No one’s property

It took generations

Without scratching the surface

I know of three, 

I know there was more

Many came and went 

Many had their names erased

My strength built over centuries

Waiting patiently

I have learnt I am the past

How arrogant I have been

Knowing nothing of waiting

I took it, as if it was mine

Although alone we never stand

Generations pulsing through my veins

I am not myself today

I am the collective yesterday

Loudly crashing in

Undeterred

I’m here

And I can declare I belong to none

A woman built from the scars of history

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. No one’s property explores inherited identity, historical erasure, and female self-possession — reclaiming the self not as an isolated individual, but as a living force shaped by generations and belonging to no one.

Good is not a virtue signal

Good deeds each plant their own seed

Sprouting beauty into our lives

Slowly nurtured from the ground up

Taking root, unbreakable truth

We build the places in which we live

Shaping our world interconnected

A shadow rests heavy on our vanity

For all is not as it seems

Stars shining without regard

Unwittingly chasing riches

Forced to dismiss the good 

In pursuit of utopian dreams

Take a look around

What do you see

Plant the seed

Spread the word

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Good is not a virtue signal speaks to the moral difference between appearance and action — affirming that genuine goodness is cultivated through lived care, while vanity and hollow aspiration estrange us from what truly sustains the world.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

No pebbles in a stream

Laying under the waterbed, so small

Rippling through the world, flowing with the current 

Each journey taken together yet alone, uniquely shaping

Water flows without you, sun shines, and rains fall without your command

This life is yours

Inevitable hopelessness fills the pool; how many choices are yours?

Intersecting journeys pushing and pulling this way and that while we respond

Is this life, pebbles in a stream

Understand with what begins, motion follows

Is this us, collective followers

Like pebbles tumbling along the river of destiny set by higher forces

There is but one recourse to shift the sands, conscious thought 

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. No pebbles in a stream reflects on the tension between fate and agency — considering how individual lives are shaped by larger currents, yet still altered by the awakening force of conscious thought.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

A sense of something

Watching slowly

Piece by piece

You depart

Brick by Brick

Taken away

Lost to the crowd

Do this

Be this

Eat this

Don’t eat that

Don’t be sad

Can’t say that

Speak up

Leave room

Take up space

Live more simply

Life is complicated

Find balance

Work hard

Think less

Be mindful

Do you

Recycle thoughts

Time intersects

I feel you coming

A reckoning

Truth out

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. A sense of something explores the pressure of modern instruction and self-erasure — tracing a fractured world of commands, contradictions, and recycled thought until a deeper reckoning with truth begins to surface.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

Holding

With all that I have, I bargain  

Today we went swimming

Under a sun shining as if it always would

I held you, or at least I imagined it

Turned the record player on, swayed my hips

Wanting this moment to be longer

Yet I know, see it on your face

You would soon be gone

No more blues skies

My body numb again

If only you were more than a glimpse

Passing by like a familiar stranger

I thought I knew you once, perhaps in a dream

Holding onto a thread, falling into the abyss

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Holding meditates on the ache of impermanence in love and longing — suspending a fleeting moment of warmth against the knowledge of loss, where desire reaches toward what can never fully remain.

Unknown Author

Despite my best efforts 

I write in my dreams

Waking at dawn

With words of broken sleep

Sitting with coffee,

Half drunk, still warm

Last thoughts fading

Every morning the same

The music of my day 

Restlessly I try to escape

Bed unmade; dishes can wait

A wishful thought

They call my name

Poetry vanquished

Who am I if I cannot be

I beg you, is there no room?

Better or worse to brighten the world 

A thought to share

Every night a better life I dream

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Unknown Author reflects on the fragile persistence of the creative life — capturing the tension between daily obligation and the inner necessity to make something luminous before the world pulls attention elsewhere.

Life as a continuum

Youth, the age of mistakes

With a smug smile, not I

A path well worn

Ending at regret, but why

We’ve seen it all before

The stories have been told

And still, judgment greets our door

But what if?

There are many twists and turns

Changes need to be made 

And it’s never too late

To start anew at a later date

A sigh of relief

Wisdom takes time

Consciousness grows

No more I told you so

Just we’ve been there before

Time for something new

Age irrelevant

Knowledge to be learnt

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Life as a continuum meditates on the generosity of perspective that comes with time — rejecting judgment in favour of growth, renewal, and the understanding that wisdom is never bound to age alone.

Life at a standstill

This day is desperate

It searches mediocre streams

Of minds unbothered

Unchanging formulas

In an ever-changing world

Falling behind

Today is yesterday

Disorientating in due course

Counting the grains of sand

Leaving no time at all

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Life at a standstill speaks to the quiet paralysis of a culture trapped in repetition — where stale thinking and mechanical routines leave little room to meet the demands of a world already moving beyond them.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

For no good reason

What if the world was closed

With you on the outside

Looking in, unseen

Would you stay or go?

Every morning this question

Life or death

Awakens the poor

Why?

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. For no good reason reflects on the violence of exclusion with stark simplicity — confronting the reader with the brutal arbitrariness by which poverty turns each new day into a question of survival.

We need to talk

The is no escape

Nobody has much to say anymore

A few good lines and a riff

Getting off to switching off

With a boozy Tuesday lasting all week

Talking football, what’s the score

A conversation not worth having

Being thoughtful gone I heard

“Think less, do more”

How peculiar I am, I thought

Now we’re only passing the time

Did you get that surf on the weekend

I’m just not sure what to say

The news isn’t good

Prospects poor

For now, we just pretend

Still, you want it wrapped in a bow

Or better yet, just not said

We’re sinking into a lie

With jingles playing in our heads

And the temperature is rising

From where I sit

Do you see what I see

It’s all just a frame of mind

Let me show you, 

If you would move over a little, please

It’s time we exchanged…ideas

I belong here too

In this man-made world

Unbalanced

In a diverse world requiring a better view

Worth noting…

For the beauty yet to be discovered

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. We need to talk explores the erosion of meaningful dialogue in a distracted, performative culture — urging a more honest, inclusive exchange of ideas as the necessary beginning of social and moral rebalancing.

