Tessera

David Birch

@davidbirch.bsky.social

Worked in education and mostly taken up with poetry these days: see some of my poems at https://wildfire-words.com/?s=David+Birch and in the latest @thebrokenspine.co.uk collection 'Beautiful Little Fools'.

2267 Posts1303 Follower 924 Folgt

Mike O’Brien @zoomburst.substack.com · 3d ago

After the success of the first Odd Challenge on poems in the future tense, here is a second one - John Keats did it with "La Belle Dame sans Merci", as did Wilfred Owen with "Dulce et Decorum Est". Can you write a poem with a title in another language? Tag them #OddChallenge, and share the prompt.

Two phrenology heads in conversation, one speaking in English, the other in French - it can only herald an Odd Challenge

Jude @jude-brucemoll.bsky.social · 2d ago

#promptcombo #stand @jenthorne.bsky.social

Before the last bus

I'll wait under the big clock by Hull station,
at seven our buses will arrive together.

Feel my eyes widen when eventually
I see you, red-faced, rush toward me.

We've made a mistake about the rendevue,
not the other clock, laugh it off, relieved.

You look confident, bright blue-eyes, chestnut curls,
your neat wrangler denim, tight green loons, sweet.

I feel shy, how can I stop myself talking
too much, but we lean in to each other.

Who knew this is how it would feel,
I'm buzzing and it seems you are too.

Soon enough the last bus arrives.
JS

Francis H Powell writer and poet @fhpowellwriter.bsky.social · 2d ago

#promptcombo #stand @jenthorne.bsky.social

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 3d ago

Hrre's my first contribution to #promptcombo #stand Have a great week @jenthorne.bsky.social Jen.

Outstanding

beachfront property has been constructed by fine, innovative American
contractors who brought many highly skilled
builders to recover desolation.

Purchase these gleaming new build apartments,
in this Golden Age of prosperity
when all awkward negative elements
are replaced with clean positivity.

This remarkable opportunity
is purchased with our usual war grists
of murdered babies, raped pregnancy
told by investigative journalists.

Please ignore folk outside who say this is their home. Their home no longer exists.

Quill of Mnemosyne @sonnetsmith.bsky.social · 2d ago

A piece to contribute to #PromptCombo #Stand Thank you to @jenthorne.bsky.social for the prompt! I might well write another yet, but this is one I found whilst sorting through an old pile of papers that I hadn't typed up yet. #poetry #blueskypoetry #amwriting

I stand upon a knife edge
A precipice both sides
Each step I slice my feet
But pain is better than a dive

A straight and narrow torture
Between two looming walls
Grimace through the status-quo
Avoid expensive falls

I carry on, I walk the path
As blood runs down the blade
A life that's slowly draining
Through crippling fear of change

I stand upon a knife edge
Each step leads to my grave
Does light await beneath me
Or only bitter flames?

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 3d ago

Thank you to @emteepoetry.bsky.social for last weeks #PromptCombo and to everyone who contributed. This week it's my turn and I've picked a word with over 300 definitions, so there's no excuse for not having a go 😂 This week I want you to #Stand with me 🙏 #PromptCombo #Stand #Prompt #Poetry

Pine Hill

The hill lifts a green shoulder
to the beckoning sky,
a place where the wind
slips off its heavy coat
and rests awhile.

A small stand of pines
leans into the hush,
dark needles catching
whatever light the day offers,
roots threading stories
through the soil’s marrow,
as it gathers
every seed that splits.

Grass sways in loose stanzas,
a gentle tide
that never seeks the sea,
only the soft rhythm
of the seasons.

In this place,
the future seems approachable
while the trees still stand.

A stand of pine trees on a hill somewhere in Shropshire that I can't remember.

Mizz Whozza Whazzit @mwplovesmusic.bsky.social · 2d ago

To stand, feeling foggy, tending toward the slants of the past, the ones where an important detail must be overlooked just to cope; we last when there’s a dream to be held and crumble when the nightmare is bared #promptcombo #emoetry #ampersandafterdark #poetry @jenthorne.bsky.social #vss365

David Birch @davidbirch.bsky.social · yesterday

Thanks @jenthorne.bsky.social for your extremely open-ended #PromptCombo #Stand. Went to a concert last night, sat down and wrote this

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 6d ago

#PoemsAbout #LastTrain @thebrokenspine.co.uk I will put a link to the reading in the comments.

