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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sensations of living
Wind chapped lips
Thirst
Sun on my back
Warmth
Naked in front of the mirror
Exposed
Bare feet on jagged rocks
Pain
Salty tears on my cheeks
Heartache
Seven days walking
Patience
Speaking out
Isolation
Laying on the grass
Connection
Floating in the ocean
Joy
Leftovers for lunch
Gratitude
Sitting thinking
Freedom
Waves lapping at your feet
Serenity
Two summers past
Melancholy
An empty belly
Discontent
The passing of time
Loss
Homemade cookie dough
Love
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Sensations of living explores the emotional texture of existence through fleeting, embodied moments — gathering pain, joy, longing, tenderness, and loss into a quiet record of what it means to be fully alive.
Unwritten rules
Standing as the odd one out
In a crowded room, all facing the past
Infinite and new for those who bring the light
Dare to discover, dare to define
Creatively minded
I kinda like it
Letting go
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Unwritten rules speaks to the quiet liberation of stepping outside inherited patterns — suggesting that creativity begins where conformity loosens its grip and the self dares to move toward what is still becoming.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Memory
A moment in time
Not easily forgotten
A lesson from the past
Time travelling
A connection made
Building blocks of future days
All secrets to the universe flow through here
One collision after another
The sequence spirals
And then … the first word was spoken
Born to language
Like the eagle flies
Consciousness awoke
Step by step
Slow and steady
Change has been our friend
Time though, was never on our side
For all things must come to an end
On this quest of variables
Challenges remain unique
You may not remember me
We all carry our own memory
Keeping us on the road to change
For sameness would stand us still
Memories, captured thoughts
To be stored and withdrawn
Expanding and insuring
Where there was nothing
There will be life
Evolving
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Memory meditates on the strange architecture of existence — how language, consciousness, and remembrance become the living record of change, carrying each life forward even as time draws all things toward an end.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Childhood homes
Memories are carried
The starting line matters
Where you come from
Cannot be severed
Even when we leave in haste
Even when we are displaced
Even when we never go back
Even when we would prefer to stay
Still childhood places remain
In dreams in reality they shape
Distance does not diminish
Where life began
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Childhood homes meditates on the enduring imprint of origin — suggesting that the places which first hold us continue to shape identity, memory and longing, even across distance, displacement and departure.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Choosing optimism
I have no reason to give for optimism
Other than the hope of survival
But the truth interrupts
Quickens my step and steals my breath
It has long been this way
So long I wish almost to wane
To give in, let it be done
Then I hear a small voice
I am not alone
I must go on
Until the final blow
I must stand tall
As if it makes a difference at all
It must
Or at least let it be known
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Choosing optimism reflects on hope as an act of conscious defiance — acknowledging despair without surrendering to it, and finding in endurance, witness and solidarity a reason to keep standing.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
The wind in my hair
The thing about nostalgia
It grabs you out of nowhere
Flips you on your head
Blurs your vision, trips your step
Makes you remember a past that never was
Takes you down an old road
Then leaves you there alone
At the time it feels like the summer breeze
You beg to be caught up in it
Flirt your way in
But ‘when all is said and done’
It was only a dream of what was not
Wind in my hair didn’t feel so good back then
I dreamt instead of air conditioning
So what is it that I miss
Is it the past or the present that missed the mark
It can be hard to focus looking backwards
I sweep my hair aside
Engage in the current day
And leave melancholy to the wind
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. The wind in my hair explores the seductive unreliability of nostalgia — recognising how memory can romanticise what once felt unbearable, and gently choosing presence over the distortions of looking back.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Seize the day
What if there is no god
No man to save the day
To worship, bow down to
Take you away to a kingdom
It is a sobering thought
Without a god to fall back on
This is all there may be
But then none should suffer in his name
Or wait for heaven’s door
For this day is for the making
Heaven is here on earth
We do not have long
Our energy must pass on
Continuous cycle of life
Flows through our veins
Vanity may say otherwise
But it has never been wise
The glory of life resides in each day
Made by many hands, not a single man
The day that is seized is returned
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Seize the day explores meaning in the absence of divine rescue — affirming earthly life, shared human responsibility and the sacred urgency of making something just, generous and alive with the time we are given.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Pain reduction
My dearest friend
I see your pain
Digging deep into that pit
Of despair you cannot escape
Words offer little comfort
To a heart that is raging
These are not just words
They are recognition
We are never far apart
When love is held
So hold on tight
Take your time
You may be battered
But you are not broken
And if you must bury yourself
Bury yourself in this friendship
That comes from me to you
Because I see you
Standing stronger than the storm
Leaving the past behind
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Pain reduction reflects on friendship as a form of steadfast witness — suggesting that while pain cannot always be solved by language alone, love, recognition and patient solidarity can help carry a person back towards strength.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
A contented heart
There is so much to sing about
If you don’t let sadness drag you down
Lift your head to the sky
Laugh at how small you sound
Reach out and make contact
Feel the impact on the ground
This day belongs to nobody
Walk free
Study instead
The rhythm of the earth
Directions from a night sky
Music that travelled through history
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. A contented heart explores joy as a practice of perspective — turning away from private heaviness and towards freedom, wonder and belonging within the larger rhythms of the earth and human history.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.
Paying my (artist) dues
It is hard to imagine
That the price is so high
Many will not even try to
Take their chance
Regrets of forsaken lovers
That never knew their time
Loss attempts to kill
Dreams did not arrive
Do I dare?
Pay the price
Bleed until dry
There is no other life
The pain provides
Another chapter is written
Discoveries are made
As flowers blossom
-Camille Delaquise
This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Paying my (artist) dues meditates on the cost of creative vocation — acknowledging the sacrifice, uncertainty and ache that accompany an artistic life, while insisting that from such endurance something vital, beautiful and deeply lived can still emerge.
This poem is available as a contemporary poetry print on textured recycled card.