Author: Callum Featherstone

Callum Featherstone

Escaping A Name

“The letters twist inflected shame.

You shan’t exist to escape your;

Name.”

Poisoned is the moniker. Acrid lips of bile.

Wrapt around, a venomous harmonica.

Notes steal away from you each chime.

Kiss inflates. Heir’s disgrace.

Chronicled.

As, paralysis, sets the pulsing throb,

In rime.

On the tongue wet, now, a frozen;

Cognomen in time.

“The letters twist inflected shame.

You shan’t exist to escape your;

Name.”

If you could afford the antidote,

Would you sup, Elixir’s taste?

Though the snide, affecting,

Side effects,

Cast, your looks in creosote,

From a spunly, ailing,

Face?

The crumple of your profile,

Would wriggle,

Offspring free of decades,

From carbuncle-formed belittle-

ment, whilst, the shackles’, taut,

defame.

“The letters twist inflected shame.

You shan’t exist to escape your;

Name.”



© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

The Beggar’s Dream

A lotus flower, closed leaves upon a lonely hour for light reprieve, before the dawn.

The gloaming, sour. Shows a grief-struck lowly glower. Sore, in sights retrieved. Pre-mourning awe.

All the while, a moonlit smile casts its cheddar gleam across the lake.

As wet beguile, twists yellow spirals, on blue beggar’s dreams of cheese & hake.

It’s in these Isles, of fantasies fine whiles,
the edge of streams, hopscotch landscapes.

Clambered stiles and climber’s trials, tribulate tributaries, where rivered oceans spake.

When dawn is broken, we’ll have never spoken
but the fondest memory in mind, always, stays.

So, inside a beggar’s dreams of the inbetween, there is no foot above to keep downtrodden.

There, lessers leap over the successor’s seats, and the throne is cut like a rug, from its top to its very bottom.

Justice done by those who suffered under its rotten, deadly feet.

Devoid of liberty, enough to eat, cold, and left forgotten.

Remembered for goodness’ sake,
begged dreams of cheese & hake,
in my mind’s hungry pockets, often.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Two

After, many days, unwritten I, finally, broke.
In:

— two.

I am read today.

Crimson pages sp/lit,
in a scarlet leather,
bound book.

I have bled today.

Not on the outside.

Inside. Where my cage, unfit,
is a gaping sØre,
raw, like, a far-opened, paper cut.

I have read today.

Vast vermillion versions,
of the same sorry stories,
I’s sore/stuck.

I am bled today.

Of all the planned paths,
& every excursion,
I put my heart in vein two:
suffering’s bløød.

Pulmonary shelves,
full of bronchial notions,
pull heavy breaths,
across gasping oceans.

I can feel each let-
ter bre/ak/ing in ph-on-et-ic,
— two
whilst my heart is aching,
for an ending, new.

E.a.c.h. B.e.a.t,

falls

f.  a.  d.  i.  n.  g.  f.  r.  o.  m.  i.  t.  s.  t.  u.  n.  e.

Two,
a phantom sound,
unfurled,
that, never, quite,
rings true.

Fairytale myths.

Are the only,
worlds & words;

I have the write;

two-cling-two.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Tiny Pieces of; O’clock

Broke..

Broken.

Smithereens sprawl

upward past

spaces unspoken.

A brokered unpeace

maims my burst and splintered tock.

Tiny pieces of;   o.  ‘    c.   l.      o.       c.   k.

When the watcher placed his watch on me.

Then my problems faced forgotten me.

A timepiece smashed

it’s own arms and hands.

A lapsed hammer lashed

down on minute demands.

Ticks of approval taste silence

for their first and final time.

As moss grows on death’s violin.

Her bow embossed with lime.

Hours & minutes all flash bygone, gone, bye.

Tiny pieces of; o’clock, now: lost in time.

Dissolved erasure’s metro-moans aside:

fade into chagrin’s yon endless sighing syne.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

“Lucky”

Will you ever know
when the cormorant
has finally dried all
of it’s wings?

Or, where the snows
first came from
as they lie on
five golden rings?

Can you comprehend the effort
it takes to survive inside a deathly land?

To travel through jungle, ocean, desert
only to be looked at through their hands.

As worldviews topple, slanted,
by misfortune’s birthly plots.

What the “lucky” ones, know,
is granted
but what they have never was.

They subjugated and supplanted.

They’re not lucky.

It’s not inheritance.

They’ve just taken the fucking lot.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

What We All Are Made From

We are all made
From our mother’s precious resource
Our souls inlaid with
Rockstone, Conflagration & Watercourse.

