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Callum Featherstone

Carnelian Jewel

Nighttime shadow thieves stole my gleam
Once upon a cerulean Moon.

They bobbed and weaved awash with greed.

With my one carnelian jewel.

A crimson and green festoon
Was it’s bed of leaves.

The sweetest berries I exhumed
To give comfort, ease.

While guile in eyes of theirs did loom.

My jewel is not a gemstone rare
Or, a precious piece of art.

But it means a lot to me in care
Because it is my heart.

Without it, I wander in aimless air.

Without it, I’m lost, apart.

Nighttime shadow thieves
Alight their maddest schemes
With the gleam
Tore from my chest away.

By spite in Adder’s teeth
Bites tight a damedest deed
In my dreams
Scorned poison left decays.

I’m weary, and I’m battle torn
From eerie, bent, grappled horns
That they used to pierce my slumber.

Unclearly in gravelled spawn
Their fearly, well-travelled cause
Cast grey ooze that steered me under.

I returned each night to retrieve my jewel
My torso agape and open
I was urged to fight with those twilight fools
That yearned to forsake me broken.

But I turned from spite and their actions cruel
I know they take from me a token
Of brilliant light which signifies renewal
Like, the beating ache in hearts awoken.

And, now, I see
Why they took my heart
For their eyes, they could not open.

Nor, their mouths feel light unspoken.

So, I let them keep
My piece of luck.

My carnelian jewel…

…we, together; brighten; darkness; stolen.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Thank You, Hummingbird

Travelling toward; aglow.

A Hummingbird of fire,
hanging wingly snow,
that obliterated ire.

It delivered me — a message,
in envisioned freedom’s essence.

When, I feel it, again, at my snowblind end,
I’ll thank it for a lend, of belly-flamed repent.

As, I flew amongst those frozen blazes,
that purloined balance from our ages,
and, called upon prophets and messiahs, doomed to burn to dust; Ignatius.

Like, so many, uplifting, scriptures pages.

Yet, my fiery, snow-tipped Hummingbird,
never turned, or, forgot my words, nor, faces.

I’ve worn many through my stages — books, profiles and cases.

But, my Hummingbird,
floating there in stasis,
is a transcendental dirge,
that lives to soar within my traces,
a vestige not seen or heard,
by other people’s gazes,
nor ears buzzed and stirred.

My Hummingbird,
saved me from,
extinction,
with a cold and warm embrace,
that I’ve since adorned,
within my graces.

So, it might sound and look absurd,
but, thank you, for my life; Hummingbird.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Anti-kaleidoscopic

A constant fight; betwixt dark and light.

Ideas spark and linger.

Music, symphonies, singers.

Memories; dance, then, dissolve

into solutions, some warm and some cold,

creating a tepid potion,

a tumultuous, sloshing ocean,

of notions that decant and, then, go.

An absence of colour is met

with residual grief and regret,

a brick-less prison built upon debt.

Indebted solely to hope; within my mind’s anti-kaleidoscope.

An always unfair fight; betwixt dark and light.

The evil, selfish and greedy

extort the ill and the needy.

The powerful grease the wheels

to pedal their sordid deals,

and, colonisers who claim ground,

in Irony’s backyard and playground,

make lies; truth, and, beggared belief; real.

A pauper eating his hat from a clothes line,

pays in melancholy, fined for a lifetime,

while the rich quaff liquid joy, as they fine-dine,

lasso and Tug-the-Poor, without a rope; within society’s anti-kaleidoscope.

An existential fight; betwixt dark and light.

A tired, weary, bleeding planet,

as Satanic drills penetrate the granite.

Currency denoting worth,

and, ideologies of owning water and turf,

meant destruction of sea, air and land;

all bearing imprints of human hands.

Indelible marks that scourge the Earth;

soured, painful, acidic,

drunken, excessive, paralytic,

consumer, consuming, parasitic.

A plastic species, that especially interlopes; within a worldly anti-kaleidoscope.

An intergalactic fight; betwixt dark and light.

Infinity has a wicked sense of humour,

to implant us; a pitch-black-hearted tumour

in a solar system, in the Milky Way,

and, not a black hole where true darkness plays.

The macabre punchline is yet to come,

when darkness falls on stars and suns,

and, the galaxies that reached and stretched,

are grasped in the longing hands of death.

Waiting infinite time is not long… For some.

When you’ve seen stars burn bright, and, then, collapse,

comets and planets collide and crash,

creation, life and death in one laughing gasp.

There’s no end to an empty, spacious joke; within a universal anti-kaleidoscope.

Callum Featherstone

The Light

When you fear your future’s faded

When you’re growing grey and thin

When your chips have all been traded

And you feel you’ll never win

When you start to wane and wallow

In intrepid, toxic times

There’s a light for you to follow

A light inside you shines

It’s a light that fills your soul

And makes you who you are

Brightens the bleakest, blackest hole

Heals the deepest, darkest scar

In the corpus of commotion

Let that beautiful beacon beam

Across the unforgiving ocean

From the lighthouse of your dreams.