poetry

Callum Featherstone

Away

I was away.

When I became
a blazing iconoclast
of innocence.

Aside Swan’s azul canal
serenely passing
by.

Shards collated
like cerise husks of
glass feathers.

Falling wholly from Her
eye.

The falling pieces
they scar the surface.

Marring my purpose
along the stretch.

As stalling features
were caught in cursus.

Barred & berthless.

A thronging wretch.

Piercing crimson crunches;

Let me —

down.

Whilst the Swan’s
unfolded wings
steal Her, white, away.

On silver plumaged
gown.

Away from;
my shattered scarlet sting.

Away from;

a jilted rufous thing.

A part of me
it went away that day.

I watched unstayed
whilst I stood & list.

Never to return.

Under Swan’s glassy lee
my pinion virtue fades;

skypaths white, now, lain
ichor chimney mists.

Dishonour’s furnace burns;

away.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Escaping A Name

“The letters twist inflected shame.

You shan’t exist to escape your;

Name.”

Poisoned is the moniker. Acrid lips of bile.

Wrapt around, a venomous harmonica.

Notes steal away from you each chime.

Kiss inflates. Heir’s disgrace.

Chronicled.

As, paralysis, sets the pulsing throb,

In rime.

On the tongue wet, now, a frozen;

Cognomen in time.

“The letters twist inflected shame.

You shan’t exist to escape your;

Name.”

If you could afford the antidote,

Would you sup, Elixir’s taste?

Though the snide, affecting,

Side effects,

Cast, your looks in creosote,

From a spunly, ailing,

Face?

The crumple of your profile,

Would wriggle,

Offspring free of decades,

From carbuncle-formed belittle-

ment, whilst, the shackles’, taut,

defame.

“The letters twist inflected shame.

You shan’t exist to escape your;

Name.”



© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

The Beggar’s Dream

A lotus flower, closed leaves upon a lonely hour for light reprieve, before the dawn.

The gloaming, sour. Shows a grief-struck lowly glower. Sore, in sights retrieved. Pre-mourning awe.

All the while, a moonlit smile casts its cheddar gleam across the lake.

As wet beguile, twists yellow spirals, on blue beggar’s dreams of cheese & hake.

It’s in these Isles, of fantasies fine whiles,
the edge of streams, hopscotch landscapes.

Clambered stiles and climber’s trials, tribulate tributaries, where rivered oceans spake.

When dawn is broken, we’ll have never spoken
but the fondest memory in mind, always, stays.

So, inside a beggar’s dreams of the inbetween, there is no foot above to keep downtrodden.

There, lessers leap over the successor’s seats, and the throne is cut like a rug, from its top to its very bottom.

Justice done by those who suffered under its rotten, deadly feet.

Devoid of liberty, enough to eat, cold, and left forgotten.

Remembered for goodness’ sake,
begged dreams of cheese & hake,
in my mind’s hungry pockets, often.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Two

After, many days, unwritten I, finally, broke.
In:

— two.

I am read today.

Crimson pages sp/lit,
in a scarlet leather,
bound book.

I have bled today.

Not on the outside.

Inside. Where my cage, unfit,
is a gaping sØre,
raw, like, a far-opened, paper cut.

I have read today.

Vast vermillion versions,
of the same sorry stories,
I’s sore/stuck.

I am bled today.

Of all the planned paths,
& every excursion,
I put my heart in vein two:
suffering’s bløød.

Pulmonary shelves,
full of bronchial notions,
pull heavy breaths,
across gasping oceans.

I can feel each let-
ter bre/ak/ing in ph-on-et-ic,
— two
whilst my heart is aching,
for an ending, new.

E.a.c.h. B.e.a.t,

falls

f.  a.  d.  i.  n.  g.  f.  r.  o.  m.  i.  t.  s.  t.  u.  n.  e.

Two,
a phantom sound,
unfurled,
that, never, quite,
rings true.

Fairytale myths.

Are the only,
worlds & words;

I have the write;

two-cling-two.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Tiny Pieces of; O’clock

Broke..

Broken.

Smithereens sprawl

upward past

spaces unspoken.

A brokered unpeace

maims my burst and splintered tock.

Tiny pieces of;   o.  ‘    c.   l.      o.       c.   k.

When the watcher placed his watch on me.

