Peter Lilly: Poems

Old fashioned values have always been that way. Trace their timeline and draw a boring horizon onto the edge of the world. Harking back through nostalgic echoes of echoes, of echoes, of dreams of graspable innocence. We've dug up the debauchery of the previous generation's secret sordid rooms, and embraced them as our banner,  our emblem, and the seal of this empire. We live inside 'obsessive lusts' without the pretence of curtains to keep the darkness private. It is the yearning for release of this ever receding satisfied feeling that we keep locked inside the lie of hedonistic happiness. It is through this harking back in nostalgic echoes of dreams of old fashioned values that have been old fashioned since the serpent's first deception. ******* I guess this is my response to a culture that embraces and glorifies the 50 Sh...

They blur and melt. All into one organism. Their faces moving in the particularity  of  their relationship to the music. All melting into the pours of the singing skin of this organism. Bass, tenor, alto, soprano: different stretching, twitching limbs in the aural dance of beautiful echoes from walls built to magnify every element of experience. Even the soloists blur and melt becoming one, through the strings and brass, with the wider choir behind. Even the conductor blurs and melts, still protruding as the third dimension, but not haughtily aloof, in the midst and in between, visible but not above, en guard at the vanguard, he is at the fore fencing distractions, and always pointing to the essence of the music. 1 Corinthians 12:12-27

Where the known world gets smaller and exploration becomes a valid career choice. Where the surrounding islands silhouette a mysterious calling to make this feel like the mainland. Where mountains peek Monroe heights and Sahara heats merely a fathom from the shore, rocky and peppered with olive groves. Where the black sands of the southern beach of Preveli scald your soles and the pink-white shells of the deserted Chrissi Island draw breathe in stark contrast. Where the green hew of northern rocks, outlined with clean salty foam are surrounded by the depths of transparency and turquoise. Where the raki is freely given to oil the joints of the evening and ease the passing to tomorrow. Where the country lanes smell like sour goats whose bells chime a native melody to echo across scorched hills. Where gracious attitudes let time pass at its own pace, leaving rich tourists uneasily glancing at expensive watc...

Even on this boat, on this fjord, there is someone looking at a screen. Oblivious to the passing beauty that will outlive our LCD: our acid and our own synapses. Overfamiliarity is no excuse. I got burnt today, in the wind below where the dregs of slowly melting snow are the glacial prints, where ice age fingers were dragged towards the permanent peace in narrow streams. I got burned by beauty that leapt from the sun and was magnified by every contour, every millilitre of pure water, every centimetre of distance travelled, every knot of speed, and every quark of every atom of every cell of my love's generous and radiant being. Beauty leapt from the sun, was magnified in those obscenely majestic ricochets, and left me burnt and tender. The Spirit hovers over the deepest fjord in silent sparks and seemingly random flashes of purpose. If you let the collisions burn you tender, those sparks w...

Subtle chains always linger, their clinking echoes in the atmosphere long after the metal has been dissolved. Every type of freedom is infant at conception and feeble in its dependance on sacrifice. Expect to have to nurture your emancipation as you fight to breathe unpolluted air with newly purchased lungs.   Written May 2014. There must always be a lot of patience involved in fighting for freedom, not least when a change has been achieved in principle, for that change to filter down into attitudes and emotions. 

Open. Glancing in toxic, hated and simmering shadows. Scolding these curious claws, clattering tarmac in retreat. Always open. Fixated onto logical arguments of crescendo victory. Volume defeats thought with every drop of poison. Still open. In determination, just if I can taste another day of this dirt, but delay is denial of the basics and death becomes you whilst you're still warm. Forced open. Fear of being in truce with your unwanted images, illuminated eyelids never stop with those twisted faces. Half open. Well, come in to my chasing exhaustion. Movement should be left to the animals that pursue me. Wide open. Start yelling suspected memories at my silhouette my spine bends with the slats of this palate that is my solace. Perpetually open. I may jinx my survival with hoping for harbour But this ocean has been licking at my soars for three etern...

Litter grew around us, teeth gritted in impatience for the filthy fruit of our consumption, that is transported from beyond the individualist's horizon. Your universe hates you when the lights are off, shutting its eyes to your waking, and all those words you bring to life as you read from pages that appear as you turn them. Anaesthesia dissolves the teeth leaving you with mysterious bite marks and bitter amnesia, it clouds the resolve of your blinkers and your mirrored walls. Echoes of outside draw its fingernails across chalk boards of yet to learn lessons, coughing up childhood traumas of empathy. They drain opaque from your worldview and leave you with the monsters, and the monstrous landfill skyline that scowls at your children's future. Yet beyond that refuse view there are leaves with the colours of depth. There is living matter never to be synthesised, and mass produced. There is an oceans of faces, ev...