DISJUNCTION

they took the train away
and they tore the lonely station down
left the barefoot pineys
with no way to get outta this town

So I’m talking about the old train station by where I walk the dog, that there’s only a sign now and a vinyl fence in front of an overgrown embankment, and that there used to be a turntable a few yards back because three rail lines met there, and my wife says I’m sorry but I just don’t give a shit.

the boiler is hissing the steam is nice and hot
the blue comet’s departing at nine on the dot
gals in summer dresses guys in linen suits
headed for the boardwalk on the classiest of routes

So we’re on our way to WaWa and my son goes what was all that about with Mom and I’m like I’m looking up shit for the prompt, last train. And then I tell him how my grandfather operated the Public Service trolley from the Hub City to Perth Amboy when he was still a teen. I wish he was still alive so I could ask him about it now. I wish he had told me stories when I was a kid. All I have is an odd quote in a retirement program I found at my mom’s that says, “My greatest thrill (Keasby [sic] Trestle) You ask me how I felt when the trolley went off the track.” I don’t even know who the “You” was, much less the how why and when.

the seriouser I study to me it starts to seem
the world is just a fat man in a trolley problem meme
I’m out of joy I can’t employ anything uplifting
the more I learn the more I turn to multitrack drifting

So I tell my son I looked up the Keasbey Trestle and didn’t see anything about trolleys, but the deadliest US train wreck in the last hundred years did happen in Keasbey when “The Broker” commuter train derailed on a temporary wooden trestle built to accommodate New Jersey Turnpike laborers working on the main line. If my Pop Pop conflated the train and the trolley I wonder why his most thrilling memory would be something he wasn’t involved in and my son says probably because every other workday was boring. Yeah I laughed it p…

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 6d ago

Here’s one for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Many thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Last Colliery Train The future had gone
before the train did. I climbed the same steps,
laid my hand
on the same worn controls. The rails were rusting beneath us, as if the earth
had begun
to take them back. Behind me, the black wagons drew slowly
from the pithead.
On the bridges, men who had worked below, women who had waited children lifted high enough
to remember.
Nobody cheered. They watched us pass as they had watched their fathers leave for work, their husbands return
with darkness
worked into their skin.
For years, these tracks had carried coal from beneath the valley
and wages into its houses. That morning
they carried neither.
At the main line I brought her to a halt
and shut the engine down. The cab trembled,
then settled. And in the silence
that followed, it seemed the whole valley
was listening
for a pulse
that did not come again.

DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 6d ago

Morning #BlueskyPoetry it’s #PoemsAbout Friday. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk The #LastTrain theme sparked an idea, but as usual I couldn’t quite write it out as imagined. Sorry. Armageddon on the brain this week! Will enjoy seeing what shows up today. Thanks for reading.

A 2 stanza poem by Debbie Ross entitled

No Escape

Text follows:

I think we missed it.
The last train left the station some time ago.
We're stuck here
waiting on the platform for a departure that will never come.
Wish on the stars, pin your hopes on Mars.
It's pointless waiting - unpack your suitcase,
throw your lot in with the human race.
Let's do something while we're waiting...

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 6d ago

Happy #PoemsAbout day everyone. Here is my offering for #LastTrain. I can't wait to read everyone else's. With thanks as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk Have a great weekend all ❤️ #poetry #choo-choo

The Last Train

I am a witness
to the lairy, blaring call
of rowdy rogues returned from revelry.

The subdued quiet
of the nurse,
longing to kick off sensible shoes
and dance.

The hushed husband
accepting the gin‑soaked airing
of his inadequacy.

The impatient sigh
of the lost girl,
searching for
the last breath of warmth
before the cold night claims her.

I am a witness
to the carriage as confessional,
to the tracks that hum with stories
no one meant to tell.

I am a witness
to the sway of strangers
bound together
for one brief, rattling moment,
before scattering like sparks
into the dark beyond the platform.

I am a witness.

