evil

Callum Featherstone

Red Letters

Paint an imperfect picture

from a red letter’s scripture…

In blood

splattered rooms

you will find

grey, pink, claret

matters and whom

was left behind

in the catacombs

of once upon a time

in a grand Creator’s mind

foolish by design

capable of fooling you.

Paint an imperfect picture

from a red letter’s scripture…

The bills are past due

so Bill passed away

swinging by the neck

in a Navy suit of blue.

His eyes used to shine

a glint of due respect

now his eyes are scuffed

and all that shines

are his shoes.

Hanging tough.

Paint an imperfect picture

from a red letter’s scripture…

You reap what you sow – and reap what you don’t – often when you owe – cause when debt alone – is what you reap;

how many secrets can you keep?

Who holds the key

to locked lips

and promises?

Paint an imperfect picture

from a red letter’s scripture…

Currently the only way to make ends meet – at wits end – encourage me to comprehend;

how numbers on a computer screen can be the difference between

rejection and lend

poverty and wealth

livelihood and death

wake me up when it ends.

Paint an imperfect picture

from a red letter’s scripture…

Misleading

unknowing investors

Us;

to a hidden

land of milk

and honey

that is derelict,

drought ridden

and smells distinctly

sick and forbidden

because this land of death;

makes money.

Paint an imperfect picture

from a red letter’s scripture…

Imperfections

are what keeps it

made…

this deathbed of currency;

funeral pyre

of red letters

unlit

crimson spite

enveloping.

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

What is ‘this’?

“If you are the big tree, let me tell you that

We are the small axe, sharp and ready

Ready to cut you down (well sharp)

To cut you down” – Bob Marley

Maybe we wouldn’t have to worry

about this dystopia or Thought Police

if we’d paid attention and weren’t in a hurry

protected our rights and thought of peace

made sure that every little boy and girl

had their freedoms unequivocally ingrained

in an uncodified constitution of the world

that wouldn’t commodify their names,

their games, their chats, their brains

wouldn’t commodify their friendships

wouldn’t commodify in exchange

for our chance to ever end;

this.

This; globalist

end of days.

This; oval disk

of human waste.

This; cashless

new society.

This; ask less

pay more, die early.

This; ‘how much

more can you take?’

This; smiling punch

you in the face.

This; ‘whatever’

disillusionment.

This; forever

can’t afford the rent.

This; take a pill

to ease the pain.

This; makes you ill

over again.

This; wants your life

to be a mess.

This; gives more strife,

more bills, more stress.

This; is worse in every single way.

This; works you til your dying day.

This; takes much

more

than pounds of flesh.

This; doesn’t need

your

excuse for less.

This; what happened

to our fledgling crop?

This happened…

We ‘the many’

never forced

‘the few’ powerful to

STOP.

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

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

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?

Callum Featherstone

Cosmonaught

Arrogance of present answers

on past tech and advances,

history’s cerebral romances

laid in the dirt asleep,

by far frog-leaped;

and also out-enhanced us.

Commonplace it justly saddens –

common faces become assassins.

As Julius imbibed Manhattans

the death-toll sparked egregious.

The space in between us

became

chasms;

intercontinental planetary spasms.

It all matters; dark and light.

It all matters; wrong or right.

What’s the matter?

Bhagavad Gita? Quoting chapters?

Nuclear war hindsight…

Science, not before but after;

made sure of atomic plight.

You are birth, life and death;

in a universal breath.

An infinite respirator

expressed;

by heavy traffic – stars and planets.

A cosmos complete yet

bereft.