Author: Callum Featherstone

Callum Featherstone

Cracks in the ceiling

The cracks in the ceiling

Make a frowning face

of this house

Leaving a mark

Like the joy that you’re stealing

When hatred spews from your mouth

But we find light in the dark.

Find the light…

In the cracks of the ceiling

In the lines of your face

As you smile through the feelings

Of dread and disgrace.

Though you might

find fear

In the cracks of the ceiling

And find

the end is near

As you smile

through those feelings…

Feel you’re

Just so out of place.

Try to find the light.

Find yourself in the cracks

Plug them whole with your strength

And love one another

to great length

Find yourself in the smiles

Make happiness your self-pact.

Cause those cracks in the ceiling

Are rainfall of sorrow – drowning

Awash with feelings you dread

But when it’s someone else flailing instead

You’ll find those cracks

Can be filled up with care

And kindness;

both buoyant and healing.

When someone else’s house is frowning

And spirit drowning

Don’t let that sorrow seep in

Use your compassion.

Be there.

Plug the cracks with your love.

Fill your house with that love.

Build each other with love.

Lovingly,

Build one another up.

Callum Featherstone

You Shooting Stars

Feeling hopeless and helpless

Left alone feeling selfless

Aren’t reasons to feel

That your life doesn’t help us.

‘Cause you matter so much

And your matter is such

That nobody can take it

In their own selfish clutch.

When the time comes you’ll know

Just like arrow and bow

That you were meant to shoot

To the stars – ever glow,

You may live to suffer

And if it gets all the tougher

Then please just remember

Together we grow.

Don’t let go.

Callum Featherstone

Death & Taxes

Death and taxes

are for certain –

you spend your life

for the final curtain.

So, what does it matter –

what is the point?

Tiny feet?

The pitter patter?

Success? Career?

Trophy wife?

Or, is there more

than meets the eye?

Burnt candle wax is

time passed by.

And passers by

you learn their faces

on commutes

littered with

sojourned strangers.

Just like the streets

you learn to tread,

learn to steer clear

of some instead.

A forever question

of take and give

of peace and war

of love and hate

of is there more?

Wipe the slate.

Clean the floor.

Swallow a hard pill

for indigestion.

Make your mind

up what you want!

They cannot find

the knowledge fount.

When all is said

and all is done,

when blue is red

and cruel is kind,

you’ll search the times

⁃ a memorial quest

and smile sublime

(once taxed to death)

at not need or want

fulfilled at behest.

But, of those you loved

and those who loved

loving you the best.

Callum Featherstone

Sky Hironies

The chief benefactor of a hospital

raced to save the sick.

They found a new cure using horse DNA

and he said he would pay

but gambled his livelihood and lost it all

to the House made from Carrot and Stick.

A woman who was jilted at the altar

sought to get her retribution.

She ran him down, ran him over

at the docks down in Dover –

now without a fiancé to catapulter,

she’ll run rings round her caged institution.

A fat-cat turned politician

never kept promises only his riches.

He prayed for the big catch,

the day before the big match

and fell from Grace; his boat, while fishing.

Now, he’s a fat-cat nibbled at by the fishes.

Callum Featherstone

Under Covers

It just might

be undercover;

human dust-mites.

Disapproving mother

makes

forbidden lovers

play more like animals

in the heat

under their collars.

Our symbiotic

shapes

feeling – just right.

The feeling smothers

you uptight

– breathing in –

water fountains and lakes

within bed covers.

Horizontally upright.

No bearing grudges

or bearing down upon

the breaks

when the love’s right.

There’s no trust like

it with anyone

else or any others;

this is our

glorious mistake

and this is what

love

really looks like.

We are always

shining bright together,

shining love’s light.

Even into old age,

our last chapter

and our

intertwined fates

remain forever…

We were right

to be undercover;

even after…

human dust-bites.

Callum Featherstone

Human Traffic

Those heavy, haughty, heady lights

Of glass and metal, red and white

Reaching hedonistic heady heights?

Going everywhere but nowhere fast

Going almost always steady, right?

Human traffic to the very last.

Inner city lost and found

Emperor’s no longer gowned

His smile has been bought by frowns

Took a vow no longer sacred

Impeached, disgraced, de-crowned

Returned to soured sender; naked.

Ask that coarse concrete cocoon

“Why is now always too soon?”

Gasped out under crescent moon

Asthma ridden apparition

Let go cele-brat-ion balloon

Burst your bubbled premonition.

Satanic mill lies derelict

Social housing? That’s for heretics.

Look what we’ve inherited!!

Show your neck and wrap the noose

From gallows sprung by rhetoric

10PM displays The News;

A righteous killing of the truth enemy.

Callum Featherstone

Complexities

An unspoken knowledge

speaks

from intergalactic colleges

wreaks

havoc in your inner sanctum.

Would

it matter if you ever thanked some

unknowing entity –

baffled by complexity?

Could

you find the words to comprehend?

Intelligence

that’s beyond the curve and bend

of

space and time and hate and

love.

Ideas of immaculate protection

prophylactic by conception.

Mysteries of universes that expand

can never be grasped by the hand.

For, if they were to be held –

our complexities – like broken shells

would be uncovered in a grain of sand.

Sifting and shifting – beats the drum of time

expanding and expounding – a celestial rhyme,

“What does become

has been departed,

The cycle ends

just where it started…”

Callum Featherstone

Full House

Nostalgic

About being lovesick

That treacle poured, sticky toffee pud-sick

A poker hand that ends up in a golden band

And even when the cards are flipped

The hand you’re dealt, you would stick

No matter how much wealth was stripped

You’d maintain the tightest of grips

Because it’s a good fit.

And in time that initial arousal

Becomes a loving house; full.

Callum Featherstone

Aye, Aye Captain

Boatswain or Bosun?

Both sons of oceans,

flags and masts,

packed bags

and

chequered pasts.

WHAT. SAY. YOU.

As Jolly Roger flies –

skull and cross bones

and hallowed eyes

for the lost, the loners.

Putting the onus

on a prophetic prize

that’s –

to be a Pirate;

swashbuckled but

never broken.

SIGN. YOUR. LIFE. AWAY.

X marks the spot.

All hands on deck

me hearties, me hearties.

AYE. AYE. CAPTAIN.

Crossed t and i’d dot.

Here’s to self respect

on nautical safari.

I’d rather be a Pirate

than a pen pushing slave.

Never clock-in or get fired

by the crest of a wave.

HOIST. THE. MAINSAIL.

I’d sing a sea shanty

from morning to night.

Watch ocean foam

romance glee

in bountiful

candle light.

EARL. Y. IN. THE. MORNING.

So, Ahoy matey!

Don’t walk the plank.

Send Long John Silver

me thanks.

I’ll swab the deck and

grow my beard long

and hair lank.

Sail the seven seas over

so shiver me timbers

‘til peg leg,

parrot and

scallywag

have sank.

DEAD. MEN. TELL. NO. TALES.

That’s the life for me

treasure troves of free-

dom. Far away from lock and key;

roving on the highest seas.

Argh, to be a Pirate,

a buccaneering riot.

No more hypocrisy

from government or tyrant…

CLEAVE. THEM. TO. THE. BRISKET.

But it’s all a dream

and I wake to no change but the climate.

After realisation is gleaned

in my attempts to scream

all that comes forth is a

sigh and

then…

Quiet.

ON. TO. DAVY. JONES’. LOCKER.