Author: Callum Featherstone

Callum Featherstone

Window of Intolerance

What was once

a pink, bustling hive

of information,

“You can do anything you set your mind to.”

Believing. Processing.

Is now a

charcoal blackened chasm

sedated, maligned.

Depressing.

To escape this

cerebellum prison

of grey

bars, locks and chains

is an impossible

matter.

Stockholm syndrome

without a captor

zombie

rejected human brains.

“Well it serves you right.”

That unflinching

whip-cracking tongue

makes a fist,

around a blade

that cuts deep.

Creates scars unseen;

scars underneath;

scars unbelieved.

Trauma

patient left cut to ribbons;

convulsing,

courtesy of what that

unflinching

whip-cracking tongue

thought was

right or wrong.

Callum Featherstone

To be understood

If within your lifetime

you can use a clock, digit or a hand

to count this life’s time

objectively

when you truly understand…

You haven’t lived,

only breathed.

To live racily in life’s slower moments

is a prize that is totally unrivalled;

Neigh-sayers. Those jockeying opponents

are trampled

under hoof, when you ride unbridled.

In the future there will be others

passing eyes over; your words,

your offspring, your pictures, your lovers.

Voyeurism

through the abstract lens of the absurd.

In the cave of your existence

lives your depths, your thoughts, your mud

a gift of solitary, temporary presence

that is you.

And, what isn’t;

to be understood.

Callum Featherstone

United Kadaver

Collective grief

makes

a corpse of this nation

each footstep impatient

on the arteries and

veins

we call streets.

We –

the beating heart

of the country;

now palpitating.

The salted sweat is

ever-radiating,

despair spilling from our tear ducts;

belief

tears us apart.

Our

zeitgeist is atrophy

rubbing shoulders

to the very bone.

Symbiosis

with a mobile phone

ringtones ring of

unholy matrimony.

This miscarrying motherland’s

hand;

unforced.

But, still kept us for viewing

in a jar

tormenting

delivering mental scars

locked down

in a green and unpleasant land.

And as the gangrene

sets in

the Hydra freshly springs to mind –

duplicitous

for;

every time

your actions prove unkind

viciousness

does arise

and two further unkind actions

affect your kin.

And this is just one

embodied state;

a United Kadaver –

sent to the

morgue

that has become this planet.

What was once

our Earth;

our good and wholesome Gaia,

that which used to inspire.

Each post-mortem

misunderstands this;

epidemic of lies

and death

by company sponsored

dagger

forged in the fiery

pits of hate.

Callum Featherstone

To be a man

In solitary dreams

i wake

the crest of understanding

waves

never reach

me

so small and unable

to reach

the stop

of their poking and prodding

hands

within my very breeches

they breach

my innards

every single time

just like they did before

when I wasn’t but a teen

only seven

and the blood

is intertwined

with every single tear

that I have intent to cry

just a pathetic little boy

that tried to become a man

smoking H and drinking cans

He could have been a man

Could have been a man.

Callum Featherstone

The Sun never sets…

The English language

steals away

at your very heart

it was

seized by foreign hands

in their taking of foreign lands

they never wore pyjamas

until they renamed it India

and there never were shenanigans

before Ireland suffered similar

we say chow down oftentimes

and never think it over

of the Opium that caused a war

sailing to Fuzhou from Dover

or of those solemn slaves

sold into their shackled sauna

from West Africa where that yellow

fruit was always called banana

and across Africa to the East

the collabo certainly happened

In North and South Sudan or Kenya

where the Jenga is often flattened

the boomerang seems to circle

and find it’s way back home

the Aboriginals knew that

when the Empire took

(and went)

back to it’s throne.

Callum Featherstone

What the Hell

They never tell you

what it’s like when

your body gets older

but you still feel inside

the way you did at

eighteen. Impromptu

is that feeling once again

of the receding smoulder.

A fire in the belly denied

by smothered tit for tat.

You ask those questions

that cause blisters within

your mind. As the heat

steams your twisted tongue

you pour out confusion.

Their answers cause indigestion,

their falsehoods crawl your skin.

A melting of your mind meets

with a recurrence of unbelong-

ing – the age of electrocution.

