David Birch
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davidbirch.bsky.social
David Birch
@davidbirch.bsky.social
1.1K followers 740 following 1.3K posts
Worked in education and mostly taken up with poetry these days: you can find some of my poems at https://wildfire-words.com/?s=David+Birch and most recently in the latest @thebrokenspine.co.uk collection 'Beautiful Little Fools'.
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Reposted by David Birch
hool415.bsky.social
@rfsmith.bsky.social @dragonslayerma.bsky.social @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
@victoriaspires.bsky.social I’m hosting #promptcombo this week.Use the #promptcombo and post me @hool415.bsky.social for the theme of #workinglove Anything on love, work or a mix of both! All welcome till 5pm Friday!!
Working Love I fell for you in work amid the photocopier’s paparazzi-flashing, had no control over seating so, between floors giddy elevator conversations snatched. Once, outside, during a fire evacuation test I stood by you, aware my ruddy-face was so obviously smouldering. Hold the note you gave me for supposed help on an urgently demanded spinning-hamster-wheel type task, just a rather economical: ‘Thank you v v much’ but I imagined that first word unexpectedly promoted and H.R. formally introducing its shyest new replacement: Love. Since that day to my certain knowledge you’ve never used ‘v v’ again… though I make sure those twanging Cupid arrowheads are near daily kept still in play.
November 9, 2025 at 7:42 PM
Reposted by David Birch
poetry-with-hart.bsky.social
Trust, the brittle bone
once broken, never the same
when a storm rolls in.

#haikufeels #brittle #promptcombo #storm #haiku #senryu #micropoem #micropoetry #3lines #poem #poetry
November 9, 2025 at 11:44 PM
Reposted by David Birch
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
🙏 to @hool415.bsky.social #PromptCombo
#DeepTime take on #workinglove

#newpoem / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2022-24

#poetry #JohnCage #MechtildOfMagdeburg #AsSlowAsPossible #orgelprojekt #MysticMonday #thework
Fatal Day in Halberstadt 1361 Decameron‘s Twelfth Night. Lollards hitch their prayers, their Plight to the Morning Star. Pestis Secunda scourges Plantagenet England. Giotto’s Last Judgement Slumbers in umbrage on the Cusp of the Quattrocento. Halberstadt, Flush, bustling prince-bishopric - its Cathedral-treasure stash of Relics looted at the Sack of Constantinople – hosts the First of its Kind: Chromatic keyboard, Twelve half-tones arranged in Octaves. Halberstadt - where, at St. Burchardi’s Monastery, Cistercian Sisters Scale the canonical hours: Minor - Terce, Sext, None and Compline; Major - Matins, Lauds and Vespers, in Perpetual rounds of Work, prayer and Lectio Divina. A century before, They nestle in a fecund vessel of Mystical vision, where Mechthild of Magdeburg - Fluid, erotic, vernacular - Lights the way for Meister Eckhart; where Mechtilde, Helfta’s Nightingale, Dispenses Special Grace to Dante as Matelda. Six-hundred-and-thirty-nine years Slip by. Millennium tenor Deeds St. Burchardi’s to Zen musical maverick already Eight years passed: Bird now uncaged - Purposeless, intentionless - Pecking away at membranes - Temporal, musical – from the Beyond. The Six-hundred-and-thirty-nine-year Lease unfolds As Slow as Possible on an Organ fashioned for this purpose. Hiss of compressors, taut notes Coasting over billowing groans until 2640. Pauses a week before 9/11: seventeen months of silence, then Nine movements, each lasting Seventy-one years. Chord kept up over seven years, between Benedict’s flight to Castel Gandolfo and Second Lockdown. Austere piety, Avant-garde whimsy - ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 Spurning utility, instrumentality - Partaking in visions that far Outstrip lifetimes, Current-day zeitgeist confines. Contemplative prayer, Playful contingency - Tentative forays into Deep Time, Possible only when one Listens closely with Open heart, Open mind. Eternity disclosed in Nugacity, ephemera: Birds, lilies, Mustard seeds. Cloistered life, Choral work Whetting one’s Keenness for the Core - Still and small. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2024 Highly contrasted monochrome image of a statue by Susan Turcot (2007/8) of mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1282) ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022 Poster-sized mural of US avant-garde composer, John Cale (1912-1992)
November 10, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by David Birch
thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
Hi @hool415.bsky.social Ju, here's my first response to your excellent #promptcombo #workinglove. It describes the effect of temporarily having 99% hearing loss due to a middle ear blockage:
The Lost Buzz Helping folk gave me such satisfaction. Teenage Saturday worker stacking shelves finding books, answering peoples questions. Now I restock these supermarket shelves, apologising to customers that I can't hear them, but know somebody who can. My smile no longer a welcome mat, More: Private. Do Not Disturb. Can't hear you. I'm changed into what I don't want to be. Unhelpful. Anxious. Angry at myself because I can't listen. This is not me. Stranger shuts a heavy door on myself. I will find that buzz, again. I must learn new skills. Listen differently. Unlearn.
November 10, 2025 at 7:52 AM
Reposted by David Birch
sueimnw.bsky.social
For this week's #promptcombo #workinglove with very understanding host @hool415.bsky.social , an old one which I think fits. Look forward to reading others later.
November 10, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by David Birch
oyoguhito.bsky.social
Hi Julian @hool415.bsky.social here's my response to your #promptcombo #workinglove

