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...

peterlillypoetry · Displaced redemption There was a world, displaced from its axis by repeated tragedies of its own making, as the inhabitants attempt to grasp the credit for it's own creating. An entire macrocosm misaligned by embezzling clutches and throning lusts. Who's history is marked by a needless taking, and just in case, a pious faking to appease a possible divinity as either a patsy or a machine. There was a world, decomposing in it's own folly. Spinning itself dizzy flailing after impervious redemption. And inside that world there was a people displaced from its milk and honey by a ruling superpower. As the globalising tar of Rome spread to paint the Empire one culture, this people had been waiting. Listening in silence for the reason of their plight, Waiting for the sword of a rallying leader to severe their shackles, and the throats of the chain-bearers, alike. Waiting with the same attitude ...

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 ...

Time occasionally escapes its narrow tube of transport in waves of influence. There is one event so significant it feels like it is ever repeating because it's always unfolding in freshly realised implications, new dimensions of completion and pristine epochs of accomplishment. It is an event of bloody terror, an event of merciful healing. It is an event of violent killing, and event of peaceful giving. It is an event of overwhelming sorrow, an even of heart-deep joy. It is an event of whips and nails, an event of captives freed. It is an event of a cry forsaken, an event comfort for the isolated. It is an event of naked humiliation, an event of shame concealed. It is an event of goodness silenced, an event of amplified perfection. It is an event of blind condemnation, an event of liberating conviction. It is an event of ultimate death, an event of unquenchable life. Time did escape its narrow ...

This is the celebration of: the hinge of history; the spine of the book of the universe; the apex of the temple of the presence of God. Throughout history Humanity has been lost, we have been known by our selfishness, and by our cruelty to humanity. The myth of progress only serves to make one culture feel superior. But this is where things change. The thick skin  of calloused sin is broken and dissolved by the creator; redeeming  filthy flesh  by becoming  what we can now become through him. This is where things change. His un-stainable surface sticks out from within the landfill of sin in every uncompromising step he communicated: God's love; The personality of the creator; Freedom from judgement; Emancipation from slavery of selfishness; Humanities' purpose; And healing from pain. This is where things ch...