Overworked

Each morning I rise with hope

By afternoon weariness sets in

With a cloud of doubt, it descends

Taking with it the waking dream

This day was just the same

Expectations were not met

Time marched on by

Without a second to spare

I had imagined there would be more

In this post-industrial world

I had a dream or had been sold one 

Of time in the sun

Sitting with a peaceful mind

Knowing this was enough

Contributing in one small part

To the work that must be done

Instead, I am just another cog

Waiting to be put to work

Waiting my turn

Waiting in line

Waiting for a paycheck

Waiting to be fed

Waiting for the weekend

Waiting to be finished

Waiting to be dead?

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Overworked reflects on the quiet brutality of labour under modern life — capturing how exhaustion, repetition, and deferred hope can strip existence down to survival, until even death begins to sound like the final item in a waiting line.

What goes around comes around

Life is beautiful

Is it not?

Why would we be here

If it were not

Life deserves …

Dignity

Respect

Truth

Life must have …

Peace

Love

Joy

Beauty is a connecting force

No fortress can hold  

What is a universal truth

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. What goes around comes around reflects on the moral clarity at the heart of existence — affirming dignity, truth, peace, and beauty as enduring values that no system of force can ultimately contain.

The guard

Beware

What refuses to be known

Festers unhealed

Too fragile, too painful

Passed from one to the next

Through generations

Stepped upon

Driven down

The way we do it

Becomes the only way

The guard does not let go

Lets no light in

Let’s talk about it

The things that cannot be said

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. The guard explores the inherited silence surrounding pain — revealing how what remains unspoken can harden across generations until the act of naming becomes the first necessary opening toward truth and healing.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

Some days are

For rest

For building strength

For gathering thoughts

For embracing love

For being still

For the quiet

For watching, 

The sun move across the kitchen floor

Some days are

Better than others

And some just need to pass

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Some days are meditates on the grace of gentleness — honouring rest, quiet, and emotional endurance as essential parts of living, rather than interruptions to it.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

160.33 585 2246 900 0001 0019 7436 2

Our debt comes due

All will know the cost

Add it up, tally the toll

Deadly silence in a barren land

 Money in a dust storm, all that is left

Death to life

Counting down 

Till the penny drops

No more… more, the echo sounds

As the last window closes

We are locked in

And so the night begins

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. 160.33 585 2246 900 0001 0019 7436 2 speaks to the cold arithmetic of consequence — turning debt, silence, and enclosure into a stark reckoning with what is owed when destruction has already been counted in full.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

Aesthetics

Fresh cut flowers on the windowsill

Sun streams in, the room is set

Only, we are pacing the aisles of the megastore

Searching for happiness stacked on a shelf

Another Saturday sacrificed

New garden to seed, room to redecorate

All wilted by next season’s palette

Kingdoms built today by a life compromised

Just a click or tap away

Always though, a step too far

Made to break; never to last

Why is the question for the day

Back to the flowers

Sometimes sticks will do

Add a touch of imagination

And you may find…where beauty resides

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Aesthetics reflects on the tension between consumer desire and true beauty — suggesting that what nourishes the spirit is rarely found in accumulation, but in attention, impermanence, and the imaginative act of seeing differently.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

A long winters night

I feel myself drawing in

As the night begins to fall

Shorter days, starry nights stir

What has been and gone

Laying to rest past regrets

Moving ever forward

Never still, the rhythm of life

Another ending has come

Something new begins

A chance reflection flickers

Flames glowing into the unknown

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. A long winters night explores the intimate stillness of seasonal change — finding in darkness, reflection, and release a quiet faith that every ending carries the first flicker of renewal.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

Instant noodles ruined the world

Everything is faster now

Time at the two-minute mark

Knowledge sits on a shelf, collecting dust

While we restlessly delay

Scrolling through life

Bellies bloated; souls empty

Labour scorned for taking too long

Ageing held in contempt

Are we there yet?

Where are we going again

Too late, time’s up

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Instant noodles ruined the world speaks to the spiritual cost of speed — tracing how convenience, distraction, and impatience hollow out thought, labour, and meaning until time itself feels both squandered and gone.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.

On the edge of madness

Summer has come to an end

Autumn is at the door

Winter just around the bend

Spring was less than expected

Today was unprecedented

No rest had come the night before

Discontentment fed the machine

Happiness was never met

Greed grew from a selected few

Until they were all we knew

Spilling into the middle

Guarding their debt

Followed one after the other

Marching to the edge, no sideward glance

Are you keeping up? 

Are you wanting more?

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. On the edge of madness reflects on the restless momentum of a culture driven by greed, dissatisfaction, and false aspiration — asking what becomes of a society that keeps marching forward without ever questioning where it is being led.

Who are we?

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Lust took thoughtful minds

Confined by earthly things

Hanging by a thread

We have forgotten or never knew

All is not as it appears

Filtered reflections, empty answers

That nagging inner voice never rests, who are we?

There is hope if we care to know

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Who are we? meditates on the crisis of identity in an age of distortion and desire — suggesting that beneath illusion, vanity, and material distraction, the deeper work of self-knowledge still waits to be claimed.

This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.