Then my problems faced forgotten me.

A timepiece smashed

it’s own arms and hands.

A lapsed hammer lashed

down on minute demands.

Ticks of approval taste silence

for their first and final time.

As moss grows on death’s violin.

Her bow embossed with lime.

Hours & minutes all flash bygone, gone, bye.

Tiny pieces of; o’clock, now: lost in time.

Dissolved erasure’s metro-moans aside:

fade into chagrin’s yon endless sighing syne.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Sligeachan’s Song (Shelly’s Place)

I’m the waters; still —

running.

Oozing was Hebridean sorcery
outslipt liquid’s shaman
her name is, Sligeachan,
to her neigh-bours.

At, Shelly’s Place,
where silver foam horses sleep
alongside uisce enablers
drams canter at pace.

Whilst waterfalls slipstream
down the rocks to the basin
pooled equestrian dreams
plunge crashed stony abrasion.

As wishing-well goes
lifeforcing pucas and kelpies.
Missing spells flow
proof’s unliving to help me.

My well-wishing legs, froze
time slowed with the waters; still —

running.

To cascades wet, crispy-cold
inside, Sligeachan’s song,

                                                              caught;

myself: humming.

I became the waters;

Two of Sligeachan’s horses,

One of Shelly’s placed sons and daughters.

I’m the waters; still —

running.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

A Timeless Land

Cartwheeling
went the grand-
father clock’s
arms & hands.

Along each ceiling
above the strands
of unstarts unstops
in A Timeless Land.

Where waters reach
wrapping wisteria around
themselves in every vine
a wetter version of a minute.

There, solsticed leaves
untrapped grow free & proud
& houred grapes squeeze syned
durations to taste like winely spirit.

Spans do not run late
& do not stand still
for they have no limbs
nor face to tell.

We mere mortals
with time to kill
the enchanted incant-
ation of our spell;

“What time is it?!”

“Make sure you’re
there on time!!”

In nighttime’s journey
to A Timeless Land
we don’t hear the clang-
ing bells that chime
empty questions
or commands.

You are no longer
a slave to master Time
when eyes do close
with slumber’s sand
your soul there is whole
ev’ry second of your while.

© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Mysty Mynded Fountains

It’s hard, this life at times. Like;
carv-
ing algebra equat-
ions
into granite.
With
mysty mynds
and all of
those, why?, god-
ammits.
Yet,
pers-                           ever-                           ance
has                     found                     me,
lost. And, carried me when I’m nought
& cross. It’s not easy, but if it was,
would we care, as much?
For, every raindrop, that fills the puddle,
the lake, the river and the ocean.
Has it’s journey of which to speak of, through it’s own cascading potion.
A feeling, an emanation, a glimmer, an emotion. A way, to make, a shimmer in the sheen, over brook or stream,
in every fountain, of our mysty mynded ; notions.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Tomorrow’s Path

Yesterdays lay at the pyre.

Where my stomach’s fire sparked a rage.

Flames were foregone failings.

Licked to heights of summer rays.

Mood’s churchly spire and blue railings.

Now, coat in dew from Autumn’s haze.

A guttural roar has turned to water.

Gushing torrents from my face.

A cleanse of force gave no willing quarter.

Healing coolly that pyre’s blaze.

Yesterdays they were flecks of ash.

That plumed, then, fell from yore, beneath.

Tomorrow’s mystic, marvelled path.

Rising, daily, just below my feet.


© poormansdreams

Callum Featherstone

Spirit Dreams of the Uisce

I threw them ..




.. waited ..




..  and watched.


The water bulged.


Subtle, soft,
rippling creases
in Manannán mac Lir’s forge.

An uisce — Scotch
coalescent Irish Moss.

That only sea and river
Gods
could in thoughts divulge
through incantation’s
soak of aquatic creatures.

Then, out of
the swell’s depths
a Selkie leapt
over a Merrow
like a silver birch
long slept
somersaulted
by a sparrow
where wet
secrets are kept
under the lid
of mine eyes
and those on
the faced design
of my stone-
made pebble
that became
their coin arrow.

For there is
mystic magic
in spirit dreams
of the uisce.

And, so, I fathom ..

.. that each wish
that we cast
from the rock
to the coffer
only bears fruit
at steeped last ..



.. under the water.


© poormansdreams