poem

Callum Featherstone

Not for the faint-hearted

Life is not

for the faint-hearted

just ask

those dearly departed –

they know all too well

that the water of life

when drunk

can buffet and swell

make a storm

of a stomach

that was lead-lined

as though

forged in the fiery

bowels of hell.

Life is not

for the faint-hearted,

it never stops

or gets restarted,

whether you begged

for

a

slower

pace

or a race that

wasn’t three legged;

your trips;

over and abroad,

your falls;

flat on your face

and in love,

will be packed,

bandaged and

suit-cased;

every act

in mind, at hand

held in a Brahman grip.

Life is not

for the faint-hearted

because it’s

simply; unrelenting –

to be alive

is to be martyred

and to survive

without resenting

takes the truest

of heart;

no matter where

you started

or where you end up

once departed.

Callum Featherstone

Persona non grata

Requiem

“will that make me look sexy, then?”

A pubescent teen

with nothing, not even self-esteem.

“Will that make them accept me, then?”

Acquiesce

to the authority of stress

of adulthood’s cold compromise;

the coatless blizzard of the wise,

final kiss by blue lipped death.

Ad astra

far away from a living disaster.

Breaking fleshed cocoon of rust

and becoming a star; stardust.

Intergalactic; invoked forever-after.

Callum Featherstone

Mass Hysteria

Listening

to car tyres screech

on dust encrusted

tarmacadam;

gristle’s twin.

A street pastor’s speech

from pavement pulpit

as Eves and Adams

grimace within.

Mysterious

one-sided telephone

conversations – brush the air;

painting; polyglottal prisoners.

History is

forever rewritten – prone

to vacating…

…forgetting it was even there.

St. Folly’s got new parishioners;

Mass Hysteria.

Orthodontic

is the undercurrent;

sautéed commuter,

parboiled carriage.

Neurotic

masticating servants

enslaved inside computers;

cyber-cabbage

crunched caustic.

Over the nest, free;

Cuckoo-faced;

One flew. Pidgins

peck at plastic cups

with a hope to digest

commerce.

Cardiac arrests meet

fate-laced

rued derision.

Plastic and corrupt:

un-laminated life we lament

in a dot-com hearse.

Overtly oppressed, we

praise avarice and fame;

and our new religion

of Selfishness,

teaches us to self-destruct.