Ambergris City

Felt no pain against the water,
the tea-cup sky was a turquoise colour in its wrath
illuminating ambergris city in spot checks below.

The sperm whale population was in decline.
Little or nothing remained of former commitments.
A bitter legacy consumed itself in half-truths
against the sound of upturned lies.

Winding alleys come as the conscience of well plaid cities.
are open zippers revealing the indecent poor.
The fire hydrant lives of cellar inhabitants strain these urinals
for wretches sniffing out the edge of completed walls.

Gray nuisances, the men in asbestos overalls finding their way
through the apricot fire of dark, eclipse Park Plazas with the
stately elegance of empty dinner dishes or red trash cans
against indentured snow.

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

Empty Warriors

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Casting Rocks

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Cable Car

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Chinatown-I

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

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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

Street Scene

    No open barge
    crowded with nameless waifs
    or junks in a teeming harbour
    - just odours spilling from
    a back alley,
    stair wells littered with cheap saki
    bottles, one propped
    to rifle the door.

Paul Cameron Brown

The Waters Of The Bay Lie Beneath

    An abandoned house -
    dark salved to eclectic;
    crinkly, black pigment of old pine boards
    disparate to the elements.

    The waters of the bay lie beneath.
    A long slope trailing back of brush,
    garbles stones hoarse
    in the throat of a dust-flecked field
    are made more barren
    by the skunk cabbage weeds,
    the ugly, flotsam cloaks
    of horse hair to the neck -
    a hair shirt, coddling abrupt the barren pain
    tilled from empty soil.

    The summer's heat.
    Nameless insect waifs
    wavering, adjusting tumult
    to straighten the tight air
    about the outward door frame.
    Pinched in windows, glass in
    refugee lots billowing about
    urine paper;
    nails a ruddy pick

Paul Cameron Brown

The Bay Of Cortes

    The sea is a requisitioned article in my possession.
    Above, in fat circles of conformity, glide
    turkey vultures, their combs
    a rich obscenely red.

    The guano rocks are isles and stepping stones
    of bird waste.
    They lie thick and bedeviled with fish fur,
    a dull lavender cached hard to the sun
    seems to shine a metallic harvest white
    as desert rocklets scattered to the breeze.

    A speck of a fisherman dots the horizon.
    His craft a barque in loneliness across the sea.
    Dolphins inveigh the richness of the depths,
    persuade latitudes to drift about their wake.
    Pelicans sour the parabola distances between light and sound,
    become chancy over this distant breath of song.

    Above the cliffs a...

Paul Cameron Brown

King And John Streets (For Isabella Vacancy Crawford)

    When the shadows are hungry
    animals on walls
    and theatre goers are
    parliamentarians engaged
    in a repast or feast
    of words.
    the lone house stands
    as a stone shard or sliver
    about to disengage itself
    from the eye.

    For behind boulders of tenement
    walls and vines creeping
    to match the red brick of
    sumac and the parrot bill of fire escape stairs,
    I watch the building
    cylindrical in the darkness
    crouching thin air
    as if an awkward child
    were about to make strange
    for the dozenth time.

    There are few things to duplicate
    plaster held by the bite of wind,
    open poverty like lesions
    refusing to move.
    neglect that festers

Paul Cameron Brown

Blackamoor

    Breaking up -
    as in the cloissoné jar you dropped. . .
    little regard,
    a few brittle pieces scattered about the floor.
    Let's call it "shedding feelings". Expensive?
    There's always another humidor tucked away in
    the cranny of another antique shop; after all,
    a woman is only a woman
    although a fine, Cuban import
    is a worthy smoke.

    "What this country needs is a good 5¢ cigar".
    Panatellas?
    He might have added tight-fitting, long lasting.

    Nooks & crannies.
    Little things, your ways. Fruit fly (perhaps damsel wing)
    as symbol of perishability. My emblematic coat of arms.
    No season of regrets, rather
    snatch of minutes, the oasis span of a single candle.

    Who knows?...

Paul Cameron Brown