A Thief's Notebook

    Baggage. Banal brigands,
    turn-coats, stiletto to dirk
    appraise warm flesh
    upraised over a pie-shaped sky,
    bread crust moon.

    On oyster rock,
    with grinning, red hibiscus,
    jute and henequin
    smother the lavender caress of stars.

Paul Cameron Brown

Paul Cameron Brown is a Canadian poet known for his extensive work in both poetry and art criticism. Born in western Canada, Brown has had a prolific career in writing, often intertwining themes of human experience and nature. His works have been showcased in various literary magazines and anthologies. With a style that is both reflective and evocative, he has gained recognition not only in Canada but also internationally.

Paul Cameron Brown

Magpie Tongues

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Ahoy

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Buzz Phrase

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Investiture

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Sequin

    A youthful bandit
    this forest -
    faltering eyelids in mud troughs
    & puddles like
    brisk lies
    woven thru deception.

    Stealing autumn into
    its colours,
    leaves in birchbark rustle
    a full mauraud stealth
    across every breeze.

    Thief, thief
    elf with a key,
    a thousand rasping angels
    their throaty javelins
    hurled from branch's edge,
    brief pageant robbing
    summer's pantry.

    Offal of the fall,
    the lake a sequined glove
    tossed from a careless hand;
    a rowboat as a buckle
    chromatic foam
    for a finger's fan.

Paul Cameron Brown

Offerings (A Movement In Four Parts)

The night is folly without the moon,
trees blank space against a frontal sky
where lattice work from a bled fish reveals
skeletal markings will not administer
the red jack of hearts to a mistress sea.

Most fickle, the ways of a cockroach
(I don't recommend them) to offerings
of white linen, cold squares atop
a stone diamonded floor.

Palaver shacks drone in ghostly light
communicating some message about eel runs
up the black river, the equivalent brush
of tombstones against dark nightsoil.

Tiny bars open as cubicles.
proverbial flashes of the coming evening,
haciendas to count every blessing.

The road to such places
snarls a dusty pleasure
and will heat thin blood
to boil in the daylight hours.

II

Swe...

Paul Cameron Brown

Turncoat

    Sitting in the spendthrift dark
    lilting pennies away,
    deciphering fate ... .
    The bed, a warm reach past
    the pillow
    like personal mortality in the
    incest breath of life.

    Warm stuff of dreams -
    the calender with its days mesh &
    march like soldiers
    dearly departed
    (cindered and bludgeoned)
    or the old sea-faring chest
    where all men are sailors
    past light's corner.

    Sturdy trudgeons,
    clock bursts thru the room
    mindful of time and aching,
    decaying things.

    Hallow's Eve in movements of the curtains -
    a remembered Rembrandt,
    self-portrait of the old man
    standing alone in a clammy room,
    idling the seconds, with drab

Paul Cameron Brown

The Intruder

    The colouring of spacious flowers rove delicious to the eye.
    The road above the harbour fickle, carousing in its tendency to pull too gray by sky enamelled water.
    The tropical foliage, still and languorous, to my touch.
    Each particle of sunlight dangling as if hoisted from a perfumed ledge.
    Newly mown grass in streaks, browns serpent-like across the path.
    Low erogenous puffs of dust are swathed by passing feet.
    Near by, bushes wear the foliage of streaked mud as a mantle might cottonwool at Christmas.

    Life in such climes is built on connotations rather than pure innuendoes of purpose.
    The southern sky, the heat above the sea allude to this.
    This triumphant trilogy embossed upon volcanic slate, more crumpled paper than firm land.

    Grave...

Paul Cameron Brown

Picaroon

Scouting the sun
thin clouds threadbare vests
barely to cover the horizon.
the heat or the day, canine,
a hot tongue's intensily
splashing yr face.

The docks are quiet,
prawn trawlers unloading gear
gar fish at the surface of the water
echoing little fins like
tiny waves green
into the shallows.

Bubbles anchor the lagoon    -
changing rivulets into sand
stone walls numbered in shards of glass
trade universal currency
but, beware, the proprietor
cobblestones up to his door,
a candle in the window-stoop,
a creeking gate opened as an afterthought.

Come the picaroon.
Spanish adventurer
lesser known rogue, thief
a smile like piano keys
huevos sent back.

I've seen the parfumerie
the snake pit,...

Paul Cameron Brown

Flashpoint

    1
    The moon has a larder
    and a kitchen,
    wears a nightcap
    as Father in the Night Before Christmas.

    2
    The moon hoards pistachios,
    marzipan
    commands the shadows
    is mustachioed
    sleeps in a sloop
    (at least when I look)
    like the boat
    owl and pussycat
    took to sea.

    3
    And on country nights
    in high summer
    fishing nets seem drawn
    about his face,
    reveal ribbons of light,
    eerie panhandlers grubbing quarters;
    a sinister sailor with a sack
    on a pitch black wharf.

    4
    Between clouds,
    leafy barques
    the hinge reflected on the
    thick, ashen door
    the moon will pirate
    your sen...

Paul Cameron Brown