Friday, December 23, 2011

Making a New Friend

I can sit here and snuggle with the heater
Alone. Alone. Alone.
I can be solitary
Fall in love with myself
I'm meeting myself
And it feels like the first time
This person -
I never knew me at all.

I can think about things
for a long time
And sometimes, when I wish
I had a reason to
speak a thought out loud
I try it out,
Weirded a little
by the sound of my voice,
like looking into
your own eyes in a mirror.

I can ride it out
Wait for it
Stare down this season
of empty
of quiet
I'm better than it.
I have power
this silent house
Hasn't even seen.

(C) 2011 Tasha Chinnock

Monday, November 28, 2011

Isaiah 42:3 [ACROSTIC Part 2]

Read Part 1
"He will bring full justice to all who have been wronged."

Heaven's glory
Emits passionate love

Where the dark of the world
Is oppressing
Loved one, your God is
Listening.

Be still.
Remember His promises
In the day of your affliction.
Nothing goes unseen,
Give it to Him.

Find a place to rest
Under His covering.
Let Him act on your behalf.
Look to Him to be

Judge of righteousness;
Undertaker of your cause;
Swift rebuker
To the wicked and corrupt.
In His mighty power, the
Creator and finisher of
Everything

Takes up your case,
Orders His armies.

Angels in ranks
Leap to obey,
Live to do His will.

Why are you cast down?
Heart, be lifted up.
Open your eyes and see

Him fight for your honor,
Avenge you at last,
Victorious,
Eternally fair and faithful.

Behold your conqueror,
Enthroned in the heavens,
Even now steps down -
Name above all names,

Wielding truth and holiness,
Raising His awesome hand.
Order will be restored
Now and forever.
Give your hurt to God.
Everything is His to
Decide.

(C) 2011 Tasha Chinnock

Our Alliance

Our alliance
Speaking - and knowing without speaking
The reassurance
of limitless solidarity
Bound to eachother's burdens
The sacred communion
of mother and daughter.

(C)2011 Tasha Chinnock

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Hermitage

Its quiet here
when they are gone.
Blank, white walls
Hold their breath
Stubborn as toddlers.
The lightbulbs sit and burn in silence
Like angry friends
Intent on not speaking first.
I don't even talk to myself.
It feels irreverent
To interrupt the wake,
Observing all the loud, messy laughter
That dies every other Sunday
when the sun goes down.
This extended moment of silence
Reminds me with its nothing pulse
That they are missing.

(c) 2011 Tasha Chinnock

Jazz

A Grievance!
She cries out indignantly
at the swarth of the mercury.
It rises, it falls,
and all the while it is
a dark, untrustable thing.
Does it even believe in itself?
Like a tepid bath boasting steam
that delivers little more
than shivering wetness.

A lie! A lie!
And I knew not to listen.
I said I wouldn't
but plugging my ears turned out
to be pointless
with my uncanny talent
for lip-reading
I wish I could read your mind instead
I wish I could turn my back on you completely.

(c) 2011 Tasha Chinnock

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Naptime Adorations

Little cheeping chickies
With wide, watching eyes
Trying tricks
Banging sticks
Find the pecking order
Repeat all you hear
Believe it all
Beckon and call
Learn so much more
Than what is taught
Lick and feel
Find what's real
Exhaust yourselves
In half a sunny day
Nod your head
Sleep like the dead
Climb up high
And preach your innocence
When you cry
So will I
Words of wisdom
Blown like bubbles, free
Skip away
Back to play

(C) 2011 Tasha Chinnock

Consciousness

I was blind and empty
A vapid reflection
Deceived by my own titles
With a mere air of reality.

And then a crux
A solid, dense cross
Crashed on the shadow of my back
Creating a surface
And my life was formed
Of something heavier.
I took on mass
And grew opaque.
I was real, real, real
Vivid, almost garish.
Painful in existence
Shrill and stuffed with knowing.
I saw in three-dimensional contrast
The good and evil and fearful
In the world
And I longed to go back.

I sought out misty echoes
I shrunk into shaded caverns
Of half-life dreaming
I hummed a partial tune
I squinted and blurred my sight
Willing blindness to return me
Up that twilight path
Of intuited perception
To forget again the
Sharp, tangy peal and clang
That wakens slumber
And shakes us out of bed
Into the daylight.

(c) 2011 Tasha Chinnock

Monday, February 21, 2011

Rooms

We have themes for every room
Like three parties
All happening at once
Because this is a home
Whose promise we sense
But can't define
Its a scary proposition
Moving in to a place
With no idea of its future
Its purpose
So we have given it purpose

Wild flowers - untamed, ecclectic
Life based solely on whim
And personal preference
Not here to impress someone else
A place of my own

Light green with butterflies
The quiet place she goes to
In her heart and mind
In the counselor's office
The color under her eyelids
The soft little creatures
Almost mythical
Who flutter and light on her sorrow
And drink it away through curlicue tongues

The bottom of the deep blue sea
A new adventure
Where courage and bravery
Curiosity and momentum
Are rewarded with visual wonders
Mysteries revealed
Treasures collected
Making the frightening darkness of getting there
Worth it after all

(C) Tasha Chinnock 2011

No Room For You

I have a new house
One you've never seen
And there is no room for you here.
The owner called it little and rustic,
it is old and decrepit
with flaking paint
and clogged pipes
but it is free of any hint of you.
The children explore the overgrown yard
and I sweep the cobwebs off the ceilings
and never wonder if you will arrive.
You can not arrive.
I decorate my room in fans
and four mismatched bookcases
and I do not leave one shelf
empty in anticipation of your appearance.
The king sized bed is
made up on one side
and the other still holds laundry.
There is no place for your tools
Or your belt to hang in the closet.
There is no place for your razor
or your keys.
There is no room for you
in this house.
You are gone.
There is no room for you
in my life now.
It is full already,
with all that you abandoned.

(C) Tasha Chinnock 2011

Quiescence

I wait in stillness, a holy silence
I've been in this state of expectation
for so long now, it is home away from home.
A hundred times I have felt certain
a breakthrough was imminent
A change was coming.
I pray
I wait.
I consecrate myself.
My food is an offering
My heart on the altar,
I believe. My trusting heart
sits.
Like a dog awaiting permission to move.
Yes, you have trained me to wait.
I've forgotten how to
anxiously wonder
The hows and whys and whens
belong to the Master alone.
All that is left for me
Is Amen.

(c) Tasha Chinnock 2011

Emergency Room

A heart condition.
So much implication in that.
A needy heart.
A greedy heart.
A broken heart.
Pierced through with its own sword?
Disappearing like grass?
What depths are in my own
too-human heart?
To wish someone's death
who I don't even know?
To calculate how this may be
my answer to prayer?
I despise the thought
and still entertain it.

She is a child;
a mother of children;
a weak, frail thing.
That I never was,
nomatter my submission.
I was never weak or frail or a child.
Does that give him power?
Does he feel big and strong?
As his pipes in his divey apartment crumble and
his ceiling caves in.
As his business falls apart
and disappears like sand through fingers.
As his children become strangers
hating all he stands for
because it is not them.
Does he derive power
from a child-lover
with a bad heart?

(C) Tasha Chinnock 2011