existence

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

Complexities

An unspoken knowledge

speaks

from intergalactic colleges

wreaks

havoc in your inner sanctum.

Would

it matter if you ever thanked some

unknowing entity –

baffled by complexity?

Could

you find the words to comprehend?

Intelligence

that’s beyond the curve and bend

of

space and time and hate and

love.

Ideas of immaculate protection

prophylactic by conception.

Mysteries of universes that expand

can never be grasped by the hand.

For, if they were to be held –

our complexities – like broken shells

would be uncovered in a grain of sand.

Sifting and shifting – beats the drum of time

expanding and expounding – a celestial rhyme,

“What does become

has been departed,

The cycle ends

just where it started…”

Callum Featherstone

A Voyage to the Impossible.

What matters the most to you shouldn’t be able to be experienced from your bodily senses. It should come from deep within your inner most depths and be intangible. Far away from the noise of this world and way into the realms of the impossible.

Transforming physical possession and perception into transcendental prosperity.

Despite the wonders of our minds and their ability to perceive so many things, we are taught in a blinkered, binary, positive/negative fashion from a very young age – good/bad, right/wrong, happy/sad.

But, we are all of these things at all times throughout our lives. Think about it;

An evil man can make a just law.

A good man can follow an unjust cause.

Both could be the same man;

of a different sort,

on different days too

and in different lives.

So, before you judge; pause.

Remember;

A journey’s map isn’t always to hand.

True wisdom is always food for thought.

Ignorance within your mind betrays you.

And, your everlasting infinite soul survives…

Always.

Your very existence is an impossible journey and, yet, here you are…

Life is the swelling sea, your mind is the swinging ship and your soul is the ripple of every wave which laps up against both life and mind, sea and ship, on a voyage to the impossible.

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.

Callum Featherstone

Making sense

When the eyes are opened

By Pineal once closed

A cerebral token

Of belief takes hold.

When their mouth’s deceitful

Don’t eat from chaos’ hand

Keep your diet peaceful

So that your mind expands.

When the scent overpowers

To cover their tracks

Be aware that some flowers

Set deadly traps.

When your hearing’s confused

Locked down in a prism

Paint thoughts colourful hues

Canvass yourself and listen.

And if you’re feeling out of touch

Take a moment to remember;

Our light burns out

by smothering clutch

And there is no fire

without an ember.

Callum Featherstone

The Poisoned Note

Your mind is the pen.

It’s razor sharp. It’s poignant. It’s a tipped point dipped in poison and from it the words which you write inside your mind stain every nerve with sorrow and despair.

Your body is the paper.

Paper which is cut from the original tree that all knowledge and sense first grew from. From deepest root to budding leaf the cursed, bubbling venom courses through each bodily cell and ruptures and dissolves all that is decent and good.

This is depression.

A poisoned note.

A note which throughout your life becomes volumes of lethargy, melancholy and pain.

And, a note from which you discover the true reality of existence.

And, to think, without this note, would you have ever truly existed at all?

For, it is better to have felt that poisoned ink blemish your body and mind than to have left a blank note.

Your note defines you.

Your note is one worth sharing because we are all noteworthy.

The greatest gift you will ever have is to have written a poisoned note so long and live to tell the tale.

Callum Featherstone

Gules, argent and azure

Gules, argent and azure;

Is it really worth fighting for?

A folded flag on your coffin door;

Is it really worth dying for?

If you took the troops & civilians

Who were murdered by war

They’d measure in millions

They rest in peace?! Or at all?!

Cause the peaces don’t match

And the peace is a puzzle

War’s an itch you can’t scratch

A rabid dog you can’t muzzle

They’re inextricably linked

Dead civilian, dead soldier

Both should be extinct

But grow older and older

And younger and younger

There’s no ageism in bloodshed

But the greedy warmonger

Sees £ signs coloured blood-red

War is a game of power

99 percent of us lose in

Don’t choose graveside flowers

Cannon fodder’s not for chews-ing

Gules, argent and azure;

Is it really worth fighting for?

A folded flag on your coffin door;

Is it really worth dying for?

Callum Featherstone

Remember the Peace

On Armistice Day I’ll ask of you this

With the poppy you’ll wear

To commemorate the long list

Of young men dead – with care.

Of those we have mourned

Yearly, since nineteen-forty-five

Other pieces of Peace we have scorned

Saving countless peoples lives.

War in proximity that always relates

Is that Troubled area over the strait.

What else could we do? Celebrate?

A peace process since nineteen-ninety-eight.

And there is a list over there

Long and left without.

No clover? Nor poppy? Or something altogether more fair.

Still, Peace worth remembering without a doubt.

So when you wear a poppy.

To remember.

Or choose not to.

To remember.

Try to remember.

Those slain and lost.

In the bitterness of November.

Remember the Peace and what it cost.