Peter Lilly: Poems

How does no one else on this train notice the sunset? Distant sighs of cloud are ignited by orange and pink reflections of descent, framed in those purple coughs, loosely spherical and stretching across the rest of the sky. A beautiful window of deep scarlet lays horizontal below the ignited sighs, below the loosely spherical coughs. The scarlet window is the bated breath ready for dusk to give way to darkness, and it's only visible when the vegetation-silhouettes prostrate themselves to allow precious glimpses, as the day happily bleeds out, draining colour steadily down behind the horizon, which loses its definition to different shades of blackness. Written 29/10/12 on the train from London to Edinburgh.

This joy is not just for me. This vindication, exceeding understanding is expansive enough to carpet the earth in gospel. The breath I have been given must form words that declare the reason for the breath that I have been given! What is there but to proclaim such grace? What else could I do with such a gift that is the solution to everyone's issue of me? There is nothing of arrogance in this testimony, it only involves my shame, taken by someone other than me in grace that has enabled everything good that had been corrupted to start growing again. So I will give my every day to witness to the degradation of my autonomous will, to the solicitous touch that ignited my ashes to embers to the blood that made the path and the Spirit that keeps me glowing, and the grace that does not refuse a broken and contrite heart. On 21/10/12  I preached at City of Peace Church on the Ilse of Dogs ( http://cityofpeace.co.uk/ ) on Psalm 51....

This is not my home; laying in the tears of my denial. Praise the Lord! This is not my home; overwhelmed at my wretched nature desperately aware of my dying body of death, Praise the Lord! This is not my home; for I do not have to make my own path through the thick forest of titanium vines that would consume me in consumption. Praise the Lord! The way has been cleared in blood that hydrates with a new type of growth, dynamic and giving. The way has been cleared and a loving tributary reaches me in my longing for belonging, in my exhaustion and laziness. I am given the motivation, the fuel, the goal, the reason, the means, the path, the example, the instruction, the tender love and the firm discipline I need to go on, in the blood that cleared the path, and the life giving life, that followed death. And I know joy! On 21/10/12  I preached at City of Peace Church on the Ilse of Dogs ( http://cityofpeace.co.uk/ ) on...

In a lyrical mirror, Of the word of God I can see my rose tinted vision and I can see beyond those lenses. My life is deliberately layered with perceived purity, and I have regressed to believe the lies of my own photoshop identity. And there was no fulfilment in indulgences that freeze my conscience, that kept me hiding from myself and convinced that I was hiding from omnipotence. How futile. Now the once ignored contours of the once buried sickness are ever before my eyes; an eclipsing insult between my frail selfishness and the sovereign and supreme selflessness who has given me all and I can't live like that any more. I need to be thawed to life I need to be heated to change I need to be blistered and burned from the dross that would keep me dull. On 21/10/12  I preached at City of Peace Church on the Ilse of Dogs ( http://cityofpeace.co.uk/ ) on Psalm 51. As part of my preparation I wrote a 3 part poem, this first part is called Conviction/Rep...

Bits of grace fall, bounce off your shoes and surround your feet in constellations of disregarded litter. But you should not despair! precious pieces though they are, but fragments of the whole costliest treasure, which sits above, waiting for you to jump and be submerged. Written Oct 2012.

Control. It wastes not like the lust that chases tides, then tries to take solace in dryness. But it is lost. Control believes in itself, despite stacks of books with the irrefutable weight of a million combined pages. It is fundamentalism. Control, draws on its own skin. It is an artist that neither acknowledges the canvas, nor the fingers he uses to paint. It is ignorant. Control: A safe delusion and distraction in the ocean of death and birth where we are given and taken. Control: A grasping at status beyond man. Control: A rejection of intuitive breathing, and a swallowing of cloud that would have one day dispersed in the revealing of beautiful truth, but Control: Impatience. Written at the beginning of October 2012.