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.

Plutocracy pollution

Unmask the misery ahead

Hurry, there is no time to waste

Twisted words revealed

A strangled truth

Left hanging by a line

I challenge you to know

The indifference that divides

Justified by deep pockets

By no means justifiable

We live in uncivilised times

Dystopia knocks at the door

Setting the fashion for more

Wealth worshipped, led us astray

For the lack of wisdom cannot hide

A logical process of give and take

The laws of balance govern all

Dethrone the kings, tax the rich

For the generation left begging for life

The hour strikes, time’s up, act now!

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Plutocracy pollution explores the moral corrosion of power — exposing a world distorted by greed, where truth is throttled, inequality is defended, and urgency becomes its own form of political reckoning.

Let’s talk tax

A participation payment of sort 

Law and order maintains

To your business door

Those streets paved by tax

But wait there is even more

For the welfare of society depends

On that service fee being met

Now let’s see

If you avoid paying your bill

Who will maintain society's will

The duty of custom breaks

When there is no give and take

A business does not thrive

Where laws hinder tolls to take

Now the picture comes into focus

For those that receive a break

A gift of welfare is bestowed

So the question must be asked

Was the business in need?

Or just perceived by intellectual greed

A notion most jarring to note 

We paid their maintenance cost

The due date betrayed by abstracting ideals

So they could plunder our civil society

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Let’s talk tax explores taxation as a moral foundation of civic life — challenging the hypocrisy of those who benefit from collective structures while evading the obligations that sustain social welfare, public order and shared prosperity.

Let them fly

Clip the wings

The bird will never soar

The cage remains

Outside the door

Unjust in many ways

No access laid the trap

 That catches possibilities

Slaughtering potential

The money was not paid

So the gift was denied 

This story is rarely told

We never look beneath the line

Where impoverished children reside

Willing to make the sun shine

Able to fly

For these lost children I cry

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Let them fly speaks to the quiet violence of denied opportunity — revealing how poverty and exclusion do not merely limit children’s futures, but extinguish gifts, freedom and human possibility before they are allowed to rise.

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

The savage

I have seen the face of evil

It smiled at the suffering

Stood in judgment of misfortune

As it tormented the weak

Wore a crown of avarice

Dressed in its own vanity

Seemingly too virtuous to reflect

Any sense of neglect

This wretched soul has no sympathy

The loss of reason seems the most dreadful trait

That enlivens no joy and alleviates no grief

This is indeed a miserable soul exiled from humanity

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. The savage explores the moral desolation of cruelty without conscience — portraying evil not as spectacle, but as a hollow, self-exalting force severed from sympathy, reason and any true claim to humanity.

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

A tale of magic & mischief

Went to withdraw money today

They said your money is out on loan

Your neighbour Joe needed a home

This trade will come back 

With interest for this loan 

This is a fictional tale of course

Except neighbour Joe did get the loan

From where it appeared nobody knows

Or cares to know what they should 

Set on a default of complexity

Or so it should appear

Much like faith it disappears

No real money was loaned

It was a percentage approximately eight

Calculated from your estate

The magic CAR if you care to know

A transfer of numerical deceit

Capital Asset Ratio should be known

Much like FRB, it is a wonder we do not know

Not unlike a monopoly game 

Sometimes the money on loan is make believe

The mischief of masters in disguise

An illusion by the wilful

A trick so wicked

Even the devil will not play 

This part of the tale is real

Before you sign on the dotted line

Take stock, avoid the shock

And the misery this is for most

If you care to count

Collectively the numbers mount

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. A tale of magic & mischief explores the hidden fictions of modern finance — exposing how opacity, manufactured complexity and institutional sleight of hand can turn economic power into a system most people are made to trust, but rarely permitted to truly understand.

