Peter Lilly: Poems

Look down at the sodium stars
Of a pessimistic skyline
Beneath the black anonymity,
The expansive anything.
The 'Summun bonum'*
Is but an ominous question mark,

Apparently.


Look down on all breath and blood
Transparently eclipsing the obvious essentials.
When the blatant hides behind the invisible
You’re lost inside last century’s explanation
And you need to keep up with the times,

Apparently.


This advertising nihilism;
A pseudo ambition,
Chasing your own tale.
A rejection, replacing what yesterday overlooked,
Tracing an orbit in the heavens;
Circling the drain;
The meaningless of our own answers.


Scoff at the scent of superstition
As poetry disintegrates into
Uninventive descriptions of depravity,
Because you’re not truly right
Unless you don’t believe in truth,
And it’s beneficial to swallow your own teeth,

Apparently.


Now sweat, not from heat
But the embarrassment of
Something that you have never said,
You took progress for granted.
Now intercontinental apocalyptic rumours …

You’ve grown into a social sickness,
An unquenchable thirst that doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters beyond the taste

Habitual past times mean
You are mildly acquainted with chemical addiction,
Nursing wounds with cautious pride;
If the wrong people see them
You might be persuaded into secret regret.

You embrace assimilation
And drown distinction in exotic colours
Whilst trying to preserve the
Importance of your opinion:
This discontinuity is not sustainable.

Contentment is in all but boredom…
Happiness only in lightness,
Hell is something deeper than your thirst
At the wrong time.
Hell is something perfectly blemished
That gets in the way of something new.

When you choose to retreat;
Sleep is either extensively over rated
Or severely under appreciated.
All else is easy come and easy go
Like the memories of an especially boring person.

All significance is fleeting perception and entertainment
But absolutes still remain important.
The celebrity relationship breakdown:
Light entertainment in television tense
Is the ac…