Steve Silas Hendrickson (Petal)@phylogeneticsteve.bsky.social · 6d ago

This is my entry for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain A train ride across Bicol sounds nice right about now. Too bad Mayon is erupting like crazy. 😅 @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #vss365 #BlueSkyPoets #Inkmine #writingprompt #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #writesky

Free Verse: Train Ride Luck

Woke up running, I'm a minute late
And I'm pushing crumbs off of my plate,
Maybe this will all go down to waste...
Stop it, he's using his mess as bait!

Sophisticated feelings here
Including hate—

You're just my luck—
The station announcing
it's running late.
Did I cause it to stop?
Let it drag me down, now
I'm clenching my ticket...wait..
Ohhhh I'm always late.
And everything happens to me—
Trying to leave
Your California
It's not how we should end,
But I refuse to bend... Ohhhh
Baao Lake, ohhh it's not fake.

Train rides, a nice, romantic fare.
It's the only way I'll clear my air...
Seeing horses running with their mares.
Maybe, it's nice without your flare (ahhh)

This is the last train ride;
Naga—Legazpi.

It's just my luck!
I met you years ago
I tripped and scarred,
Cause I'm just way too much
That I need a brake,
now I'm staring at great three lakes,
volcano, I breathe fresh air.
And trees can slap my face, don't care
I'll pretend
It's better this way
It's not how we should end,
But I like how we ended... Ohhhh

It's my luck..
ohhh it's my luck.
ohhh picture luck
With spicy luck.

Andy Williamson @andywilliamson.com · 6d ago

Good morning everyone, still not much writing time but always good to write something about trains, so here's a wee draft for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain. Thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk as always! #poem #poetrycommunity

Late train to Dundee

I run for a seat as
the day slides shut.
Ticket gates, the noise,
wheels feeling for grip.

A coal-black city evaporating,
tenement stone, brick, darkness,
the bridge where the city is lost.
And you.

Steel and diesel, dark fields blur.
My palm on the cold glass.
At Inverkeithing the line forks,
as the land begins to open.

Through salt-hardened towns:
Dalgety Bay, Aberdour, Burntisland.
Shuttered fronts,
sea-worn stone.

Then harbour lights, iron hush.
This river holds no shape
until the final curve,
and you.

C. Oulens @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social · 6d ago

For #PoemsAbout #LastTrain combined with #vss365 #brake @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk @andyperrincycling.bsky.social Thank you for reading 🙏 #Oulens #poetry #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity

The Left Platform
by C. Oulens

The last train at 11:11 p.m.
has left the station
once again
The lone lantern, the broken bench & I
finally,
fare free in shadows of our memory
The eleven-eleven chiaroscuro
spreads unhindered
across the silence along the rails,
tick-tied, lying still until
the first train brakes
in
the
morning
at o-five-eleven
on the opposite platform
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll cross over
and it’ll take me to the verge
they call home

David Birch @davidbirch.bsky.social · 6d ago

In response to today's @thebrokenspine.co.uk excellent #PoemsAbout prompt #LastTrain, here's a rewrite of an older poem recalling a childhood train journey. Many thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk and the rest of the #poetrycommunity. Looking forward to reading other responses!

The Broken Spine (SUBS OPEN)@thebrokenspine.co.uk · last wk.

#PoemsAbout #LastTrain starts Friday. Empty platforms. Flickering signs. A suitcase. A goodbye. The last seat home. We favour vivid imagery over explanation. Draft now. Use Alt Text.

Rainy train platform at night with a stationary train and two figures walking away under station lights. Overlay text reads: “#PoemsAbout #LastTrain”.

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 6d ago

for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain and immense thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poems #poetry #BlueSkyPoets

on last train

oiled with alcoholic monsters
old miners prop up their subsiding
faces.

Call centre staff hold their heads
in both hands as if their palms
are headsets.

Shop assistants clock the prices
of metal cans out of habit.

Giggling teenagers hold one
another up whilst taking
selfies they'll regret in the morning.

Girls decide they can't walk on one heel
so both shoes slung in the bin.
Stockinged or barefoot they slope home.

Boys piss beside the train shelter
leave their monster cans on a wall
lig on a hedge as if they've found a bed.

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom @janpsolivagant.bsky.social · last wk.

