I’ll make a pact with you:
Today we make the world more beautiful.

Let us compose epics from the diner straws,
And draw breath as our gang sign.
The sky is full of pictures that can teach us Monday afternoon.
Someone has to define the mountains,
Or they will just stand there forever, unsaid.
Let us cast our bodies in any production
That is unfinished, and averse to the past perfect.

Today we take up the work
Of giving away our hearts
While they are still laughing.
The soul is an able farmer
Who would not be spoon-fed aphorisms;
Get up and milk the sacred cows.
Mouths talk tongue-sized truths,
While servant hands reap the harvest.

Let us be a little too kind
To the conmen and the saints
Who linger on Eighth, waiting for a singe.

Today we bake bread
From the flours the soldiers in the square
Have always carried in their secret compartments,
For a moment such as this.

Let us buss our ears with high pronouncements:
You must have passed the exit back there dearie,
Because half-assed was yesterday
And the wars have all gone home for their naps,
And it’s grown-up time now, children,
Time for the wise ones to play.

Let us be willing
To be mid-level managers of everything glorious.
You need to be pulling double shifts
At the assembly line of the numinous,
For it’s not a hobby, it’s a job;
It’s not a job, it’s a calling;
It’s not a calling, it’s the whole world gathering
In the interstellar space of your lungs.

I’ll make a pact with you:
Today we make the world more beautiful.
Today we look each other in the almost eye,
And feel the inward beating,
And say
I’m in.