my working glove (sic)
is blue and hypoallergenic
a rash choice
November 10, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by David Birch
dragonslayerma.bsky.social
#PromptCombo host is our very charming Ju for this week & his theme is #Workinglove

Tag @hool415.bsky.social & use the hastags to get involved.

Have a fabulous week hosting my dear friend ❤️
hool415.bsky.social Julian (Hool) @hool415.bsky.social · 2d
@rfsmith.bsky.social @dragonslayerma.bsky.social @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
@victoriaspires.bsky.social I’m hosting #promptcombo this week.Use the #promptcombo and post me @hool415.bsky.social for the theme of #workinglove Anything on love, work or a mix of both! All welcome till 5pm Friday!!
Working Love I fell for you in work amid the photocopier’s paparazzi-flashing, had no control over seating so, between floors giddy elevator conversations snatched. Once, outside, during a fire evacuation test I stood by you, aware my ruddy-face was so obviously smouldering. Hold the note you gave me for supposed help on an urgently demanded spinning-hamster-wheel type task, just a rather economical: ‘Thank you v v much’ but I imagined that first word unexpectedly promoted and H.R. formally introducing its shyest new replacement: Love. Since that day to my certain knowledge you’ve never used ‘v v’ again… though I make sure those twanging Cupid arrowheads are near daily kept still in play.
November 10, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by David Birch
gclifford1.bsky.social
Thanks for the #promptcombo @hool415.bsky.social
This is more work than love, and based on a true story.
November 10, 2025 at 2:40 PM
Reposted by David Birch
andywilliamson.com
Hello everyone, slow of the blocks this week, so I've decided to share a wee poem I wrote a long time ago for #promptcombo and @hool415.bsky.social's prompt of #workinglove. Thanks Ju for hosting and everyone else for being so inspiring! #poems #poetry
First love, lost [your] fear will never be more powerful than [my] love but [my] love will never be enough to save [you]
November 10, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by David Birch
robgalpin.bsky.social
Hi @hool415.bsky.social - here's my response to #PromptCombo #WorkingLove #poem #poetry
The Burn Closes Another silent afternoon, stunned in the supermarket by the this-ness of the shampoo bottles on the shelves, and of the workers who stocked them— bawling happy insults at each other across the stock room floor. So I took the long way home through the burn closes: to the plateau with the little ruined church, the grounds herb-rich and rabbit-bit; the rich greens of the gorse, the grass, the trees blending with the sky— the sky glaucous, and carnation. And through the pink, rusting 70s fence to the medieval Holy Cross— a ruin by 1800 — and St Peter's, down the bank, not built for another seven years. And in that church-less gap, all the parish souls, married, with or without offspring, in a pen-stroke deemed on the instant illegitimate— their ties illegal, the registers annulled: A portcullis authority over small, quiet lives.
November 10, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by David Birch
zentinl.bsky.social
Thank you Julian @hool415.bsky.social for this week's #promptcombo prompt #Workinglove. Sharing one from 2014.
November 10, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Reposted by David Birch
fhpowellwriter.bsky.social
Here is another offering a rather sober look at love

