Lost Patrol

    Blue walls were grottoes,
    subterranean panels
    for covert messages, the
    occasional mot juste
    squirrelled up thru paint & memory.

    Something like guitar strings dangling
    only you employed
    tear sheets from Rolling Stone
    (counter-culture fly paper
    to catch the runny masses).

    The blue walls existed as
    firing ranges, gunpowder
    plots for ideas scribbled
    on pencil waves
    like the movement
    of snakes (or commandoes
    on their bellies) thru
    desert sand.

    Blue walls. Blue grottoes.
    Blue moods to temper finger oases
    (tap-tap of skeletal tree on your window pane)
    crawling thick with pregnant fruition
    with the bayonet lull of words.

    Snippets of that legacy (hobnailed like a
    lost patrol)
    forlorn as yellowing pages
    or dusky petals unfolding.

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

Trespass

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Toronto Star, Saturday, November 30, 1985

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Old Brompton Road

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Elysian Fields

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.

Passageways

    Greet the days -
        greet the moon,
            gather the stars.. .
    Man is not at one with himself -
    collars the infidel ways of his
    race under pressure domes of widening silence.

    I scan the horizon barely cognizant
    of the metallic bits that pierce
    the night's crown - no
    jewelled orb stabs this queen's spectre.
    I am running and lost. . . ever slow
    to breech this reasoning.

    Honeysuckle mist with armfuls
    of orange lilies with scent stronger
    than the carriage needed in their gathering.

    Place the constellations upon their heads,
    the colour so transcends.
    And then there are the bludgeoned
    stars fallen into the eyes of
    my farmhouse scene.
    The sphin...

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

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

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

Eyeshine

    I remember the world like a picture.
    The habitat of trees and sense impressions,
    the cover of leaves as fall spurred its way
    thru corridors of plasma forest & sarsen stone.

    Most of all, I saw illuminated clearly
    the brash self poke of logic that came
    massively when sunlight stirred, lilted
    its early head erasing the world thru
    sand crusts of colour.

    The cabin floor, a cold dawn infinity,
    was a chilblain on frosty morning shadows -
    the old cupboards staring like flowers
    through a break in the leaves
    watched till the latches & hinges were worlds
    in frozen power, dark rust as thoughts
    meandering like age.

    The stamped down clay, the well worn earthen crust
    that m...

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