Peter Lilly: Poems

Escalation It twists against itself— the spring-loaded serpent pushing the bullet from the cartridge into the chamber. Wound in metal— a charged agenda unites just enough to divide, consolidates power by tightening on targets, for all can be molded into success when you shape the narrative. But there is also a natural spiral of escalating resistance— when you extinguish a poet some protesters might carry the alleged 9mm, when you terminate a nurse the fuse has almost burnt out, and ice will meet the people’s fire, having doused the streets with the accelerant of death.

Spacial awareness   let us down again, and shattered  another urn, spilling that morbid sand. In the irritation  of  vacuuming respectfully    we give a moment of meaning  back to sooty remains.  Referendums pass the time.  They draw out experts who,  with shouts and keystrokes,  fling the spittle of their opinion.  Elections pass the buck.  With their signs and slogans  they draw out the masses  to choose between arsenic and anthrax.  The French call their ballot box an urn.  It is where we cast  the ashes of our expired ideals,  to be scattered amongst  the winning or loosing percentage,  as the fate of the nation  teeters on the whims   of  fickle voters and loyal tabloid readers.  All the projected outcomes  are varied shades of ash,  and a different decor  of the receptacl...

These lies cast a thoughtful zeal from the heart of their origin and it convinced so many in the necessity of shadows, that is the necessity of corruption. It was some sort of impatience that drew its teeth across the shivering flesh of the already emotionally tortured, And so many twisted hands reach for the escapism of free-market capitalism that has the individual all wrong: Equating relational significance with collecting eroding materials in the makeup of glittered vomit. And so may twisted hands reach for the razor-wire scaffolding of communism which has community all wrong: Negating the significance of the particular and fashioning flesh cogs which will never rotate cleanly because we are persons, not machinery. Desperate people will grasp for any answers they can reach.  This poem is a call for care and consideration, it is written to highlight that there is more than left and right, conservative and labour, blue and red, ...