, simply being kind and open;
A suggestion(for You): lay Your hand on a patient’s slowing heart
in a cancer ward, catch their tears with a jar
and meditate on better things to do;
give the old folks a laugh;
steal the Elgin Marbles back for the Greeks,
or, for the memory of ancient Greece;
find where lay a psychopathic fascist’s bitter ashes
and give them to the conspirators for closure;
(for me) place letters on the graves
of John Keats, Percy Shelley,
Wystan Auden and William Yeats;
rescind, abolish, annul, invalidate
my station in God’s dysphoric, existential reverie;
heap up beautiful words and send them off to sea
inside a laptop on a cellophane-wrapped raft;
(for both of us) think thoughts uplifting;
smile thirty-three times a day (or more);
plan for the future of ourselves and others;
give just a bit of love to our mothers;
sweep the kitchen and the city streets for free;
by your garden plant a tree.
Beyond these things for us to do,
be proud-yet-humble, open-eyed and acquiescent;
just accept; all things inanimate and animate, accept.