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Kara Rose Trojan Sep 2011
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.
A W Bullen Aug 2020
It was there
we ran like
lambs to laughter,
loved by landscape
further faster,

faster than
a smarting starlight,
hoofed in dew-soaked
volleys from our meadow
kicking feet..

and onward, upward

beat
those tracks
of flattened rye,
then took the dry-stream
bed by storm,

leapt the dams,
with air-sprung ease,  
and wore our leaf-haired
voices wider

quelled our glare
in sky-torn ponds
at peace,
  
with
our surrounding....


so
where, to, now
the Birchwood boys,
our atoms split,
our cells dividing

chided,
from our
founding frolic,

gone to chase
the last day down.
Marshall Gass Nov 2014
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
Luke Gagnon Feb 2014
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
Caroline Shank Apr 2023
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
Chris Thomas Apr 2017
Part I

There is a trail that I've walked a time or two
Wearing heavy shoes made of crackling fire
I've left behind only a charred unrecognizable road
And a sunrise as bitter as its roots

The trail parts swiftly, cleaving me as it cleaves itself
My route is camouflaged in winter's blanket
I spin on heels that have worn their welcome
And I walk beyond the borders of this dream

There's an old woman in a cottage
Who tells me I have a mist behind my eyes
"Brown is the color of failure," I tell her as I pass
And she flashes a half-smile that chills me to my bones

Part II

Late to rest, yet early to rise
Quarrelsome images tirelessly haunt my sleep
The old lady waves from the bottom of the hill
But it's too late to turn back now

I see a saddle of good weight resting against birchwood trees
Yet no sign of steed for miles around
As calloused palms meet calloused leather
I sense the spirit of its rider wash over me

The path now winds like a time traveling clock
My breathing hastens as my feet carry on
I hear whistling but I'm unsure of the source
Is it me?  Or is it something out of sight?

Part III

I come to a clearing at long last
Blistered feet have taken me far, just not far enough
My pupils sense a brightness I haven't encountered before
Instinctively, my hands shield my cowering eyes

The old woman is there, whispering to lilies
In a language my mind has no hope of comprehending
She pays no heed to my presence at all
Yet she knows that I linger in my bewilderment

She plucks a lily from the unblemished earth
And I see a brilliant steed at the center of the shimmering field
"Brown is the color of failure," she says with a parched grin
And suddenly my path becomes very clear

Part IV

I flinch as the light overwhelms my perception
Evolving now into an ethereal embrace
Though blind, my feet move without my mind's approval
And suddenly I am mounted upon the majestic horse

Like a snare drum, its gallop is steady and gallant
My sense of direction in disarray as I'm carried through the woods
I hear the woman's hands wringing at weeds in the distance
Despite how far from the clearing I should be by now

The horse tenses and sneers as momentum careens to a halt
I feel myself being thrown through air, time, and space
My brown eyes blink as oxygen floods my rested lungs
Gasping, I realize I'm as awake as I have ever been

End.
This work is the result of two weeks of writing, which seems like a long time for a piece of this length.  But each time I sat down to work on it, something else just called to me to either write or re-write.  

This piece is focused on the substance of my dreams; how quickly they seem to unfold in my mind, and how deeply they seem to point to something in my heart that is unsatisfied with its condition.
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.
Nonn Feb 2018
Oh, how we always like to be right.

From the way we victimize ourselves
Until we've guilted our way out of the blame,
To the way we create anguish inside us
So that someone will save us.

What a twisted world this is, inside our heads,
Where we are both vanquished and conqueror.

It stems, I think, from a certain kind of pride
That we wish wasn't there yet we guard with our lives

As if Light in this world just didn't suffice
As if only the darkness could give us a life


Then we fell, so far
From our Birchwood, wobbling
Seat, and met the truth.

(c) 2018 Indigo Kenna
Mixed styles. Things come in what form that they will.
Colm May 2020
Guttural rumble
As tree rings move
So shifting Huorns call

Like bark rippling
In denim jeans
Refreshings

And yet odd
The feeling is
Of springtime through the windows felt

At last
Let me step into it with being
Firm as rocks refined by subtle streams

For you are birchwood and in beige
A beauty of Earth
An eternal sky

And moving less much
Like a tree
Will be the ever end of you and I

And so I move
In premeditated you
To find us

The mere sight
Of you
Makes such standard spirits fly
Yearnings Of The Earth And Sky

— The End —