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.
A house on fire
The future is already here
Chances hanging by the last thread
Tombstones written in advance
Abandoned on the bookshelf
Weeping willows weep no more
Without a breeze to carry change
Development grew evermore
Across a barren land
A sterile existence takes its last breath
Inside, the faint buzz no longer stirs
Recycled air dulled perception
Then we lost connection
Sirens fade into the background
Windows closed
Doors locked to the world
Distance closes in
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. A house on fire reflects on the claustrophobic nearness of collapse — evoking environmental, social, and spiritual exhaustion in a world that has sealed itself off from change until even its warning signals begin to disappear.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
The midnight hour
We’ve conquered every land
Now all that is left
Is for us to go
No more lands to devastate
No more people to displace
Unless … Are you ready for it?
Change!
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. The midnight hour reflects on the exhausted logic of conquest — distilling violence, dispossession, and ecological ruin into a final, urgent recognition that transformation is no longer optional but inevitable.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Deep in debt
Universal are the laws of balance
Aligning negative with positive
The essence of life
Dig a hole to build a mountain
The sum of both is none
A rule of give and take
In this space the river of knowledge resides
Flowing freely in the passage of time
All ownership is void
Our mass of negative energy is accelerating
A debt so deep it is our grave
Time to weigh with considerable evaluation
The law we cannot buy
Before we are lost in space
Balanced out by nature’s scale
A counterbalance is change
Moving to a new state of mind
To nurture not own
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Deep in debt reflects on imbalance as both ecological and philosophical crisis — suggesting that a culture built on ownership, extraction and unchecked accumulation has drifted dangerously far from the deeper laws of reciprocity, limit and care.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Lost world
Sitting by the creek
Stop listen slow
Dip the toes
Cold rush of life
Broadening horizons
Imagination flourishing
In this show of nature
Blooms
All there is to know
Transported
To the beginning of time
Lost and found
In the cycle that never ends
Feel it in your bones
Hearing it for the first time
The beating of a heart
Connected
To the signal of life
A magical place
This world is full of shadows
What I take then is the wild
In the hope it may tame
The nature of my kind
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Lost world reflects on the restorative intelligence of the natural world — finding in its rhythms, beauty and ancient continuity a form of connection that both enlarges the self and gently rebukes the shadowed impulses of humankind.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Winter is near
The winter of humankind draws near
Science has spoken in alarm
The day may be warm, unseasonal
Land whips at our faces
Too spoiled to take root
For all the rot we fed it
The well of life ran dry
As the last drop fell from our swollen lips
Our gods of gold had fallen short
Adorned in accolades we buried them too
Perhaps one day another kind
Will unveil our bones of mystery
On what was once such fertile ground
Should they enquire
How we never grew to regard our limits
To value the welfare of life and land
There remains of course one moment left
One movement to change the trajectory
Write a new chapter
To mark a start not the finale
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Winter is near explores the reckoning that follows ecological arrogance — confronting the costs of excess, denial and worship of wealth while still holding open the possibility that human beings might choose change before collapse becomes final.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Little bird
In a forest without a tree
Little bird had no reason to sing
All life had been commoditised
Where is left?
For little bird to nest
Crown land or private property
Capitalise and capture
A king’s domain
The rule of law
Divine right
To own all
Trading away the world
Leaving nothing for all
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Little bird reflects on the violence of turning the living world into property — mourning how commodification, ownership and extraction leave less and less room for fragile life to belong, shelter and endure.
The clock is ticking
How many more days will pass
Without remark, counting down
Until the clock has stopped
The moment was lost (or stolen)
For a game that only counted scores on a board
When did it become easier to
Walk away than stay
Obey than draw a line
Forsake the future for the past
Reminisce now for it will not last
Decisions must be made at haste
Before Earth resembles Mars
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. The clock is ticking explores the urgency of acting before irrevocable loss — confronting the human tendency towards avoidance, short-term thinking and passive obedience at a moment when the future of the earth itself hangs in the balance.
The real market
I woke up crying
as the machine pulled
out the life next door
unsatisfied were the owners
of number seven’s beach shack
that sat unobtrusively
they took the trees
with such ease,
these natives gave
so much shelter
now are exchanged
for a double block
of buildings that
will emit spoil
the soil is already
in protest as it
is picked up by
a howling wind
that has come
to take it away
this slope is slippery
as it falls away
without roots
to keep it grounded
the community falls away
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. The real market considers the violence hidden within ordinary development — revealing how profit, extraction and disregard for place can erode not only the natural environment, but the deeper bonds that hold a community together.
The unknown
From our small speck of stardust
I must confess how little is known
Not even enough is known of the speck
That travels in this vastness
We once traveled to the moon
But alas only as a contest
Once the game was won
The fun never began
Directed towards the inconsequential
On an unsustainable speck
In a world that explores destruction
No glory will be found
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. The unknown speaks to humanity’s failure of vision — our tendency to pursue conquest over wisdom, even as we remain profoundly ignorant of the fragile world we inhabit
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Behind the facade
Oceans swell as lifestyle sells
The bare and barren truth lurks
An imagined Photoshop collage
Draws weary as deliveries stop
Where are you my dear old friend?
The one I knew so well as a child
Take me home…
to the birds that sing,
to the trees that whisper
and the flowers that bloom.
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. Behind the facade speaks to the loss concealed beneath modern lifestyles — mourning a world of natural intimacy and simple belonging that has been obscured by spectacle, consumption and disconnection.
What if?
It All Begins Here
Life could be
Peaceful
The road not yet taken
The formula gone
Creating beauty
From a seed
Watching it grow
Leaving only what life needs
Nothing more
What if?
Hope conquered fear
And joy was for all
A better world, for sure
Moving past what has had its day
No perfection, please
Just free
~ Camille
This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third poetry collection, which centres on the rising inequality — profit over people — being the cause of our most urgent global crises, and that confronting this imbalance is essential if we are to step back from the edge. What If? captures the possibility that still exists, should we choose a different path.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.