Humboldt's Current

    Cresta roja wine
    - colour of
    arterial blood,
    vena cava of
    the alcoholic soul.

    And seeing bottles bob
    in mainstreams of men's blood
    to pistol whip their reddened eyes,
    Humboldt's current becomes a rash of drinking,
    a map that charts more bloody lies.

    The thirst that passeth
    all human understanding,
    (an alternate Biblical rendering)
    certainly body heat surpasses
    Vulcan's bellows
    adding new faces to Delirium Tremens.

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

Errands

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

San Cristobal

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Men Of Shade

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Old Brompton Road

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.

Mare Rubrum

1858

Flash out a stream of blood-red wine,
For I would drink to other days,
And brighter shall their memory shine,
Seen flaming through its crimson blaze!
The roses die, the summers fade,
But every ghost of boyhood's dream
By nature's magic power is laid
To sleep beneath this blood-red stream!

It filled the purple grapes that lay,
And drank the splendors of the sun,
Where the long summer's cloudless day
Is mirrored in the broad Garonne;
It pictures still the bacchant shapes
That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, -
The maidens dancing on the grapes, -
Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.

Beneath these waves of crimson lie,
In rosy fetters prisoned fast,
Those flitting shapes that never die, -
The swift-winged visions o...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Distemper

    Looking into the glassy crucifix of water.
    slits of rock form stigmata across creviced limestone -
    green pools with an occasional fish passing
    air bubbles to the top
    the eerie night crumbling under shafts of starlight
    with the smell of hemlock pods & cedar bringing
    nard and precious stone within
    crowns of natural thorn -
    this body of muskeg pressed onto
    aromatic herbs then borne away
    along the road to a wooded Calvary and
    the sense of Christ
    in that light at dawn.

Paul Cameron Brown

Cold Passion

        Some dead undid undid their bushy jaws,
        and bags of blood let out their flies.. .
                    ? Dylan Thomas

    The land is barren
    wears straw wisps
    as an unkempt man
    might razor stubble.

    The land is dry, a faded yellow
    in its barrenness.
    A sky broods from afar,
    a stalactite sun accounts merely a jot
    above that thin road into despair.

    Grass lies everywhere dead,
    faded tongues above an
    earth afflicted with scleroderma,
    deadliest of skin disturbances,
    forerunner of deeper pestilence.

    An erasing wind whips the fields
    further into bereavement;
    turns tiny bits of chaff to pursue themselves
    in a mad St. Vitus dance
    of cold...

Paul Cameron Brown

The Burning

The sun is a burning magnet on the water.
Durable, our boat is a sizable pretzel in the arms of the bay.
Warmth with contortion, the clash of passions
tug the funnelled swooned water.

Greenery, that inlet of the ocean,
lies precarious and submerged.
Life, subsidized by water,
is within its hope, bubbling in embers,
froth drunk with suds
hammered against the boat's edge.

What is this, this sky
home of the transparent sun.
Blue agony,
burning up with delerium,
the wet pastel illusion slides against our craniums.

Crass, crass the movement of the waves
across a low bow, excessively pleasant.
All the more
troubled vistas
blue with hegemony over earth,
drowsiness dropping a plague of lapping edges;
a strength pried from gra...

Paul Cameron Brown

A Draught Of Sunshine

Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,
Away with old Hock and madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;
There's a beverage brighter and clearer.
Instead of a piriful rummer,
My wine overbrims a whole summer;
My bowl is the sky,
And I drink at my eye,
Till I feel in the brain
A Delphian pain
Then follow, my Caius! then follow:
On the green of the hill
We will drink our fill
Of golden sunshine,
Till our brains intertwine
With the glory and grace of Apollo!
God of the Meridian,
And of the East and West,
To thee my soul is flown,
And my body is earthward press'd.
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division;
And leaves a gulph austere
To be fill'd with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled
To high above our head,
Affr...

John Keats

In a Wine Cellar

See how it flashes,
This grape-blood fine!
Our beards it splashes,
O comrade mine!
Life dust and ashes
Were, wanting wine.

Amontillado
Fires heart and eyes;
Champagne the shadow
Of care defies;
An El Dorado
In Rhine-wine lies;

Port has the mintage
Of generous deeds;
Tokay scorns stintage
And richly bleeds;
But this great vintage
The Wine-March leads.

Yet it is wanting
In poesy;
No legends haunting
Its vassals be,
No tales enchanting
Of chivalry.

Spains grape hath stories;
Its blood the bold
Conquistadores
Drank deep of old,
A wine of glories,
A wine of gold.

Who drinks not sparing,
Beholdeth he
The great Cid bearing
His banner free,
Columbus...

Victor James Daley