poetry

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.

Callum Featherstone

Sheltered Hell

Claustrophobia;

casting spells, anxiety obeah

feeling trapped in a shell

a gleaming pearl

trapped in a cell

of another’s designer

hell

waiting for the pool to whirl

me down

again.

The heat and the wet

make a vitriolic garnish

causing what once gleamed – jet

to now become tarnished.

Agoraphobia;

crowded house – residential dystopia

all the faces look the same

painting misery – drawing blanks

always strange and often insane

that’s what happens to your brain

when you’re trodden on like wooden planks

and spoken to just the same

you become a broken, wooden frame

a shell without a pearl

a face without a name

and when you push the system yanks

until there’s nothing left to say.

Until there’s nothing.

Nothing.

..

Callum Featherstone

Rescue

You are a pathway strait

unlike your last mistake

and mistakes are learning curves;

they aren’t your overall fate.

You have your being

but their eyes aren’t seeing

what goes on inside

of your mind as it’s fleeing.

Steady your ship

sail yourself to equip

yourself with a set

of masts they cannot rip

or strip.

Rescue yourself from the doldrums

breath fresh air into your lungs

leave the noxious and nasty

to suffocate on their own tongues.

Cause they never will know

what you have lived and do know;

they don’t deserve to encounter

what you can be

what you will be

what you will become

when you thrive and you grow.

Set your sights and show

that beauty bright

and innermost light

of your selfless glow.

Smile like the crest of a wave

and remain deep

leave those naysayers to weep

in their shallow dug graves.

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.