Peter Lilly: Poems

'Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him.' Calendar's rhythm thuds. The kick drum rattles your rib cage As collective memories and communal routines Plume like dust from that undulating skin. ..... You must wrap gifts in superfluous paper, ..... That's tradition. ..... Yet repeating acts to underline thankfulness, ..... That's superstition. Calendar's rhythm thuds And we bellow through that dust cloud, Clearing our throats and averting our eyes. THUD For the drum announces the sales THUD The rhythm is the anthem of vacation gifts. So discard the old and ugly, To find the beauty, To spend and to own.  'They came to the place that is called The Skull ' Excited skin bristles. Chill shivers the spine in want For purpose and ergonomics dim in contrast To the lights, and the efficacious movement of the crowd. ..... So much spectacle, ..... All these plate glass doors, ...

If you are anywhere near Northwest London this Easter you should go along to the Easter Joy and Justice Arts Project in Northwood.   It's 'An amazing opportunity to engage with various art pieces, created by 13 local artists, and see the Easter narrative in a new light. The project combines the Easter narrative with issues of justice (e.g. homelessness, poverty, climate change, drought) and brings together these concepts through various pieces of reflective and transformative light.'   It's running from 11th to the 22nd of April, for specific times and more details follow the link.

Hope distinguishes itself from now. It is gazing at milestones that keeps the rhythm constant. Thud, Crack, rustle, shhh Thud, Crack, rustle, shhh... kicking stones. Hope is a hammer.      It fractures skulls,      it embeds nails. Hope is a hammer.      It cracks metal,      it shapes what is forged. It is the violence at the door to keep you inside. It is the violence to bend the bars of your entrapment. Find your hope, a hope that builds and frees,  know the reason behind it and wield it.  wield the hammer of your hope. Written in the Autumn of 2015, about the violence of hope that can be for good or for bad.

What becomes of us? Circling our ambitions in tentative pigeon steps, not awaiting permission but opportunity, which some take as the same thing. Anticipation takes our breath until we are light-headed, spinning, it repeats and repeats. I wish this circle was a spiral, but I recognise my tracks, our tracks in the flattened grass and compressed dirt. Our internal voices circle our potential like hungry vultures, waiting to pick the bones of what might have been, in the approval of regret. A Poem written as an encouragement for endurance. It's difficult to start new initiatives, to build something sustainable that is in the image of something greater than yourself, to live a Christlike life. Laying foundations feels like walking in circles. But these foundations are important and it is right that it takes time! For, to build without foundations is to build in ignorance, a fatalistic and pointless exercise in egotistical squan...

I wanted to look out from the edge of the world and feel the weight of a thousand miles of ocean breaking against my toes. I wanted to look out, to fearlessly stand on overhanging cliff face, adding to the nothing before me with my breath. I wanted to look out from the flat of my back at the immeasurable depth of the blackness between the stars, all thinly veiled in our life-parcel atmosphere. Give me distance: so I can taste the untampered air of the sea; so I can see a thousand peaked horizon reverberating the globe before my feebly observing eyes; so I can be pinned to the earth by starlight, who's heat and fury is refracted by lightyears to become peace and beauty. Give me sea, give me mountains, give me stars, and keep your phoney medicine. - Written on Monday 04/03/12

Her skin serenades my working hands her listening silence is wise counsel to my troubled, tired mind. her searching eyes are welcome to my imperfections, because there is no judgement in her questions and no condemnation in her judgement. Her complexity leaves me silent, her creativity paints the colours of my gaze across an otherwise beige room, her blemishes are beautified in honesty and cast shadows across photoshop idols for the skin is deception. She will bow where I bow but never to me and I never to her. Written february 13th 2011 before I met my wonderful wife. too chliched? Naa!