Caustic cynicism is all that remains

now that the beastly brawn outwits

the worm ate brains.

The stinging scorned proudly splits

a bill with hedonism – that explains

the firmed terrain.

A drought of thinking critically, rationale and morality

created global tyrants; ruling in totality.

You have no reason to fear being sent

to hell because you live there every waking moment.

Callum Featherstone

Existential Colours

Feeling blue

the gloaming dusk

envelops

me

cloaking my every attempt

to twist and turn

and every intent to learn; opaquely.

Feeling red

sky at night – Shepherd’s delight?

Or a rage deep inside – unevening.

Incandescent

but ever present and waiting,

waiting for the time to strike;

a clock

with fiery hands that yearn

to make this whole system

burn

eternally to the ground.

Feeling green

mentally bilious

cognitively all at-sea

desensitised

to the obscene

filled with so many

thoughts, feelings and disinformation

but alas unable to scream

unable to tell what is real.

The propaganda machine vomits more lies…

“You’re ill. Do as you’re told and stop asking questions.”

With a punch, a jab

it puts to bed freedom’s dream.

You snooze, you lose.

Sickening to the extreme.

Felt yellow

once upon a

sun beam

that cushioned joy of unmarshalled

mellow;

sun shining sweetly

summer breeze

vanilla ice cream

a happy, smiling, unbridled fellow until

The Neo Nightmare

becomes a novel series

out of

what was once

a magazine.

Callum Featherstone

Scattered Scions

And as that outward blowing breath

scatters floating seeds of dandelions

my thoughts of birth and life and death

coalesce among the scattered scions.

For what is now has always been

and will return from future passing –

the sight of what remains, unseen;

your loss – not lost – but everlasting.

This life has now come to a close

and we reminisce on all your giving

a beacon bright bursts through morose

your shining light that lifts our living.

As we send you on your next new journey

we cherish those fond memories

we take a clutch and grasp them firmly

where you live on; in our reveries.

Callum Featherstone

What is ‘this’?

“If you are the big tree, let me tell you that

We are the small axe, sharp and ready

Ready to cut you down (well sharp)

To cut you down” – Bob Marley

Maybe we wouldn’t have to worry

about this dystopia or Thought Police

if we’d paid attention and weren’t in a hurry

protected our rights and thought of peace

made sure that every little boy and girl

had their freedoms unequivocally ingrained

in an uncodified constitution of the world

that wouldn’t commodify their names,

their games, their chats, their brains

wouldn’t commodify their friendships

wouldn’t commodify in exchange

for our chance to ever end;

this.

This; globalist

end of days.

This; oval disk

of human waste.

This; cashless

new society.

This; ask less

pay more, die early.

This; ‘how much

more can you take?’

This; smiling punch

you in the face.

This; ‘whatever’

disillusionment.

This; forever

can’t afford the rent.

This; take a pill

to ease the pain.

This; makes you ill

over again.

This; wants your life

to be a mess.

This; gives more strife,

more bills, more stress.

This; is worse in every single way.

This; works you til your dying day.

This; takes much

more

than pounds of flesh.

This; doesn’t need

your

excuse for less.

This; what happened

to our fledgling crop?

This happened…

We ‘the many’

never forced

‘the few’ powerful to

STOP.

Callum Featherstone

Envy

I’ve seen a man

so consumed by envy

that his jealous heart consumed

his mind

his soul

and everything

he ever could be.

When you covet another’s life,

success,

belongings or

in this case wife –

you become a bitter container

filled with green bilious

acrimony

spending hate-filled hours

to keep that bubbling

poison on retainer.

They say it is better to have loved and lost

but if you have never loved at all –

have you even lived?

No star-crossed

lover or Shakespearean romance,

no first kiss let alone first dance..

Just a sad excuse for actions

that are always centred on a loss

you never had

and a sense of selfish pity

that leaves a feeling of disdain

because

inside you’re left

wondering what it really feels like

and where the chance to grasp a real love

ever

really

once

was.

And, as that green bilious acrimony

bubbles away in its container

it eats away at what is lonely

and devours the remainder.

Leaving nothing but dysfunction –

a stab-wound without a knife –

leaving nothing but destruction

in what was once a living life.