#promptcombo #workinglove
November 11, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by David Birch
thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
Hi @hool415.bsky.social Ju, here is my second response to your inviting #promptcombo #workinglove. It is from my collection "Please Take Change":
THIS MOP AND BUCKET are poetry to me. My pen is a mop I stick in a bucket of disinfectant floor cleaner pull out mop sodden with words and splash them backwards and forwards slop lines one after the other Until the floor fair shines, My mop is dry, needs another dip. I squeeze out the gunk back into the bucket. More the floor shines, dirtier the bucketful gets. A good poem is a clean floor
November 11, 2025 at 9:20 AM
Reposted by David Birch
internetofwords.com
Done the #Poetry Warmup this morning as the #PromptCombo #WorkingLove for @hool415.bsky.social. This might work for a weekly thing…
Working Love by S. Reeson I am my own relationship with truth I will and must keep the flame alive because until I learn to love myself a work in progress remains a lie simply the smouldering remains of pain I built to fit this form because until I can become a host constant reassessment of my care I cannot love this lifestyle forward will never transform awful into fair until the day I finally wake up joyous as my own calm appears
November 11, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by David Birch
hareontherun.bsky.social
I Hope all #promptcombo folk will forgive one of my very occasional forays among your number 🙏..... just couldn't resist the current #workinglove prompt from @hool415.bsky.social !!!
Surely you've felt more than just paperclips between us, more than just occasional sharing of Blu Tac? Us, us meeting with such propriety at the photocopier, maintaining such decorum waiting patiently for the kettle to boil in the office kitchen - it's blowing off of steam surely hinting at more than the filling of a stained cup.
November 11, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by David Birch
mwplovesmusic.bsky.social
#promptcombo #workinglove #poetry @hool415.bsky.social

“Believing this is the day of their demise”
November 11, 2025 at 1:36 PM
davidbirch.bsky.social
Many thanks @hool415.bsky.social for this week's #PromptCombo #WorkingLove. Hope this one fits, albeit obliquely! Looking forward to catching up with others later today.
November 11, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by David Birch
johnchmura.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #LockedDoors
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
I will put a reel in the comments, or I won’t.
LOCKED DOORS I’ve learned or been reluctantly convinced to trust the math so if Monty Hall may he rest in peace resurrected his game show host self and showed me Schrödinger’s pussy or a goat behind door number two I would switch my choice but I wouldn’t like it. I want bigger balls to fall faster, I want Columbus to land in India, I want eels born from mud, I want my wife to have less teeth than me, I want ice smaller than water, and I want 77 million Americans to be and to vote smarter, but they ain’t and they’re maybe never gonna.
November 7, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by David Birch
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
at the fringe of night
the sound of a
closing door
creaking
on
its failing hinges
& of crickets going quiet
& of
some bro-
ken
breaths
& lost s.l.nt counts
from one to ten to
to
naught
#PoemsAbout #lockeddoors #Oulens
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by David Birch
daveashleypoet.bsky.social
#LockedDoors #PoemsAbout #poem #RhymeRoyal #MentalHealth
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by David Birch
metaphorqu.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #LockedDoors
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

Whichever door might have slid

Open

Then

Is now closed.

There is no key
janedougherty47.bsky.social Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 5d
A poem about raw grief and trauma, even if they're not mine.
#PoemsAbout #LockedDoors for @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by David Birch
poetryman1.bsky.social
Am I up to the challenge??😳

#Poemsabout #lockeddoors
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

Cheers to all. A good day to read!😀👍
November 7, 2025 at 3:30 PM
Reposted by David Birch
rayhourigan.bsky.social
Winter closes its
Fist, mottled orange carpet
Of leaves swept away.
#WildWalkPrompt #orange #haiku #senryu #poem #writing #writingcommunity
@sonnetsmith.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 5:59 AM
Reposted by David Birch
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #LockedDoors @thebrokenspine.co.uk 🙏 to @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social & best wishes to @alanparrywriter.co.uk

#poetry / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2024

#Symbolism #ZinaidaGippius #monochrome #ImageAndVerse #DepthPsychology #bskypoetry #poetrycommunity
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. After (Пауки, “Spiders”, 1903) by Russian Symbolist poet, Zinaida Gippius (1869-1945) ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2024 Highly contrasted black-and-white image of a large cobweb glistening in the morning sun
November 7, 2025 at 6:10 AM
Reposted by David Birch
drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk
Hello #poetrycommunity @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk This is my slim offering for todays #PoemsAbout #LockedDoors thanks as always to reader and sharers I’ll be popping in and out as time allows. Looking forward to your contributions.

#poetry #poems
A poem by Debbie Ross entitled Shut Out Or Shut In Body text as follows In my dreams there is locked door after locked door, down a never ending corridor. I don't know what it means, I rarely remember dreams, but I remember the feeling of panic, of not being able to get through to get to you.
November 7, 2025 at 9:03 AM