poet

Callum Featherstone

Love’s perilous shallows

Those sunken…

relationships,
cause wrecks,
when love is perilously shallow.
Reluctant and scorned, the captains,
dive into their slippery,
ill-gotten, untitled, reckonings.

A backpedalling pool,
of thick, cementing gruel,
turning stomachs,
into, trodden, broken,
ceramics,
and, once, placid waters,
into, viscous, panics.

“King Cnut was awash,
with humility, and, a gut-wrenching knot, in his defeat, to the seas,
and, deemed them; majestic,
Godly, and, hallowed.
For, he knew, then, that his reign,
could not stop, the rains of April,
nor, reverse the ocean tides,
despite his courtiers’ love,
being perilously shallow.”

The salty waves,
of harpoon-shaped tears,
submit to sandy cheeks of forlorn,
creating crestfallen beach tides.
Memories resurface; embittered,
and, resentful,
as, sodden spite, is beckoning.

Frostbitten, arctic remarks,
chisel those, once, bleeding hearts,
into cold, scuppered; currachs.
Punctured, and, capsized,
from, ice-veined, blue-blood, it freezes, and, attacks;
subverting, and, destroying the voyage; of doomed solicitude;
when love is perilously shallow.

Callum Featherstone

A message from Gaia.

Where did all the compassion go?
Is it lost; in the Sun’s, ashen glow?
Is it locked; in hearts, that unfasten, slow?
Please, find it, and, return it to Me.

I talked to My Brother;
testy Ares,
His rage spoke of Him watching,
Me burn, convulse and freeze.
He saw those smothering,
fleshy fairies,
self-caged, hate-soaked, plotting,
with yearned pulse, for Me, to seize.

My Sister; loving Aphrodite, too,
cried, agonised,
weeping, at human destruction,
Her dusty tears, made clouds of ash.
Her vista turning, grey, from blue,
My blackened eyes,
from bloody knuckles, of consumption.
Unjust; I fear; gnawing fists, unabashed.

I heard My Siblings, both, and vowed,
never again,
to become, abused and broken,
enduring an insane plight, scared,
and, rid Myself, of this parasite.
This poison growth, is overproud,
severing Men,
will leave Me bruised, yet, awoken,
from an inhumane nightmare,
and, back, to health, and joy, and light.

Where did all the compassion go?
Is it lost; in the Sun’s, ashen glow?
Is it locked; in hearts, that unfasten, slow?
Please, find it, and, return it to Me.

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

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.