Peter Lilly: Poems

I thought I'd smash some glass, spill some liquid, so I clicked it, clicked it. But the bottle was not tangible, though before my eyes in three dimensions it was flat as paper. Only static rises, so it is never wind that blows your hair. Plastic progress masks the faces of unnecessary despair. What tastes remain in your pixels? Your pockets of MSG delicacies? Your dunce assimilation and mind-ache? Breathing silly soundbites, broadcasting solutions to the vast ocean of immediate me, my and mine: Shackles for time in mirrors. Only static rises, so it is never wind that blows your hair. Plastic progress masks the faces of unnecessary despair. All who take part are lost in mirrors, but somewhere, somebody is still breathing and should write their breath with ink and paper and truly commit in the truth that there is some freedom in patience. A poem I wrote about Patience, roughly 3 years ago. I did s...

Home is changing context, and that takes some time. It has to happen around you first, then seep in through your pours and unite your spine with your skin with your surroundings. Like with new language, listening, bumbling, confused, improving, trying and smoothing into rugged fluency. Home is changing context and that takes some time. Three weeks ago, my wife and I moved to Montpellier, in the South of France. It's a wonderful city but of course it takes time to adjust to new surroundings, new language, new culture. Last week I took some time to reflect, to feel that adjustment happening around me, to me and in me, and I wrote this.

The Horizon looms closer than the edge of vision, or the curvature of the earth, and the sky's third dimension stretches miles beyond the land, empty of clouds and stars. It draws me with compulsion, this great nothingness of the edge of all things. I'm sick of things, of bits and pieces, they get into your skin. They lie of necessity and draw themselves out across your walls, In front and in the way of every view of nature you've had the opportunity to see. I want to peek over the edge and experience that desperate lack of things. Tomorrow (4th May 2015) My wife and I will be moving from Northwest London to the South of France. I have been living in this area for almost eight years, since I started university, and have never lived away from the UK, so this is a big change for me. This is something I wrote last month, whilst making preparations to go. When you pack your life into boxes you realise how much 'stuff...

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...