The Listener

How useless for me to understand.
For all my cries of “understand me”
what good will commiserating do?
I won’t change the way you feel.
You will still seek blankness
albeit knowing that I do too.
I wanted to knell with you
Express that I too, my dear clay one,
conclude us to be the balanced, authentic few
while those who don’t grasp it
are liars, dirty cowards.

You do know.
Have felt this!

But why does it hunt us so heavily –
others shrug it off
resuming their smiling lives –
Is it there, but unrecognized?
Too scared to acknowledge it
in all its renoun
In any form, it comes as
a welcome relief
the ecstatic release
A period to passion.
If only some merciful quietus
would find us and spare us
the difficulty
that captivates us in stasis.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2007

Adoption

Your moue whispers in my ear
the bald, cold figments
that signify your voice.
You inspire the derelict mouths of
weary, insipid moppets,
Expose the blood of your spirit
like a milky moon
or a yearning organ,
Leave shaking a faint heart.
It is thievery,
a sly trick of the tongue
and my keys have ears for you.
I can hardly hear my own
small heart through your
pounding loth shrine,
and as they coincide I am prone
to listen to either
the louder
the stronger -
when one faints the other burgeons
like a blood red poppy
flapping perilous
waving a wand of contrition
a rueful garden.
I grow my blossom
from your own opiate pod.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2007

Second Guessing

They should not be laid to my charge
I can’t be trusted with these -
I’ve always lost earrings,
spilled guarded secrets,
and broken small porcelain things.
Anger and selfishness constitute me.
No one ever gave me a test
or ascertained what would suit me the best
Am I my own keeper
All a-buzz with bees
Should I offer nets
and balm for the stings
How did I become a keeper of things
of such precious plum gems?

You mustn’t walk away yet
expecting me to oblige.
I live in a lurch of compunction
where Heaven’s awash with the tide.
Consider the dark purple flower
wretching a savory rush
while I in my phlegmy heart
wish I could sleep
through the gurgle and moan
of primal abdominal push.
Through the crying for peace
I am vying
Thinking as a sole fish.
I am careless, vicarious,
Wanting and wrong.
Your desire requires
the spurning of lassitude
shifting to staid aches -
sincerity,
cherishing -
while I offer reticence
Unworthy of thanks.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2007

Contusion

Chain ganger, Thor,
take your mallet and pound.
Bring it down.
Crush out a banger.
Bone crusher
Spike right through
Without a warning
Chink. Chunk. Chink.
Hammer and nail
Usher in silence
Fall on the rock
Crack without echo
Heave, ho. Heave, ho.
A dusty crunch
under iron cudgel
Pegging a pin
With a knuckle down whomp.
To bludgeon the grit
you must clobber it.
A rhythm is set
in my bloody veins
ba bump ba bump
throw it hard
ba bump
I don’t want to see it coming.
Another swing,
another inch deeper
the stake is driven.
Blow upon blow
pound hard
move slow
The redundance of labor
a sweaty endeavor
Steady monotonous
plea for my liberty.
Quash an urge
To fade weakly
I prefer obliteration
With no hope of reformation
Just drub a wedge
Into the socket
Knick knock
Knock it.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2007

Bulk Mail Is Poetry

Is this enough, or isn’t it
your austere mantra
lets go check it out
get-together or concede
I think i can help you out
with an empire kiss
this soap wardrobe
so stinking
annihilates the urn
in sag monotony
disheartened by the therapeutic
I wanna go commando
A lane of creation and collaboration
important for tomorrow
maybe before then
is this possible
bedspread invader
The westerners’ concurrent eruption
they’re traitors and foes
or so I’m guessing
Your prima donna suicide
with a convoy of grill tractor-trailors
so fascinated that I’m afraid to use it.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2007