corruption

Callum Featherstone

Painting the frown; Dread.

Shifting the gear,
clutching at nostrils.
Eight hours;
of undulating, pedalled pleasure.
Communally imbibing Christ’s
blood, like, twelve apostles.
Resurrection; found in a spirit’s –
double measure…

A snifter of hope –
blown into a smoky bottle.
Three graveyard shifts later,
the zombie’s bottleneck is throttled.
Followed by –
three days of manic, forsaken terror.
The fear imprisoned mind;
crucified; by pedantic Aristotle…

Painting the frown;
Dread.
A beer-goggled gaze –
locks onto a clown’s ruby-red smile.
Brushstrokes of panic,
turn the landscape;
a greyer shade of lead.
Judah’s lion, and, lioness;
have already been defiled.
The fledgling doves;
have found heavenly peace –
as; vertically, they have fled…

But, for, we – desolate few;
escape is futile.
Eden has gone.
From, ethereal garden, to, shed.
All trees, plants,
flowers, bushes,
and, wooden panels,
have been collectively burnt, and, shred.
By pasty, secateur-ing devils – that beguile.
Who ask for details,
to stop, and, search,
the saintly, for a while…

Cuff, beat, confine, and, brutalise,
without proving need; the “lowerbred”.
In their eyes,
a twinkling morning star,
cast us down.
But, righteous children; always rise.
Ascending high above –
Babylon’s screaming, burning lies.
Losing blueish, busied noses,
to spite;
in the face of systematic –
destruction, and, denial.

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.

Callum Featherstone

Thirty-three.

Misfortune favoured

by a coward

gets emboldened by

imagined

acts of bravery,

paralleling,

when freedom is

attributed, scoured

then soldered, wry,

universally enshackled,

to the liberty of slavery.

A leaden head

of melancholy

wearing

suffering’s shawl

of crusty grime

became

a body of water’s

shopping trolley,

disappearing,

in that shoal

of rusting time.

Castigating memories

lie deeply

and contorted,

misshapen

inside that meshy box.

Untrustworthy,

this hill of discontent,

rising steeply;

geography unreported,

as the corpse’s lips;

kissed the fleshy rocks.

Callum Featherstone

United Kadaver

Collective grief

makes

a corpse of this nation

each footstep impatient

on the arteries and

veins

we call streets.

We –

the beating heart

of the country;

now palpitating.

The salted sweat is

ever-radiating,

despair spilling from our tear ducts;

belief

tears us apart.

Our

zeitgeist is atrophy

rubbing shoulders

to the very bone.

Symbiosis

with a mobile phone

ringtones ring of

unholy matrimony.

This miscarrying motherland’s

hand;

unforced.

But, still kept us for viewing

in a jar

tormenting

delivering mental scars

locked down

in a green and unpleasant land.

And as the gangrene

sets in

the Hydra freshly springs to mind –

duplicitous

for;

every time

your actions prove unkind

viciousness

does arise

and two further unkind actions

affect your kin.

And this is just one

embodied state;

a United Kadaver –

sent to the

morgue

that has become this planet.

What was once

our Earth;

our good and wholesome Gaia,

that which used to inspire.

Each post-mortem

misunderstands this;

epidemic of lies

and death

by company sponsored

dagger

forged in the fiery

pits of hate.

Callum Featherstone

To be a man

In solitary dreams

i wake

the crest of understanding

waves

never reach

me

so small and unable

to reach

the stop

of their poking and prodding

hands

within my very breeches

they breach

my innards

every single time

just like they did before

when I wasn’t but a teen

only seven

and the blood

is intertwined

with every single tear

that I have intent to cry

just a pathetic little boy

that tried to become a man

smoking H and drinking cans

He could have been a man

Could have been a man.

Callum Featherstone

What the Hell

They never tell you

what it’s like when

your body gets older

but you still feel inside

the way you did at

eighteen. Impromptu

is that feeling once again

of the receding smoulder.

A fire in the belly denied

by smothered tit for tat.

You ask those questions

that cause blisters within

your mind. As the heat

steams your twisted tongue

you pour out confusion.

Their answers cause indigestion,

their falsehoods crawl your skin.

A melting of your mind meets

with a recurrence of unbelong-

ing – the age of electrocution.

Caustic cynicism is all that remains

now that the beastly brawn outwits

the worm ate brains.

The stinging scorned proudly splits

a bill with hedonism – that explains

the firmed terrain.

A drought of thinking critically, rationale and morality

created global tyrants; ruling in totality.

You have no reason to fear being sent

to hell because you live there every waking moment.

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

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

Pink.

In this;

beguiled reality

avarice makes mincemeat of charity

and conceit fucks vanity.

The sick and the needy

die at the hands of the greedy.

Death by hate filled hearts;

scolding via network

scaffolding.

All the while, living in

wholly

indecent matrimony;

wedded by insanity.

“History always repeats itself.

History always repeats itself.”

A war of roses; red and white

without their heads

soon lost sight.

And stem of green then realised;

roses without petals

aren’t needed

nor recognised.

Angry is the blood.

Broken is the bone.

Nothing good can come from

a world wide webbed

throne

where lies are spun from.

And when all is said and done

it seems even odd to; think?

Before your actions

become

the difference between warring factions

and your essence becomes

on the brink

of existing.

Is this;

existence masquerading as extinct?

Or is this,

really;

extinction pretending

to be

in the pink?