Ending Up

reads like
living down    -
a coconut arriving with the tide,
bottles perched in sand
the blue glass
colour or imprisoned dreams
genie of a bottle cap.

Ending up.
the brow or a gondola overturned
sees memories squared away    -
the window of the envelope
an all too foggy membrane.

Turning out like
ending up
no check-out time or
non-existant room service
in a flea-bag motel.

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

The World Of Dying Love

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Water Fast (The Pearl Fishers)

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Regalia

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Ancestral Memory

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.

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

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

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

Buzz Phrase

Down on your luck
or, as they say, "financially embarrassed" ...
with little in the way of hope,
less palaver    -
drifting in & out of theme parks not unlike
El Paso, Prairie Junction
between jobs, causes and wives...

letting "it all hang out", in the jumble of the moranese
letting despair and the pig iron law of economics
have their say    -
shouting "moral support" in the face of the rocky
"well-wisher".

I read all the plots and each ends up as a grave...
once in a single afternoon I even gave up on
golddiggers
who, though just passing through meant dress rehearsal
for the bigger jive, "longterm"
and since when should "patching up and catching up"
make starry-eyed even that slip of a girl, commitment.

Paul Cameron Brown

Wincing

You can't go back,
to Love, a home.
memories of Pearl Bailey
even a scatterbrained job
curled like a Morning Glory
about the ribs of day.

Everyone repeats not going back.

A sly ripple on the cape of wind,
peaking with
absentminded glee,
into that bulge from within
your past, beyond your left arm,
called "before".

Dismissing angels, refusing to
court hardship, not to mention
wincing that comes from attaching
the mouth too fiercely on privale parts
and all flasks with firm memory;
wheeling drunkenly on her thought.
her sayings, sculling backwaters of your mind
with little fingers each repeating
sane warnings.

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