"birchwood" poems
There was a squandering ember that climbed her spinal chord
and lit the deteriorating birchwood on the peach-fuzzed tea lamps.
When those stairwells cramped and swelled with staggered liquid terraces
in the foundational pin-cushion that cradled family after family.
Woe begone chants that railed support beams moaning under elemental abuse.
A litter of ghost kittens coiling underfoot where the rug
used to yawn before the grandfather clock,
now senile and rotting with absent-minded tick-tocks.
Inside her streetcorner, the music was that
monkey hopping to street ***** blue notes on somber ropes.
The air thick with the regal, chunky vibe
of batting eyes, flirty sighs, and bourbon.
Between the buildings again...
embraced with the same warm feeling that
entrances your fingertips, lips, and ears when within a man's arms.
In this city, Love is those two birds on that same powerline
that bowed and ebbed with summer's sweet sigh.
Sep 23, 2011
Sep 23, 2011 at 11:47 PM UTC
If I come to you I will be unriddled,
singing and shot through with
poetry. My gift will be the rings
around my soul, the songbirds
and the winds of Jupiter, warm
touched my arms and the
long wait of my legs.
If you come to me be it on
a Monday when you are
at your best and relaxed.
Bring me the scent of musk,
the water gobleted in crystal
for my waiting lips.
We will clasp the future as if
it was Young. The breeze
on our faces
blows over
the carved vows
on the birchwood
tree.
Caroline Shank
April 2, 2023
Apr 2, 2023
Apr 2, 2023 at 11:16 PM UTC
The are fragments in the space
inside my father,
allocations of
belts and birchwood and driftwood, or
coin covered wishing trees,
safe as houses
without enough windows.
In shallow places, he tells me
'swallow your chewing gum
and limp into cemetery
grounds. I will forget you
as if you were alive"
Everything he says has
water under it.
It doesn't sit, or stay, or
take root in any meaningful sense.
I guess that's when this all started.
why I stuff an entire pieces of cake in
my mouth just to stay
silent.
I wonder if it's recessive,
this un-satiated need to fill
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 11:02 PM UTC
Buried in the birchwood camps where wood rot
and leaves trace many summers of being
Lies the old skeletal remains of a frisky deer
Silently sleeping eyes, glazed and stricken tongue
hanging out of of lucid mouth
pellet covered with heart muscle and frozen sinews
Hunter ravaging the forest for fresh meat
struck at the dawn of reason and aiming
pulled a perfect shot at grazing deer but struck
the one that wasn't looking directly. The others
sped into the thicket down the hill away.
Life and death intermingled in the gloom
of wanting and not wanting. The hunter walked away
rather than cross the valley for quarry
and burden his strained back for his prize.
Further down in the sparse sandy gorse and shrub
other smaller prizes waiting undisturbed by the
crack of death higher up. Life benign
Again he lowered rifle to his squinting eye
and squeezed the trigger. The sound echoed
across the valley, through the birchwood trees
and quiet calmed the pulsing racing hearts.
The hunter picked his carcass from the gorse and soil
and headed home. Guilty of of greed, two deaths for one small
meal of roasted meat to share his whisky thirst.
The night descended with its blanket of black
and other predators shredded their prize uphill
thankful for lazy hunters.
Life and death balanced itself in the wilderness
nature spoke with an even tone.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 23 days ago
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 2:12 PM UTC
The snow crunched
Underneath my sandals
As I walked along the seashore.
It was there a grove of birch trees stood
Ever since childhood, I often swore
Yet I saw them stand tall no more
White as ever
And as banded as any snake
Yet their branches had broken and withered
In the time I had gone.
Ice had split the trunks in half and no matter how I tried to glue them back together
It was far too splintered and cracked
Winter had taken it's toll
On this Birchwood heart of mine.
Aug 13, 2025
Aug 13, 2025 at 1:09 AM UTC
Little, large and tiny embers
Flew as if they’d grown their own feathers,
As flames erupted from my armchair leathers,
And long forgotten, left behind endeavours,
I am now standing near a man-made crevasse.
Feeling fire consuming my internal threshold,
Its painful lair,
Whilst emitting a strange glare,
My legs are shaking, and my hands and feet are bare.
I’ve no more knives and needles left to spare.
My potted roses have now withered,
The moment for I so long have lingered.
Their armaments in time became so dull,
Grinding my eternal thoughts into a lull.
The pain just never stops, I guess.
It doesn’t matter if their thorns sting less and less.
Her tender, warm and flower-scented head–
Oh, how I wish I could have pumped it full of lead.
And what of our dreams of an ascetic rural livelihood?
I reckon that moment you weren’t in the mood.
Us slowly splitting moisty birchwood logs.
Beloved, it seems it’s raining cats and dogs.
But now it’s nevermore;
I feel I’ve changed my history and lore
For this moment and evermore.
Or have I just repressed my need for gore?
A fairy meadow shaken to the core–
Before me the country house, I enter may not dare.
It is now derelict, in disrepair,
Winds sweeping through its crooked wooden stair.
I sense that deep inside she never even cared.
And I am crawling spitting blood and ash.
Fires burned my limbs into a pile of scorched flesh,
Life fleeting from my helpless carcass,
But now I have become Augustus–
Eternal city,
Our Rome I set aflame
With wood you brought, I know it isn’t fair,
Just as my radiant words fell into your ashtray.
I shall not lie,
Countless cats and dogs falling from the sky,
Of our beloved pets, corpses lying here and there.
Aug 29, 2024
Aug 29, 2024 at 8:10 AM UTC