poetry

Callum Featherstone

Snooze you lose

Snooze you lose

The emperor’s got amuse-bouche

Yesterday’s muse

Pales into insignificance

When you’ve got no food.

Leadership battle

Pray to silence politician’s prattle

Tell-tale will always tittle and tattle

Morbid magnificence

Cause we are already culled cattle.

Another day done

Counting down until the final one

Rebellion quelled by quango sponge

Resolute reticence

Society controlled by scum.

House of common creatures

Falsehood is a permanent feature

Nurse, retail worker and teacher

All paid a pittance

But it’s just a policy procedure.

Callum Featherstone

Build bridges not walls

A wall is made for breaking down

A brickyard’s tears, a stony frown

Ventless, relentless, in the past

America, Berlin, Belfast

Partition found on world renown.

A bridge is made to bring together

A culture crossing, a road for better

Far-reaching, for teaching

The human condition’s seeking

Each step across is a capped feather.

The walls you put up within your heart

Deny a chance for love to start

Foreboding, eroding

Bitterness, self-loathing

Constant reminder – landing marks.

The bridge you build will bolster new

Strengthens souls and spirits too

Co-operation, exaltation

Meeting in the middle; combination

Helps humanity by uniting you.

Callum Featherstone

Soul-searching

We are all cut from the same cloth

Black or white. Pauper or posh

And as those veracious bubbles do froth

The truth always comes out in the wash.

Life’s banquet is seared with many decoys

Blue, well-done, medium and rare

You can never delect in the delicious joys

Without first tasting bitter despair.

It’s always the cruel that bloom and flourish

It beggars belief how the meek don’t inherit

We must first plant wisdom and courage

To stop them reaping from our own merit.

Because when life is unkind

And your ducks don’t stay in a row

Sometimes you have to lose your mind

To find your soul.

Callum Featherstone

Empty stomach and larder

You can’t un-see

Once you’ve cut the red tape

You remain unfree

Shackled thoughts won’t escape.

When it doesn’t make sense

Whenever you listen

There’s no recompense, in a

Taxable war of attrition.

“You won’t have to suffer

If you’d just work harder!”

No nutritional buffer

For empty stomach and larder.

This so-called elite

I just don’t understand

They’d cut off your feet

And insist that you stand.

Callum Featherstone

The thing is…

Whatever it might be

It’s them and not me

Something found you’ll still miss

The thing is…

I can’t put my finger on it

Darkness can never be lit

Never cease nor desist

The thing is…

You’ll find a problem you look for

In colour, creed, or much more

Whether words or a fist

The thing is…

We all bleed one way

Same colour, red – every day

The thing is…

We are all in this.

Together.

Callum Featherstone

The Sun and The Son

The Sun carries the fate

Of our future on its back

The Son carries the weight

Of his past in his pack.

The Sun practices beaming

Ready for the summer show

The Son forever dreaming

Of freedom free to grow.

The Sun solemn staring

At a world disintegrating

The Son struggles caring

In a world hell-bent on hating.

The Sun won’t last forever

But will far out last the Son

The Son’s a trifle clever

But he won’t surpass the Sun.

Callum Featherstone

Demockracy

There were selfish celebrations

While we were locked inside

Salubrious salutations

Meant irony did not hide.

Pain, anger and dirt fills

The way that we all feel

Going around in circles

Like a hamster in a wheel.

Once you’ve seen the bigger picture

You can never then return

To believing shallow scripture

That the bourgeoisie then burn.

It’s a time of utter travesty

And Orwellian hypocrisy

Getting hoodwinked by humanity

In deceptive dead demockracy.

Callum Featherstone

Keep it together.

They love when you’re whole

But despise you when you ain’t

The black and dark of the hole

Is nothing they could ever paint

It’s what you read and learn

Propaganda for the eyes and ears

And the more you pay and earn

Will only ever amplify your fears

Cause they don’t care about us

They want us blinded all the while

Misgiving honest trust

And sucking poison with a smile.

All the poison

All the while.

Callum Featherstone

Point the Pin

Thoughts are running wild

Their hoofs unruly; trample

Cerebellum sands reviled

Scatter, scurry and they scramble

A lack of understanding

As to why this burden carries

Aptitude is demanding

Mind and fear; forever marries

It’s hard to point the pin

If there ever really was one

In self-loathing, selfish skin

That coalesces til it’s gone

Yes, the suffering it stings

But the feeling never lasts

The ‘only hope’ should cling

Yielded tight within the grasp.

Callum Featherstone

This Can’t Be Life

This can’t be life

Hours and minutes

Is it Misery’s wife?

Sadly passed til it’s finished.

Crushing disappointment

Around every corner

Now I’m a fly in the ointment

Tomorrow’s maudlin mourner.

Brutality is the common tongue

Existence is a forgotten song.

Love has been lost forever

In a society that’s broken

Future ties have been severed

Empathetic words left unspoken.