Peter Lilly: Poems

You took on flesh, True flesh and grew With the same astonishing  Life-long quickness  Of my one-year-old son. You had a first birthday,  Finding your feet, The Word, imitating language With sighs and groans, The Word of Life, so deep within, So clear and true, In unadulterated expression Of a conviction beyond Language. On the 28th of December my son, Gabriel, will have his first birthday. The year has been indescribable. Yet throughout all the challenges, just revelling in the privilege of being with our little boy as he grows has brought such sheer joy. At this time of year I'm obviously thinking about the incarnation. But rather than Jesus' birth, I'm thinking of him at the same stage of life as our little boy, as a one-year-old. Gabriel has been walking for a couple of months now, and often makes long convicted speeches in sounds that no one else understands, waving his hands like he's teaching some essential truth to a captiv...

We travel in spirals, within spirals. It's a bigger picture, and more beautiful than your circles. Yet when the loops tighten, as time's fingers around the trachea of our solar system, we know, even the spirals are not the whole picture. Your irises, forged from Neptune's ice, follow the orbits and fear the heat of friction. They do not fear melting, but evaporation and the end of all things seen. It's this fear that keeps our lenses frozen, fixated on hypnotic rotations, unable to focus on the constant. It's this fear that keeps our lenses frozen, fixated on hypnotic metaphors, unable to break from the pattern of the present. Unable to acknowledge a wider perspective that can glimpse the self-identifying verity amidst the coils of our models of truth. Steadfast and unwavering, he wants to be perceived and he exists outside of our spirals. Therefore we must adapt ...

Abba father May I not be yet, Clay that has been cast and set. But in humble recognition Of my nature fallible, May I remain childlike And in your hands malleable. May I bow before you In broken dependence, Salvaged by your Unreachable transcendence, Which stretched the distance From holiness to degradation To plant inside flesh The seed of salvation: The very will of God, Who chose as his raiment to endure Rejection humiliation and harrowing slaughter, to procure That which humanity Alone could never reach, As the stains of our folly The blood of Jesus did bleach. May I never fall For any idol of allure, But remain in a garment Cleansed and pure. Lord, bid every facet Of my heart to stay in your hands only, With which you forged night and day, And keep me forever pliant As the potter's unfired clay. Mark 10:13-16; 1 John 2:1-16. SPOILER ALE...

I am disappearing, down into the linen that caresses my body as my mind criss-crosses, chasing through meandering crises of nocturnal fabrication. I am full of hope, and dread... and whispers. Soft chalk runs out before the lesson is learnt. I was truant anyway, day dreaming of summer. I am disappearing into something, yet I still see my shuffling footprints, scoring a perforation through this continuum; a seam to tear and a void to feel expanding. Fields of livestock and houses of television faces, all lost in the gap that is left. It is potential hidden in false humility. I am disappearing, if I fight it I sever the umbilical cord that attaches me to my Father. It is an artery, with flow too fast to cauterise. I would disappear in the dirty needles and forgotten-butt fires. Lucid, as I feel my significance hang its head from my skin in shame...

Crayon fingers clasp at the pictures of another's mind. Leaving you to salivate over silhouettes of broken pieces of conversation: chiming a random anthem as they settle in the sad lifelessness of silent fragments, and I want to hide from the ocean beneath the sand of the coastline you fashioned with those crayon fingers. Rain peppered beaches sigh moments of fresh water at the salt of the inhalation waves. It waves me farewell to your listening. So make a water world of your speaking and dream the abyss of walls away. Contact your forgotten ambition in the misassembled shapes of frozen water and draw what you see in your own contrition taste the flavours that your art tried to achieve and feel  the purity  of all dimensions  of this creation as it awaits the artist's  restoration: injecting pure colour into the hearts of each willing figure of this moving canvas ...

The following is a poetic reflection on the Lord's Prayer... Father, Remove the weights that pull our eyes to ground so that we may begin with you, our all. In Heaven, Up: out of the minds reach, above all it is that may come between persons created for your unity. Your name, is so much more important than our names, even its sound is righteousness and light, may we not cheapen it with venal voices. Your rule, here it should be as tangible as there, equip and anoint us, so that we may be your ambassadors. My needs are simple, but as the affluent west cracks and splinters We trust you to feed your feeble servants. Forgiveness: The essence of salvation the only way for us broken pieces to retain heart and continue breathing. Enable it in us to forgive as radically as the pain pierced man of innocent service and ultimate authority. ...

Man. Vulnerable, dependant. Suckling, giggling, crying . Universal significance profoundly juvenile. God. God.  Immovable, sustainer. giggling, crying, accommodating . immeasurably deepening love's definition. Man. A poem made up of two quintain structures reflecting on God's self-accomodation in the incarnation. Written 20/12/12.