The economy is everybody’s business

Economics is the air we breathe

When all has been commoditised

There is no escaping its pollution

No wilderness untouched

No soul unscathed

Indoctrinated by ideologies

Incoherent in thought

Where is the value in a tool

That trades life to ‘make a killing’

This mechanism spreads disease as excess grows  

Free trade is a myth, the labourer cannot move

Trapped in their plot this is their plight

Rulers seize with might

The workers right to life

A life should have reward

A life should have joy

A life should have security

A life should have leisure

A life should have a chance

A life should have dignity

This is the life profit should buy

There will come a shift

When no more can be borne

Exhausted all faith

The belief will rise from within

If you dare to live a dignified life

Unified by peace, terror subsides 

Take another look, read a book 

It is not as hard as it seems

To set the human spirit free

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. The economy is everybody’s business explores economic life as a moral and political structure that reaches into every corner of existence — rejecting systems that commodify people and insisting instead on dignity, security, leisure and peace as the true measure of value.

Relentless drudgery

The sprint is futile there is no end

Only exhaustion to keep you company

In the midnight hour sleep is awoken

Rest cannot lay on a heavy chest

Lines trace out the picture

A dark figure appears

Rips back the sheets

Work cannot wait

The weary must work on

Without pay they are hidden away

Relentless is the need of greed

And the crumbs reduce to none 

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Relentless drudgery reflects on labour as a site of depletion under greed — revealing how exhaustion, invisibility and unpaid effort are woven into systems that demand endless work while withholding dignity and rest.

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

One percent

One percent rules the world

One percent takes almost all

One percent is all it takes

One percent is not small

Is this all there is on offer

Control by persuasion

Domination by fear

Division by hate

Is human nature so evil

All it desires is to rule

Is human nature so mindless

All it can muster is troops

Surely this is a misperception

For when the floods come

Neighbours are by your side

A sign of solidarity

Establishing civility

The good example

Spreading its wings 

Carrying unity

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. One percent considers the machinery of concentrated power — questioning narratives of fear, domination and division while insisting that solidarity, mutual care and ordinary civic goodness remain stronger truths of human life.

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

Comfort

Comfort these days is but a pretentious play

A utopian dream, a mythological state of being

For if my comfort bestowed your discomfort

Where was comfort gained?

A gain for a loss still equals nil

Until we see this spectre

Comfort will not be real

Just a matrix of illusion, perhaps even delusion

Balance must precede the comfortable shield

For balance is the equaliser of life

And comfort resides in truth not lies

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Comfort reflects on the false promise of ease built on another’s suffering — suggesting that genuine comfort cannot exist without balance, honesty and a more equal reckoning with how we live alongside one another.

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

Rebellion

There were times I thought this was enough

To sustain and nourish, even flourish

I thought I could dream

Be lifted up by my own hand

Escape the shackles

Re-purpose them instead

A redesign to showcase 

Kindness

A sense of what is fair

With earthly prosperity shared

The life I dreamt of seems further than the moon

A moon walk would be easier make no mistake

Living contained by a wall, ceiling or chain

When will we claim our own lives

Break down the wall and trade freely

Remove the ceiling and reach for the stars

Unlock the chain and free the mind

One question remains

When?

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Rebellion explores the distance between imagined freedom and lived constraint — turning its gaze towards the structures that confine human possibility and asking when fairness, dignity and true collective liberation will finally be claimed.

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

Ghosts in the machine

We live on the outside

Of locked doors

We walk on by

A mournful sigh escapes

We can see

But are never seen

Remember me

You saw no reflection

So a living wage was taken away

Dehumanising the worker

They are seen as a machine

Assembled to serve

A ghost of a being

With a face to smile

A touch that soothes

This is no machine

Now do you see?

Connections will be made

The light of the spirit flickers

So one day we will be free

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Ghosts in the machine explores the dehumanisation of labour under systems that demand service while denying recognition — insisting on the irreducible humanity, dignity and inner life of workers too often treated as invisible instruments.

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

Charity

A notion slaughtered

Severing connection

To the gift

No goodwill exists

In a wolf that dines

In sheep’s clothing

Recognisable in gesture

A purpose to be seen

Disingenuous disguise

Nobility is tied

To invisible strings

When iniquity funds

There is no charity at all 

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Charity explores the corruption of giving when it is emptied of sincerity — exposing how power can disguise self-interest as virtue, and how generosity without integrity ceases to be generosity at all.

