Poems by Peter Lilly

Hermit Crabs

An enforced hermitage:
No vows but to try.
No conviction but to live.
No chosen fast,

this hunger,
this distance,
this fleeing
is enforced
by exploding shells,

​and living promise
must hide in cellars
from the volatile weight
of opposing progressions.

"Hermit Crabs" speaks of the hunger of people displaced by war.

​Click to hear the poet read the poem.

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Love Starts with Bread and Bandages.

The street laughs
at my cracked and bleeding soles,
and that is not
how love is supposed to be.

The thorn in my side
is surrounded by new splinters
from cactus fingers
and that is not
what love is supposed to do
to your wounds.

​The nutrients was expelled
along with the poison
when my body purged itself,
all that is left
is that nauseous combination
of hunger and exhaustion
and that is no foundation
for love.

"Love Starts with Bread and Bandages" defines feeding people and physical care as the starting place of love.

​Click to hear the poet read the poem.

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Window Shopping

Each and every story recites
beads of neglect and abuse
threaded with the hair-thin string
of fragile breath.

a twisting of the will,
a burnt hair smell,
a repeated jolting of already-fractured limbs,
a rubbing of the eyes with sand covered fingertips.

The hands that feed
often become fists
that beat, and palms
that smother screams.

If you want to help
you cannot bemoan the teeth.

The papers paint them plastic,
keeping us blind to the cold side
of display windows

where security means
being free from alarms
and able to sleep a night
without the disturbing displacement
of officers of arbitrary enforcement.

"Window Shopping" appeared in my debut collection "An Array of Vapour", and mentions how, if we want to feed people or help them in other ways, we need to understand who those people are and their vulnerabilities.

Click to hear the poet read the poem.

Peter Lilly is a British Poet who grew up in Gloucester before spending eight years in London studying theology and working with the homeless. He now lives in the South of France with his wife and son, where he concentrates on writing, teaching English, and community building. His debut Collection 'An Array of Vapour’ is available with TSL publications, and his second collection 'A Handful of Prayers' is forthcoming with Wipf & Stock.

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