A splendid #PromptCombo theme, @emteepoetry.bsky.social! Have a great week! #Poem about #Arachnid #Perseverance #poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters, 2025/2024 #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #PoetsOfBluesky #Symbolism #DarkPoetry #BW #nature

Anchorite and Arachnid

Dark, clammy and cramped,
My world abuts
Moss-fringed, head-heighted heavens.

From my cell’s cardinal points,
Four spiders work away at their webs
Night after night,
Day upon day.

Cunning crafters, they crave no respite.
Their bodies - oiled, grimed, and Engorged -
Warp silk line upon silk line,
Weft sticky spiral after sticky spiral, in
Unyielding rounds of
Self-same prayer threaded
Night after night,
Day upon day, in an
Unslacking orgy of monotony.

Their four webs merge into a
Nexus of gossamer monstrosity.
Their four turgid bottoms romp in the
Dank stench of dust-choked obscurity.

Dew-beaded filaments
Titillate my brow,
Gum up my lashes:
Ashen-white strands -
So light, so soft – like
Fine spittle spun from
Marrow.

With bestial fervour,
Four fat spiders
Cavort, carouse as
One.

Inspired by Пауки (“Spiders”, 1903),
Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945),
Russian Symbolist

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters, 2024

Highly contrasted monochrome image of a large spider's web in early autumn.

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · last wk.

Here's one for #PromptCombo on #Perseverance Many thanks to @emteepoetry.bsky.social for hosting

The Work of Returning Love is not proved by how carefully
we avoid the wound. Sometimes the kitchen must fill with weather, a cupboard closed too hard,
two voices striking
against the same old stone.
We have both said
what silence would have spared us. Still, neither leaves the other alone
inside the damage. We let the metal cool inside the mouth,
let anger loosen
its grip upon the facts. Then comes the harder courage: the door reopened,
the room entered again.
The stubborn faith that what has been disturbed
has not been destroyed This is how a life together endures, by crossing the distance
we have made.
wo cups. A hand placed down
between us.

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · last wk.

Thank you @emteepoetry.bsky.social for hosting this week's #PromptCombo with #Perseverance. #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · last wk.

Here is part of "Wild Thrill Seeker" from my collection "She Needs That Edge" for #promptcombo #perseverance and @emteepoetry.bsky.social Have a great time hosting this week.

You're mandled, mollycoddled. Need to be chivied and mithered.

Too long seen you topple your Mam and Dad grab

you up, smartish, to console. Too much smothered

when deep in debt, pulled out the mire,

dusted down and placed on decent path, again.

Not fended and fought, bended and bought,

mended your own path, cleared undergrowth,

tramped and stamped with your own sore feet.

No blisters and sores, cuts and grazes you've picked

washed out ingrained grit, gravel while grimaced.

Emily Tee @emteepoetry.bsky.social · last wk.

Thanks to Ronnie for last week's #PromptCombo. This week tag me, @emteepoetry.bsky.social for the prompt #Perseverance. I'm including a poem of mine published about a year ago in The Poetry Lighthouse 🙏 and a photo I took back in January Looking forward to reading your poems!

Francesca L Rolle @francesca-laura.bsky.social · 3w ago

For #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds. Thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk for hosting and getting me writing. #Poetry

A poem by Francesca L Rolle titled Coffee:
You left your bag of coffee,
It's sat at the back of the cupboard,
You took everything else,
But as you left,
You said,
Keep the nice coffee.
A final act of kindness,
After breaking my heart,
But I don't drink coffee,
And now I realise,
You never really cared.

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 3w ago

Here’s my contribution for #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds Thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Créacht na Staire
The Wound of History The empire sailed away, or so the history book said, a small engraving of ships
diminishing into weather. But it had already hidden
inside the mouth.
Our rivers answered
to names they had not chosen.
Mountains were corrected. Fields divided themselves
obediently on maps.
At school, we were given rulers. We learned to draw straight lines, to underline the subject, circle the object,
and call possession grammar. The old words survived
as contraband: in kitchens, at wakes, under the breath of women who knew a language could be beaten
without being killed Still, when we speak,
the wound opens: claim, clear, settle,
own. A conqueror's verbs, passed down
as ordinary speech.
The flag was lowered. The alphabet remained, some letters missing,
others drilled into order. And somewhere beneath each careful sentence, the tongue remembers
what was taken from it.