A day of peace

Let peace win the day

You were going to lose anyway

Water leaks from a class war

Human rank and file

Has bled to death

And died in vain

Today pay with your own time

Be virtuous by deed

Wise with truth

Share the load 

Poverty was too violent a war

It was always going to come to an end

This is a public service announcement

Have a nice day!

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. A day of peace speaks to peace not as passive idealism, but as a deliberate social and moral refusal of exploitation — urging truth, shared responsibility and humane action in the face of class violence and needless suffering.

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

To market to market

Am I really missing out?

I do enjoy something new

The allure of fantasy

If only for awhile

For now I will enquire

After a new line perhaps

The electrifying buzz

It’s sweet seduction

Passes faster than the cost

Another hit please

I ask again

What must I acquire?

The ship has sailed

Traded around the globe

Advanced mankind

Left behind the kind

A query for the man

Where is the next land?

Most live only to get by

In a redesign of slavery

By the owners of capital

You are now free to starve

Here stands a prison cell

Allowing weekend leave

How modern is this market

Elite capitalism rules

Where imperialism perished

Leaving most in the dark

New name same rules

If only we knew

The next trend is too divine

And off we set once more

To produce to purchase

If only profit prevails

Where does it end?

What was the purpose again?

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. To market to market explores the seductions and cruelties of consumer capitalism — exposing how desire, novelty and profit can mask deeper systems of exploitation, alienation and moral emptiness beneath the spectacle of the modern market.

Roots

A grounding sensation

A place to call home

To hang a hat

A place to grow

The dream we all have

Remains attached 

Even when uprooted

Aching to find fertile ground

Where to now?

Displaced wearily they wander

I have known this journey

Packed the bags, paid the toll

Searched the hills, followed the streams

To find a place, a home

Still the roof is rented

Denying the roots 

To community 

Decay seeps in

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Roots explores the human longing for belonging and permanence — revealing how displacement, precarity and insecure shelter do not only unsettle the individual, but slowly erode the deeper roots of community itself.

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

Awakened

It was a thundering sound

When it fell, crashing

Obliterating all comfort

A heavy heart sank

You were not there

It would be harder now

Harder to brush aside

Harder to push down

Harder not to see

Masters of society want more

More of what is really less

They play as gods

Far from sight

Littering the earth with misfortune

The fortune is almost wasted

Spilling over the entire sphere

Nowhere to hide

Wars break out

To feed the machine

Because peace is free

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Awakened explores the collapse of innocence in the face of systemic violence — confronting the ways power, greed and war are sustained by those who profit from human suffering while remaining distant from its consequences.

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

Renting the dream

The roof caved in last night

Even though I had paid

Paid for your service

Paid for your dream

I barely know your name

The one I paid the way for

Your dream is my nightmare

And still I pay

Is this all we aspire to be?

Not much of a dream society

A very imperial way of being

This divisive device called rent

So many dreams are lost 

Bubbles are built to burst

That is their nature

Not human nature

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Renting the dream reflects on the cruelty of housing as extraction — showing how the promise of security is distorted by systems that turn shelter into profit and leave one person’s dream resting on another’s instability.

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

The poor choice

Like the humidity on a hot summer day,

it clings

There is no breeze to carry it away,

no escape

Sleep is restless in these smothering conditions

That are tiresome at best and deadly at worst

How lovely it would be

For poverty to become a choice

Good options would arise

On a tidal change

Setting adrift the strain of worry

For who would choose poverty?

If they had the freedom to choose

But there lies the truth disguised

For how do you get out?

When the price of life is high

And the cost of labour cheap

Capital ideals of hypocrisy

So the sea of poverty continues to rise

Where to next?

Paid distractions seem to appease

In a market restrained from change

Until you come to know

Awoken with a fright

Like the disconcerting call

In the middle of the night

The system failure was pre-set

To snatch dignity from the worker’s hand

To shame, to silence

Leaving them to walk alone

Clutching the twenty dollar smile

How far can it go?

When all that it buys

Is just a poor choice

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. The poor choice explores the lie of poverty as personal failure — exposing how economic systems are structured to cheapen labour, erode dignity and recast injustice as if it were an individual moral shortcoming.

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.