My weight is upon the rock

For burden-heavy patience

To pass along

To me

A stone’s throw from the wisdom of the Ancients.

My flame lit upon the log

An incandescent renaissance

Fire and block

Homely

Smoke speaks land’s peace before our ages.

My quay won’t fit one loch

I ride waves above the cadence

Tides are strong

And free

Rolled lustre wandered bluely spacious.

We are all made
From our mother’s precious resource
Our souls inlaid with
Rockstone, Conflagration & Watercourse.

Callum Featherstone

A word with Little One

For, what is ours, will be yours, one day soon, Little One.


As, the leaf turns black, to fall, too, upon our graves.


Grave, too, the days, where compassion’s

mud exhumed covers pasture’s bloom

with our disdain.


The courage within our clay,

that fought amongst the sooth,

has hardened — meek, along the way-

side and cracked upon our tooth.


So, what do we leave for you, Little One?


But, battlegrounds where lies bury shady roots, sowed by darkness in fair eyes, for troubled stem and leaf to shoot.


O, Little One, I shan’t obstruct the truth.


Whilst, we wither and decay. For, now, it is upto you.


To comb the river and the brae;


For, wisdom’s hair,

renewed,

on their chins,

below the noose.


And, pluck the strands,

you may, you choose,

to be planted,

by deluge.


So, that, Little One,

the next time,

that we speak,

in the twilight,

by the creek.


I’ll meet your kin,

their spirit’s saved,

and mine will be a star,

a guide that you wished for,

aside you, at New Moon.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

suffering’s lips

suffering’s lips
swept
at first rage
quivering, crept
then floods
ran down from:

my sole
my heart
my back
my eyes

sorrows waters
all exhume
rued days
unliving
gloomed nights
unforgiving

as I lost
myself;
beside.

gone under, now,
pulled
rotunda
frown
by routing griefly trout
in their shark disguise
of gnashing teeth
agrin that bully me
bite and kill my fight
underneath
engulfing
suffering’s tight-lipped
tides

convulsing sobs
pulse and throb
robbing me snogged
wet of air to breathe

those waved high lobs
fashion a crashing rod
to strike:
my sole, my heart, my back, my eyes
across
suffering’s lips of bleach

beached
I curse my cog’s
un-nod, unsleep
where slumber’s sand
could drowse not
nor deliver me
commands
against anguished
kissing douse

suffering’s lips
swept
their pink-blue Hell — fresh
they win
and bring
me nether, to sunk
depress’ quagmire knees

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

A Half-Forgotten Song

A half-forgotten song…

Each, sound, softly,
hummed, 
then,
a disappearing octave,
in alarms, rung,
eternal steps down,
to secondary reminders,
eight-fold,
in a larger symphony.

A half-forgotten song…

Errors made in haste,
din short like catchy, 
hooking choruses.
Whilst, unmade amends,
become musical lessons,
that echo; 
lengthy, 
lectured, 
lifelonging — laments.

A half-forgotten song…

A bum note,
impressed upon,
a bell’s unrung,
zygote. Hims and Hers?
Hymns and hearse.
All, sing along. To, Amnesia’s,
blankly beaten drum.
At your song’s end,
those imaged lyrics play,
in reverse.

A half-forgotten song…

Cascades along,
bass paths, unchanged refrains.
That recollect in mindful albums.
Caseshowing;
songs forgotten other-halves: 
piped our throngs, bite bright,
bellows thrum.
Where you & I belonged.
Nostalgia’s, ode & strain,
from us, forgone.

Life is a hal…


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Sligeachan’s Song (Shelly’s Place)

I’m the waters; still —

running.

Oozing was Hebridean sorcery
outslipt liquid’s shaman
her name is, Sligeachan,
to her neigh-bours.

At, Shelly’s Place,
where silver foam horses sleep
alongside uisce enablers
drams canter at pace.

Whilst waterfalls slipstream
down the rocks to the basin
pooled equestrian dreams
plunge crashed stony abrasion.

As wishing-well goes
lifeforcing pucas and kelpies.
Missing spells flow
proof’s unliving to help me.

My well-wishing legs, froze
time slowed with the waters; still —

running.

To cascades wet, crispy-cold
inside, Sligeachan’s song,

                                                              caught;

myself: humming.

I became the waters;

Two of Sligeachan’s horses,

One of Shelly’s placed sons and daughters.

I’m the waters; still —

running.


© poormansdreams