poem

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

Lost, properly

Another

night lost –

to this infernal game

of sleep. Another light lost –

to this internal

flaming

heap.

Another day, found; wanting,

ever-seeking, left

behind. Suffer

darkness;

unfounded: daunting,

ever-creeping, when in mind.

Another time or another place,

Another line on another face,

Another calm before the storm,

Another baby to be born.

Another life is another death,

Another fight for another breath,

Another want, another need,

Another plot – for which to bleed.

Another jab, another hook,

Another play – not by the book,

Another lie becomes the truth,

Another, “why?” crushed under boot.

Another step in lands of Hinter,

Yet, another long, bleak winter,

One more liberty carelessly lost,

Bitterly frozen by piercing frost.

Another

toll cost – to

the extending tarmac

adam. Another soul lost – to

the never-ending

blackened

chasm.

Another scarlet debtor, found;

humanity is justly,

repossessed.

Smothered faces

turn raging red, thrusting,

brutality; into Robin’s breast.

Callum Featherstone

Do the colder months collude?

And, I wonder,

are the colder months colluding?

Would warring Winter, pause?

Could audacious Autumn, wait?

Or, does the vexed, brooding

and unruly thunder

shape the sordid

cause

of the lightning,

hale, snow and rain?

Why does the gourmand, wolfy-pack,

have to, spit,

growl, and, attack,

the Spring, and, the Summer?

Do they resent;

the clement, balmy days.

Or, just, yearn to take their place?

Mankind has reached it’s own;

November,

suffering unscrupulous mists; a fog of charging cheats,

compassion is a disillusioned ember, smothered and crushed

below;

fraught

autumnal

feet.

A stampeding fall persists,

clenched in the dying undergrowth,

of doomed and dark deceit.

So, do the colder months collude?

That remains, forever, to be

seen.

But, the human race to season, enroot, ended in; self-defeat.

Fallen;

from favour;

from grace;

gone

trees.

A final, lonely leaf of fortitude;

fell, and, lost, beyond the evergreen.

Callum Featherstone

Don’t mind me

Saturated emptiness;

oozing – pickled defeat. Dripping in lamentation.

The brain became an anciently soiled kitchen sponge,

bedecked in grimy morose, and, greased dismay,

each hollow ostia – a den of distress,

forgotten chutes, where legends and ideas should spark creation.

Instead, the tale of the springy, squashing grapple with grunge;

grew into asphyxiation, at the dirt encrusted hands of Grey.

Sucking joy, from every cushioned orifice, until the overflowing

bowl became, just, dregs of despairing.

And, the dried dregs turned to a black, tarry residue; unknowing,

they are scraped – into the brimming kegs of uncaring.

But, don’t mind me;

I am the disappearing, desolate dishwater;

uncontrollably cascading down the punishing plughole of inhumanity.

And,

I was almost, nearly…

never, really…

here.

Flagellated unfriendliness;

kind words are pushed down, beaten back, whipped away.

Each harshly inspected smile – considered a smirk of contempt,

enamelled grins of violence, lipped beams of ill-will.

Wishing nothing but dental uncleanliness,

to every lip, tongue, jaw and fang on demonic display,

and, all the pains of brutal, bruising discontent

to be swallowed – by their owners, in a tiny, bitter pill.

Crushing victory in the maws of defeat; crunched bliss

is chewed and broken – into meaty, cakey pieces; devoured.

Each digested morsel a reminder of a sweet, yet, deadly kiss

from the lips and teeth of a cloying, carnivorous coward.

No, don’t mind me;

I am the forsaken crumbs; wiped away.

Wiped away from a mouth that relishes consuming the hearts and souls of those unseen, unacceptable, unfortunate ones.

And,

I was almost, nearly…

never, really…

there.

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

Where are ye, Robin Hoods?

Where are ye, rebels?

Ye, Robin Hoods?

Who robs the rich to feed the poor?

Who traverses the bleak, uneven levels,

to rid the bad and keep the good?

Cap of Lincoln green,

a sight long unseen,

Nottingham archer’s

bow,

and, steely arrow.

The poor man’s dream

of outlaw heroes seem,

broken, from the

bone,

unto the marrow.

Who dares be rebels?

Be Robin Hoods?

To replace, replenish, restore?

To reverse the cycle of Avarice’s pedals,

and, stand up for the misunderstood?

Marian, like life, is no longer fair.

There are no merry men.

John has all but been destroyed,

he’s;

bereft, bemused, belittled.

Enduring strife with every breath of air,

should you suffer it again?

When will our children’s simple joys,

bequeath;

retribution in every giggle?

We are the rebels!

We, Robin Hoods!!

We must rise, revolt, make war!!!

Dampen the spirits of those greedy devils,

who bathe in pauper’s bloods.

