apathy

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

puppet mastery 101

the puppeteer; has scaly, reptilious skin,
a charming, colourful, cataclysmic chameleon,
with eyes of, devouring, gluttonous jealousy,
like glowing, bite-sized, emeralds,
the puppet-strings, that are pulled,
are made of, flaccid human backbones,
spineless, and, apathetic, docile, and, weak,
always easy, to bend, shape, and manipulate,

the puppets; are twisted, in a daily spin,
forever unfurling, and, falling from favour; like disgraced comedians,
or, top-storey, tumbling clerics, guilty of heresy,
their shelf-lives, are; fugitive; ephemeral,
the pre-packaged, chicken-y cattle, are; disjointed, culled,
mooing, clucking; moo-ucking; those unrelaxed tones,
soundbites of; tinned laughter, canned speech,
eager to unoffend, a sterile escapade, veiled by a fake-crusader’s cape,

the audience; never looks up, from their, feeding troughs,
staring, ravenous eyes, and, mawing, myopic mouths,
transfixed on; oven-ready propaganda,
an amuse-bouche, of; punch, and, judy politics,
succulent headlines, curried scapegoats,
a diet of; regurgitated news cycles,
each garden-variety brain, is, washed, boiled, and, mashed,
then, cannibalised, and, ingested, by the, frenzied, factory-fed,

the puppeteer’s; plotlines are misleading oft,
making polar norths, into, cancerous tropic souths,
teaching true-falsehoods, that reveal, and, cover, the lingua franca,
with, tongued wands, that cast, polyglottal tricks,
selling ice, to; Inuits, and, Amazigh; Saharan raincoats,
making a play, of religion, and, a cat’s paw; the idol,
the final act is here, box office takings, are; sealed, and, stashed,
as, the audience; counts sheep, daydreaming, of lying in fantasy’s bed,

but, ostensibly…

the outcome is always the same,
the outcome is always the same,
the outcome is always the same,
the outcome is always the same,
the outcome is always the same,
the outcome is always the same,
the outcome is always the same,
the show is, almost, finished,

and,
inevitably, before, the final curtain,
you beg for…

La Fin.

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

Babylonian Cheeks

Cheesy moon at midnight pings

it’s beams down

upon a colourful commonplace town

pavement shimmering with blood and teeth

policemen oinking hearty.

Slipping

upon ripe banana skin

the fall – opens the flesh

fracturing bone

but, also, opening minds

coincidentally

courage

could never before

see our age

unified and advantageous.

– black and yellow meets red and white –

A wasp with great insight stings

a shrieking clown

his big lipstick smile made into a deathly frown

pass the parcel and the EpiPen, please,

at a child’s birthday party.

Foraging the dark arts

bold and free; golden,

exiting the mental metal cage

with toughened knuckles

and white-hot sharpened senses

ready to redden

Babylonian cheeks

angrily

in a manner

most outrageous.