Dark Feathers

By Charlie Bowden

CONTENT WARNING: References to Blood and Violence

When Mother’s at her bleakest

and the world is churning orange,

the vultures of earthly youth, with

a hiss of truth, take a juicy bite of history.

All fall together in the brisk morning moonlight:

a Byzantine horse, a French guillotine, a Neanderthal spear, cookie dough ice cream;

founding fathers, desert fathers, mud mothers, blood brothers;

all cascaded to the depths of Doom.  

The birds see demise as decoration,

siphon steel with molten stars,

with their dark feathers simpering

as they slashed through humanity’s lard.

The pages of Utopia burned up above

but the rapture of knowing it was there

was enough to slather their souls with hope.

Yet history was a notoriously bad dancer.

A sudden purge of the ground beneath

gave way to girls, clawing their way out

with gnashed teeth and hollow cheeks.

They spread their wings to find some triumph.

The way out was mirrored, moonlit,

and the morning dew tasted bloody and brutish and sweet.

As the vultures tore themselves limb from limb,

the men fell to heaven at their feet. 

Charlie Bowden is a student from Hampshire, England, who discovered a love for writing poetry in lockdown after spending years studying it at school. His work has been included in collections by Young Writers, Black Cat Poetry Press and the Stratford Literary Festival among others and he won the 2021 Forward Creative Critics Competition.

Twitter: @charliebpoetry

Instagram: @charliebpoetry