Andy Williamson @andywilliamson.com · 3w ago

A bit early I know, but I'm travelling tomorrow and been rubbish at posting poems lately 😀 Here's a wee contribution for #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds I wrote in the tiny spaces of the week. Hope you like it and thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk! #poems #poetry #writingcommunity

Southwesterly gale eight

you watch water
spit
from the kettle

hissing
as it hits
the stove

a tap
dripping
into silence

salt spray on windows
darkness past colour
and you
sit
alone

the bed unmade
drinks gone cold
words
scalding
scarring

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 3w ago

Yay it's #PoemsAbout day again. Here is my offering to @thebrokenspine.co.uk for #ExitWounds Have a good weekend everyone 😊 #Poetry #Home

Exit Wounds

We close the door on twelve years,
on a house that learned our footsteps,
moulded its walls around our living,
and sheltered us through every storm.

Now it stands
hollow,
echoing bedtime stories and laughter,
whispered fears,
the lives we lived inside it.

Scratches on the door jamb,
each one a celebration
of legs stretching longer.

The dent in the wall
where the sofa refused to turn the corner
still smiles at us,
a stubborn reminder
the furniture remembers too.

Nail holes pockmark the plaster
where photographs once clung.
Faded squares linger,
where smiling toddlers
in floppy hats once watched us.

We leave behind the marks
of having endured.

The house will heal.
Paint will cover.
New laughter will fill these rooms.
But these scars are ours.

We walk away knowing
a home is never just bricks.
It is every wound we made,
and every wound we mended,
inside its walls.

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 4w ago

Thought I'd have another go at this week's #PoemsAbout #PowerCut. This one a little more starry-eyed than my usual. Hat tip to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk for hosting! #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom @janpsolivagant.bsky.social · 4w ago

🙏 @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #PoemsAbout #PowerCut 1987 Great Storm #poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters, 2025/2024 #80s #ClimateChange #Shakespeare #GenX #EastAnglia #Chernobyl #BW

The Tempest

Halfway between
Chernobyl and my first
Exercise of suffrage:
Sizewell B, just fourteen miles away,
Prompts loud, lapidary Green to
Spore in the deep, dark midnight of
Tory Blue.

October evening,
Sixth-form outing:
Contemporary Shakespeare,
Theatre Royal.

Tempest:
Inner turmoil, ambition, treachery -
Otherworldly disruption of the
Natural order.

We return home at midnight
To soft rain. The air is still,
Sultry for an autumn night,
As if the season
Has sapped its own strength;
As if the season
Has hollowed itself out from the inside.

4am
Pitch and yaw of a
House far out at sea.
Walls vibrate.
Unearthly howls:
Souls in agony
Circumambulating,
Seeking succour,
Scratching at double-glazed sills.

Whipcrack-flash of
Power lines striking the ground.

Daylight whisks in,
Softening the storm to a
Mere gale.
I peer out the window:

Copper-topped and bristled
Head of the Troubled One,
To whom I give wide berth,
Slices prow-like through the
Choppy headwind.

We venture out.
Cars, phone boxes,
Post boxes,
Annexes
Crushed under
Toppled cedar,
Sycamore,
Oak.

Spire adorning the town’s
Private school -
Cracked,
Crooked,
Doomed to collapse.

Neighbour’s wall
Lurches, dissolves, nearly
Smothers my sister.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Countryside:
Birnam Wood battalions,
Squadrons, platoons
Decapitated, decimated -

Macheted – or
Mangled.
Shredded by
Volley upon volley of
Round shot.

Tunstall Forest -
Annihilated.

Power returns
Intermittently, but the
Windscreen-wiper motors on the
Family car conk out.

Driving home in rain,
Patches of Ipswich,
Woodbridge,
A12 with the
Lights still out.

Pair of Mum’s old tights
Attached to the wipers,
Now hand-operated by
Driver and front-seat passenger.

Wisecracks ripple through the car.
Wisecracks ripple through the
Brightening air -
Toppling a laconic
Candle.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

©Jan Peters, 2024

Monochrome image of uprooted tree next to a boardwalk in the Harz National Park in Germany

Sue Ibrahim @sueimnw.bsky.social · 4w ago

For this week's #PoemsAbout #PowerCut from @thebrokenspine.co.uk Can we have a heat cut please! 🫠