Gladiators

    No broken visor, emptied glove
    abandoned cudgel, opened net
    - only gathering spots on spreading sand.

    Clang of cymbals
    wrench of flesh,
    death is a morsel
    delectably met.

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

Corner Store Fifties Reveille

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Flood

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Reading The Tides: Petroglyph Park

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Pelly, The Powder And The Snake

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.

At The Red Throat

    In youth, Death was
    a puny boy possessing but
    wormy hands & fleshless fingers
    as in Witch Hazel
    or Scrooge's Future Ghost
    - that insipid Evil One
    Hansel so easily outwitted
    in a gingerbread house.

    Time brought increased notoriety.
    Saucy times with a soupçon of respect
    for the artful dodger.
    Givens change, an armful of
    orange lilies, limp & loathsome,
    on a tombstone door
    before trumpets of rain.

    Graven images. Lifeless stone.
    Death became stone.
    Stone empty. The maggot emptiness
    burrowing into chiselled easel and
    the stone-cutter's savage magic.
    Just a bitty stone
    to herald a passing.

    Night-jars.
    Old straw-...

Paul Cameron Brown

Every Man's Hand

raised against them
hussars, cossacks, zouaves
the renegade janizaries and corsairs
in for an indeterminale stretch
assorted soldiers of furtune,
never-do-wells
or just low brows duelling crusts of bread
scarce precious little else
when for pennies more,
(Wellington's phrase)
the scum of the earth
enlists for drink.

Too harsh, I think, of
imagining the Foreign Legion,
kepis of scarlet
the near requisite haggard looks
moving in waves across the desert
pitting date palms with bayonets.
the occasional fellow ravaged by French pox.

Then dunes where water should be    -
storms granulating blown particles
twice the perimeter of a camel train
from whence decent men become driven
(as the desert fox) to crouch beside thems...

Paul Cameron Brown

Paleface

    Old Sawbones, pale as a sheet,
    white sand, whispering edge of the sea.

    II
    The mind tarries not one place long,
    (longitudinal wanderings off a map).
    Is shiftless, both a shirker (and army deserter)
    devours like larvae,
    a bullet ledge for leaves.

    III
    I saw in a rusty tankard
    a gallon drum
    (ghostly galleon at that),
    a tin can floating for
    all the world shores
    of its alkaline prison,
    pirating salinity with anchoring sounds,
    brackish bench-pressed sound of waves
    wedged between far-off distant gulls
    and mezzanine,
    dimly-lit funeral parlour
    of the sun.

Paul Cameron Brown

Mangroves

    How do you survive
    in the mangrove swamps -
    amid the twitchings of foetid water
    & lice thick as baby tears?

    How, with all the wallow of thick muck
    making suction noises and the teams in
    relays
    searching nightly with baited hounds,
    do you pull free?

    Your bamboo pole knows every ploy
    but a slender craft ill-equipped
    to sparring blows from every quarter
    the undergrowth necessitates.

    The closeness of the clammy night
    heaved about like so much rotting
    fruit will draw
    the ants ... devouring like that
    abundance of cold yellow eye -
    the firefly swarms that mock your
    heavy steel machete arm.

    Across the drift of darkness
    and the in...

Paul Cameron Brown

The Crowkeeper

    "She gallops night by night through lovers' brains...."

    I see grindstones in the sky,
    pots of tulips overturned
    - big tug of the reins
    and chestnut hair
    is seen before the windowpane
    with chance & more chance lost to
    frost or hungry bees
    this still autumn eve.

    Darling,
    walls that division us
    are envelopes of passion
    bridging trust, seal it
    lest it rust.

    Skeletal scrapings
    make for poor bedding
    (this poor rhinoceros of lies)
    the devil gliding about so disguised
    on his tentacle and toenail chair
    (inviting lair) or is it
    hiccup and bandaged prayer
    yet stalwart wall is a rosary bead
    thick ale and bread to hungry snail

Paul Cameron Brown

Mangroves

    How do you survive
    in the mangrove swamps -
    amid the twitchings of fetid water
    & water lice thick as baby tears?

    How, with all the wallow of thick muck
    making suction noises and the teams in relays
    searching nightly with baited hounds, do you pull free?

    Your bamboo pole knows every ploy
    but is a slender craft ill-equipped
    to sparring blows from every quarter,
    the undergrowth necessitates.

    The closeness of the clammy night
    heaved about like so much rotting fruit will draw
    the ants . . . devouring like that abundance of cold, yellow eyes -
    the firefly swarms that mock your heavy steel machete arm.

    Across the drift of darkness
    and the insect life
    you bat in sw...

Paul Cameron Brown