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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We were always in it together

Loneliness is no longer alone

Together in isolation

All birthdays pass without cheer

Standing at the window

Looking out

Somethings must change

Beating a dead horse, relent

A viral catalyst connects the dots

Plagued by a debt past due

The final hour approaches

Is anyone ever ready

With bags packed

Socially distance has not changed

Merely rearranged, extending the lines

Where so many already stood

An unaccustomed middle joins the queue

Some doors open as others close

Nothing new, and yet…It is time

Time to see, I connect to you, but no

We stand in a past, two years behind

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. Originally written on request for a world anthology of COVID poetry, We were always in it together reflects on the illusion of shared experience — revealing how isolation, inequality, and delayed recognition shaped the pandemic’s collective life in profoundly uneven ways.

By Silent Decree

Everyone is competing

All views obscured

Another fence, another wall

No space remains

One on top of the other

All trying to be the same

Windows closed, blinds drawn

Trying not to see

Yet wanting recognition

Everything is measured

Especially time lost

Living as a machine

Connections are sought

In mirrored reflections

Easily shattered

Always distorted

Nothing is real

Nothing really matters

Buying in, vibrancy gone

More locked doors

The world is closing in

As the abyss expands

It won’t be long now

Silence marks the end.

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. By Silent Decree explores the spiritual and social desolation of a world built on conformity, enclosure, and relentless comparison — where human connection is thinned into reflection, reality loses its texture, and silence becomes the final consequence of collective surrender.

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

An empty grave

So, nobody reads poetry anymore?

Still, there are whispers here and there

Spoken in hushed tones

As if someone has passed

Poems visiting as ghosts

Disappearing with the dawn

Three-word slogans cast a spell

So nobody reads poetry anymore

As if there is nothing left to know

Truth submerged by fast-paced gabble

Sport on every channel, the race is on 

So nobody reads poetry anymore

‘Manufactured consent’ tells us so

What to say, how to think

How to for dummies

So nobody reads poetry anymore

Even so poetry persists …

In the love we show 

Within words that inspire 

Fighting the good fight

Such is the poetry of life

That nobody reads, forever recited 

Passed down entwined generations

Sparking the imagination for evermore

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in The Precipice, Camille’s third contemporary poetry collection. An empty grave reflects on poetry’s uneasy place in modern life — mourning its supposed disappearance while revealing that it still endures wherever language, memory, and human feeling resist being flattened into noise.

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

More please?

Why must it always be more?

More of me

More of you

A push for more

Why do you want more?

More of the same

More for less

More to digest

When did the simple

Slip away for more

Make way for more

A traffic congestion of more

More time for waiting

Less time for doing more

More often I crave less

Strip it down to less

Do with less

Make more with less

More is an overcrowded room

Where I do not belong anymore

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. More please? reflects on the exhausting logic of excess — questioning a culture of endless accumulation and suggesting that clarity, freedom and meaning may instead be found in the quiet discipline of less.

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

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.

Framed perspectives

The lights are on

But for how long?

When minds are distracted

Bodies are consumed

Fear of scarcity

There is no sanctuary

Carrots dangle around our necks

The noose gets tighter

Give it a rest

Think for awhile

Collectively shift

To thoughtfulness

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Framed perspectives reflects on the pressures of distraction, fear and manufactured urgency — urging a collective return to thoughtfulness as a way of loosening the forces that keep people anxious, passive and constrained.

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

Hypocrisy

Small ripples drift off

Their destination unknown

You may ride the wave

But not steal the ride

Do not push in line

Then tell a lie

Hypocrisy denies

Look on the other side

Nice guys finish 

Bad guys are incomplete

The fool that fools themselves

Fails to be fulfilled

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Hypocrisy speaks to the corrosive gap between conduct and conscience — suggesting that self-deception, dishonesty and small moral evasions diminish not only integrity, but the possibility of genuine fulfilment.

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

Breaking bread

The smell of comfort

Warmth of a loving embrace

Fuelled by community effort

Breaking to be shared

Nourishment is sliced evenly

A taste of what humanity could be

If only we chose to rise

The fundamental elements 

To a good life

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in RISE, Camille’s second contemporary poetry collection. Breaking bread reflects on shared sustenance as a simple but profound social ideal — imagining care, fairness and communal effort as the essential ingredients of a more generous and humane life.

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

Experience forms understanding

Never forget the sum of who we become

Is life experience in additions

Adding advantage or disadvantage with prejudice

This collected sum of knowledge,

Can be disconcerting when in context

As exposure to experience is individual

And individual knowledge is limited

The view may only expand in this knowledge

Humanity becomes the tool of choice

Weaving together this patchwork to connect

Creating a join in these experiences

Where dominance by one patch cannot be

As the whole story is only revealed

When the quilt is spread out on even ground

And the quilt of humanity becomes shared

By the warmth of understanding 

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. Experience forms understanding speaks to empathy as something built, not assumed — suggesting that only by honouring the uneven realities of lived experience can a fuller, more humane understanding emerge.

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

Constantly entertained

How often do you hear

The wind whirl

See leaves swirl

As thoughts go unremarked

The engine searches at speed

While the mind slows to stop

Switched on to switch off

Images dance across as fairytales

What happens next?

Record, play, pause, stop

What was just missed?

Constantly distracted life goes on

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. Constantly entertained speaks to the erosion of presence in a distracted age — a life so saturated by noise and motion that the quiet intelligence of the world passes by unnoticed.

Consumed

Consumed by days without joy

waiting in the feeding line

thank God the day is done,

without a second thought

to thank God for this day

fall into line, stand straight

the goods will be delivered

in pieces with no goodness inside

assemble with deliberate precision to replace

the allure of escaping into addiction

teetering on the edge of extinction

contentment the infrequent visitor…

of more is less

Until more becomes no more.

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. Consumed speaks to the hollow machinery of modern survival — where repetition, deprivation and false comforts erode the spirit until even desire begins to collapse under the weight of excess.

Apathy

It came from a cruel blow

This tough skin of the worn out

Cries went unanswered

Left alone to heal

Bitterness the scar tissue of the forgotten

This sharing pain ongoing

Holding in a desire to survive

While sinking the ship of humanity

The indifference that forms the divide

Built up around feeble resolve

Set adrift its sweet seduction

And raise firmly a familiar face

To ease the pain of you and I

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. Apathy speaks to the emotional aftermath of neglect — how unanswered suffering can harden into indifference, deepening division while quietly corroding our shared humanity.

A theory on conscience

An intangible element common to human existence

A negotiator for good and evil

The epicenter of human concern

Our universal language that resonates within us all

This binding force unbreakable

For its sustaining impact builds resilience

Take it or leave it, for power it does not lust after

Ignorance has its own price tag

Even collective coercion cannot redirect

As simple as the shared goal for survival

One foot balanced out acts for the other

So the trail may be walked

With no short cuts, no way around

As the individual that is touched flourishes

Born from the offerings of good conscience

Humanity becomes their masterpiece

-Camille Delaquise

This poem appears in Behind the Facade, Camille’s debut contemporary poetry collection. A theory on conscience speaks to conscience as a shared moral force — an inner compass that resists coercion, binds human lives together and makes ethical care the foundation of collective survival.