Expecting

The day's long past that I've expected less--
I think it's time I expected more.
It may be what my expecting is for--
And I will learn by love to strengthen it.

I am pissed by my expect-less days,
smitten by an expect-less craze,
compromising my loves and hates to fit.
"Procrustian" is what I make of it--
but you could call it cutting my heart out
to spite my place.

I want something better.
I want something made right.
I want change, and more of it, and faster,
and still, I want everyone to feel the change until--

a lot of words get unsaid
and wounds unwound. And hope that was fallen
gets refound. I want starbursts of passionate
adoration for the different and careful
listening for the silenced and the hope
that their voices find a gain,
a verb, a reverb--a DOING!
And that the inscrutable gets a good unscrewing.

I want that thing-a safer place,
a human kindness informed by grace,
A human face enchanted with the beauty
of, say a great, comfortable pair of boots,
and not, for example, a boot stepping on a human face.

I want accountability and respect!
I want personhood, selfhood, privacy, and how!
And still openness, the end to shame, the knowledge
that understanding people will somehow
understand. And not judge until they've walked
not one mile but two--

or three,

or a dozen!

I expect more! I have to, I'm broken for it--
all in, passionately hoping we find Eden again--
and if there's an angel with a sword, guarding the gate--

well, I have a teaspoon.

An angel? A sword?

Whevs. I expected MORE!

(inspired by Shakesville)

It is not yet an Elegy

It is not yet an elegy,
but I can feel the themes gather,
the muse calls, the baleful
light falls across the keys
of my instrument, and I type--
But it isn't yet an elegy.

You live, for one, and I can't,
for another, imagine you gone--
a reality that battles back the
themes of mortality,
skews the dying light
to cast about in a certain corner--

What did we call it?
Memory.

And that was mother of the thought
I had of you, being mortal,
and your mortality,
that it should not be rung as an elegy,
but tragedy,
tragedy--

that flesh is tragic,
that loss is tragic,
that we are all flawed like this, which is tragic,
and most tragic of all--
that something still within you stands
passionate, connected,
full of life--

and also full of dying.
Unthinkable. These two competing strains--
I dare not call it an elegy,
no. This dissonance haunts my
instrument, chastens me,
forbids me to wreathe you in
laurel or flowers, makes me honest--

but doesn't make me accept.
I have knowledge of what you are, alive.
I can not take knowledge of you finished,
yet.

~Jennifer Paviglianiti (12/6/2010)