anguish

Callum Featherstone

Delicate Essence

You are only as old as you feel.
And, also, somewhat, making a meal,
when fashionable disguises, are, unpalatably real.
An all too familiar; appetite for deception,
or, destruction; boiling down to mutton, dressed as veal.

A diseased droplet of poisonous, septic bile,
will contaminate the entire, antidoted vial.
As the Janus’ faces; wear smiling frowns of guile.
A frothing dribble at, each corner, of their mouths.
Ready to kiss naïveté’s; unknowing, apathetic child.

The cancerous bacon rashers flash their cache of rinds.
Whilst the purveyor, and, punters talk; porky pies.
The subject of the, price of peace, creates porcupines;
of prickly words. That make religion; a sin.
The spieler’s prayers are; devilshly; delivered, sealed, and, signed.

Nightmares of vomit ridden delicatessens;
regurgitating the meek, and, innocent’s; delicate essence.
A force fed; growing up, for the poor, adolescents.
“You can’t miss what you never knew.”
A shallow consolation from maternal lessons.

Bursting guts of gluttonous swine; litter the landscape.
Amid the landfill site where shifty, crooked, hands shake.
Rats, bugs, gadflies, wasps, vermin, and, snakes.
All feasting upon the remnants of the good.
Meanwhile, ‘the future’, confesses sins; for the damned’s sake.

Callum Featherstone

A Dervish, named; ‘Constantine’.

I, Myself. Constantine.
A trailblazer. Making my mark,
until tremors, quaking, and, a long lived aftershock. Got trapped, got sick, now,
making my way home; to Torment.
Manifested;
off-track, lost, unfound, raging, bitter, twisted.
And, sick. Obviously.

Disorientated, tranquil tornadoes,
of, marauding memories,
revolve statically;
sarcastically whirling,
with the sincerest, of all, ironies;
like a Dervish, riding a languid carousel,
a Dervish, named;
‘Constantine’.
The inert twisters,
carry, and, cast –
concealed emotions,
that are; born to seek death,
that are; created to destroy.

The camouflaged
saliences, are;

re -visited,
re -worn,
re -vealed;

‘In the stitching –
a khirqa of shame, whispers, “guilt survives, long after, the dead, have been mourned.” As sorrow seeps, from, a blood-soaked; hood, cuffs, and, sleeves – where cloying, bloodthirsty tarmac, bore it’s teeth, causing shudders. Devouring all escapes, to salvation.
And, after grasping, deep-down,
in those, endless, cloak pockets, Mercy, was found slain. Smothered, by iniquity, concrete, rocks and rubble, as compassion is, demolished by dark, anguished,
traumatic silences.’

Uncontrollable
obedience – stagnantly spins,
and, turns, soothing provocations,
into, a, swooner’s consciousness.
Hushed screeches vomit, teasing and tormenting; to mutilate…
To massacre;
a begging, bruised, exhausted, inner-sanctum.

A colourless draining.
The colour is fading,
from psyche’s cheeks,
a liquidating; of shady pulp,
of soft, once radiant,
rainbow spattered, but, now, only;
grey matters.

I, Myself. Constantine.
A soggy, battered, quivering, hasbeen. An already; blazed trail.
Long forgotten.
Lying beneath,
a superego’s ocean-jungle undergrowth, where there, once was, a long, plumed, dove-white robe.
Overgrown, crestfallen, and, un-phren-dly;
lying beneath,
the forsaken waves, of; lost seas, past shocks and, cruel, convulsive, inclemencies.

Callum Featherstone

Relief, awaited.

When dodecahedron bombs fall;
will you be my buried and sturdy shelter?
When cohesion is trodden to asphalt;
would you wage pitched and bloody welter?

Breakfast,
served at his majesty’s pleasure, often ladles out food for thought…
The menu – provides;
convicts, politicians, businesspeople, and, royalty,
with plenty to discuss…
Such as, ‘do the high and mighty ever dream of tasting prison porridge, as they commit high crimes, whilst they starve and cull the poor?’
And, ‘can beggared worms chew through royal lead-lined coffins from a dead beggar’s ulcered stomach sores?’ Yet, what lies in the unasked? The public inquiry into corrupt power, like lunch, awaits.

Relief without a branch
to cling to. Bare, shaken,
but, also, beyond agonising
disbelief. Avalanche met Alpine
Firs; a collage of bitter viridescence – often mistaken,
as, not life, but, death, imitating art.

What a relief!!
That’s the “good stuff”;
the pinprick and the poison-pill…
The Medicine Men have long traded in shady deals,
of jabs and hooks,
wearing labcoats lined with vaccined, pain-killing schemes.
Patiently making case studies of us all,
all the while,
toasting, our declining health,
along with silent, complicit and sickly governments.
Sláinte!

Encrypted night;
puzzling and studious, awaits
us all,
along with an unshrinking denial,
a half-blinked eye,
a non-thinked; why?
And, a nihilistic sigh. It is all, so…
insalubrious.

Awaited relief of a final breath when no more lies can be proferred no more lines can be crossed or excuses offered no more questions unanswered no more victims no more cancers no more derision and pain due to another’s conceited vision and gain no more losers no more winners no more abusers or willers of forgiveness.

Just peace; unreplicated.

And, relief, no longer, awaited.

When dodecahedron bombs fall;
will you be my buried and sturdy shelter?
When cohesion is trodden to asphalt;
would you wage pitched and bloody welter?

Callum Featherstone

Shell shock

My sword, my shield, are heavy now,

the battles rage, my neck feels bowed.

Once more;

my head’s above the parapet,

princely darkness; devil silhouette.

Rancour,

blood and fire, steel and death,

cling to the air; grasping breath.

Encore,

there is no time for plaudits’ sorrow;

every ‘moment’ had – scorned by tomorrow.

This suit of armour wears a chink,

whenever the owner bears to think,

deeply;

in ocean beds; discomfort lurking,

from the pearl of wisdom; I’m undeserving .

Discreetly,

these battled wits within my mind,

devise painfulness, a brand new kind;

obliquely.

This ever present convalescence

makes; funeral pyres of my presence.