Emptiness

The threadbare uniforms
we let stare at others
we would refuse ourselves.

The bare walls, misunderstanding,
Support nothing,
taut empty sounds.

The inclusion of everything
excludes nothing
except why it was done.

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

Debriefing

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Leaves Of The Cecropia Tree

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Toronto Star, Saturday, November 30, 1985

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Metaphor

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.

Empty Warriors

The jungle where the meow goes in, is
a forest for hoodlums.
Trucking up, the empty warriors
breakfast on lost impatience,
apricot fields away.


Now see them speed away.
Their lollipop cars drizzling in the sun.
Their apathetic stares really cantaloupe harvests,
left too long in the sun.

Paul Cameron Brown

Swords And Roses

    Some lives have themes.
    Goldfish that stubbornly die;
    compatability only with distant lovers
    - flowers (but no sweet-breads)
    that wilt to the touch.

    Waiting. Charcoal-grey cat
    agreeably on a green linoleum table
    with light basking in....
    a tad playful,
    paws up,
    (classic boxer stance)
    but no one notices.
    Others oblique in their transparency,
    are unmindful of even the empty closet
    and greeting cards that smile hello.

    In the dark
    this room shimmers below
    life-raft status;
    chairs are buoys
    bobbing under waves
    of congealed fright.
    In the morning
    the first pigeons
    rifle over rooftops,
    mad flutterings like your eyes

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 Spoken Word

I touch your
face - where strands of whispery hair
dangle your thoughtful gaze through mine.

Clutching,
all the words not said
lie pale and broken
beneath forgery lies.


Eyes, our facial minnows, the mirror
images, flash too brightly
out of the shallows,
out of their stony commitments
towards believing
we cannot agree.

Paul Cameron Brown

Inside Seam

    1

    Having wilderness cracks
    in emotional facades
    chinks within
    to let cabins in.

    2
    Porous wind
    examining pavement,
    foot-sore maybe loose
    winding entrails
    of our hearts
    into lavatory paper;
    would that it pleased
    riddled trees
    - more whistling,
    poked holes
    across oasis tracks
    wandering spaces.

    3
    Blistering thought,
    paint flecks
    chipped in the mica-afraid
    heat of wan-ton passion;
    (acknowledging debts to Chinese cuisine)
    a wan smile
    left from which
    I pretend to remember all.

    4
    Love-smitten
    to lend
    the reach of your arm -
    sighs,
    droop...

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