Robin Hood statue outside of Nottingham Castle
Callum Featherstone

Soliloquy culled

He removed the toque

and bowed his head,

shamefully,

as though every secret,

lie and misdeed were

engraved

upon his mottled cranial tablet;

‘the writing is on the bald,

auld Apache.’

I think she meant ‘alopecia’.

She exuded smoke,

he cowed, coughed and left,

painfully,

it was the first time she’d cut

him to the core, yet, deeper,

impaled

by barbed words from her palate,

a mouth aghast, appalled,

alas, he,

never intended to aggrieve her.

Words can be weaponry, inflicting damage lasting eons.

Words can be incendiary, turning cherubs into demons.

His body, indiscreet,

every scar, mark and blemish

obtained from this unwanted life,

were, classified documents; leaked,

Sorrow’s woodpecker had been peckish,

boring holes deep, into his desperate skin of strife.

The story finished in defeat,

soliloquy culled, forced to perish,

machete thrust, from tonguing knife,

made edgy points; too sharp for cheeks,

an empty vessel, bereft, unable to replenish,

no sleep, nor soul to keep, ‘This is the end’, spoke his eyes.

Callum Featherstone

Something within

They said,

“well, at least, you don’t miss

something

that you never knew.”

this pater-shaped hole

began to impress;

began to exceed excess.

And, once begun,

it couldn’t be undone,

it made both

beginning, and, ending;

without gravitas. Gone.

A filicidal forecast looming

within,

gloomy;

whether he reigned or son shone

“A victim of cruel circumstance?”

this pater-shaped hole

became a grave of discontent,

deep.

So, very, deeply;

without.

No heaped shovel or search

within

could ever uncover it,

nor, taste of stark reality

– stomach it

“A by-product of uncertain romance?”

this pater-shaped hole

has a

dangerous potential

to permeate

generations,

going from keyhole;

within, to black-hole;

exhuming –

gravity without fixture,

irrevocably vacuuming;

sons of Mars,

Venus’ daughters,

zodiac stars, suns, moons,

and all of their explorers,

solar systems, nebulae,

and, galactic formations

of future paterfamilias,

of all things familial,

intergenerational idioms,

inscriptions and incantations

“I didn’t miss what I had never known.

I just knew that something within was missing.

Half the time I felt apart, alone.

Half of my history in absentia whilst existing.”

Callum Featherstone

Happiness, wisdom and foolish tragédies

Happiness is a forbidden fruit

when your soul consumes such grief,

the smiling, juicy, joyous flesh

makes Temptation a willing thief,

it’s often sought in seas of excess

leaving wrecks at Dependence Reef,

it can turn the sinning, wicked brutes

into patron saints of belief.

The taste of Happiness is absolute

without eating branch and leaf,

and, a tangle with despair’s wiry mesh

makes the taste that much more sweet.

Wisdom is an unwanted gift

when you think you know it all,

it hides in spirit’s plane of sight

foreseen under Sage’s shawl,

it can make ignorance feel like bliss

and, learning truth – a bloody brawl,

but, nevertheless, a worthy fight,

one worth every scarring maul.

Humility provides the lift

when pride tumbles as it falls,

and compassion reconstructs might

building bridges from crumbled walls.

This experience of all, which pervades us,

from cradle to grave and beyond,

can be unremarkable, perplexing and outrageous

once spawned in primordial pond,

this human condition exists to enslave us,

catching feelings that try to abscond,

a state which makes fallen angels our saviours,

and, breaks the chains of sacred bonds.

So, until selfish, greedy, loathsome behaviours

become unworthy, unkept, unfond,

there’ll be no happiness found in wisdom’s favours

while foolish tragédies eclipse le monde.

Callum Featherstone

The storm of I

Staring out into naked abyss,

optics wander in twilight’s wonder,

stardust gleaning sacred bliss,

vision listens to silent thunder.

The universal rains lash down;

they make vast waterfalls among the heavens.

Open tear ducts; eternal, splashing down,

closed lids crashing…

down, still, always – Catch; fifteen. Then, adding seven.

The black cascade envelops all it touches,

no matter the presentation,

the make-up plumes from scarlet brushes,

have a bird’s eye view; their final destination.

This pupil set within the storm of I,

is not enlightened nor insightful.

It couldn’t see the worlds bore inside,

it’s maker, yet, remained open minded.

Until, a benevolent outlook was razored,

gouged, clawed, blinded,

at the hands of human-nature.

Behold, this glaringly undelightful,

this epidemic Myopia,

deceptive, cruel and spiteful,

this future unforeseen,

presently; apathetic and obscene,

this, ‘Forlornucopia’,

held aloft for all to see;

perpetually consuming glee;

consuming all… of you, and them, and me.