Reading The Tides: Petroglyph Park

    " ... A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun
    itself out in his brain ... a promise
    that the rock of the world was founded
    securely on a faery's wing."
    THE GREAT GATSBY

    Perceiving the universe
    as an orchid stem,
    wild hibiscus
    crane & heron breaking water
    - voyage of elliptical, pea-shaped
    canoe down dancing images of
    the underworld.

    This temperature charged,
    climate-controlled glass
    geode designed to war on
    moss and stone munching
    aphid lichens seems everybit as
    fanciful as any animal totem.

    Grim crevice in the rock
    (animistic female orifice)
    fertility turtle swollen with
    eggs carrying Earth thru
    gorged labours of darting
    salamander & the spaceman snake.

    And coming to that rushing sound,
    (subterranean, evocative stream)
    or so Algonkians, pensive & puzzled,
    paused for a thought encased in
    deep, riverine bowels.

    Glass slipper, blue guitar
    - Silent Lake with something
    of wild dimensions in Warsas Caves
    (Cyclopean boulders), Serpent Mounds,
    this runic enchantment with
    glyphs & a cabalistic moon of May.

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

Smokestack

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Ponchontas

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Rake's Progress

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Desire

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

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The Gingham Dream Utterance

    As I watch the clouds assemble, steam-ship fashion, with funnels to
    alert passersby, I realize the Romanovs tore silk & riches from
    every bazaar leaving the bright spot of this evening studded with emerald marks.
    A dot in the ocean is a spark upon which minnows play, their silver
    bellies upturned to imitate the moon's white shawl.

    I am wanting in the delights of the reef narrowly hauled from
    rambunctious depths, the tiniest splashes of green, yellow, blue darting in an upturned fish's tail.
    An octopus rock commands squadrons of fingerlings while the eisel
    fish decorates a steeper, coral garden.

    Jet black sand crowns the lagoon volcanic ages' past the innocence
    of this spurting palm while mounds of pitch dark ants deposit slivers o...

Paul Cameron Brown

Tide Charts

    To create dream -
    the pearl thru wine effect,
    oil and vinegar viscidity
    of giant salad leaves
    basking on the
    broken picnic table
    like so many lemurs
    taken to a
    Malagasy forest.

    Liverwurst on rye,
    cuff-links drag
    the hard, mica table;
    so, why be afraid
    'cause spume from waves
    glows upward
    in so many trails of
    grey-laden smoke?

    This island looks like a loaf,
    a dot or mole on inviting cheeks,
    to me; so wary, invariably, of land
    (and perhaps the Sand Man)
    amongst all those wandering eyes,
    especially the sea-scape,
    curl of snake
    illuminated
    in a sudden, tropic shower.

    See the sudden bandanna ...

Paul Cameron Brown

When I Was A Much Younger Man

    When I was a much younger man,
    my spiritual homeland was a scrub-mile of bush with thicket
    leaves the size of your palms.

    Saucer-size holes of white air enveloped the edge of trees
    and the sky was large, an upturned pitcher
    placed upon its ears...
    edge-wise cicadas & June Beetles let out long throbs
    and the people rounded out lives between the farmhouse & the barn.
    This ennobled them and they were famously resilient and, in turn,
    redolent with firmness & the gladness of life.

    There was a Drive House, a pig pen, sheds & a chicken coop and, by
    night, stars became the earlier evening swallows gulping the space Left in
    the train of the moon. There was no one Empress of the Night anymore
    than a Pr...

Paul Cameron Brown

Vertigo

    We're travelling down a carnival road, are met at intersections by
    varying faces: poets as eyes in collapsed black holes, even the
    universe as extension of the stellar poet. Then, they are transformed,
    become worm-pickers, masons, longshoremen who subsidize their
    poetry with the real task at hand: making waste, laying trestles
    instead of women to prove a point.

    This is necessary. I'm defending it, find it both believable and
    interesting. Meanwhile, troubadours and wandering minstrels eke
    out a living on storybook memories, join Marco Polo if he ever
    lived. Seek out the Great Khan in a box of cookies or within a
    magnum of champagne depending on circumstances.

    The Grand    Lunar is watching. Her pallor commands true poets to

Paul Cameron Brown

Unpaginated

    Orchestrating violins thru whisky sky
    clouds slide like billiard balls
    a Jackie Gleason-Fats Domino
    ricochet off greener velvet;
    my pheasant escaping snow.

    Jack Ketch the hangman
    in brilliant plumage,
    a touch of Borgia in
    long, murderous hands.

    The light of Capone in
    steeple-dark eyes
    running like a
    haunted ship
    around the white, facial disc.

    Offset. Bold type.
    I see you through pages
    of my history book
    only you're unpaginated.

    Unclench the fist,
    watch for effervescent islets,
    erotic mounds of Venus or
    protuberances called Marquesas
    off my left hand.

    Omens are the cloth
    of dreams, scissors

Paul Cameron Brown

Wanderlust

    Who administers to my needs?

    Is it the dandelion, so ant-encrusted, that
    yellow pollen dangles from a shiny abdomen
    suggestive of some actor's
    smeared and garish make-up?

    Or the cicada's song,
    difficult to describe,
    laundering thick summer heat?

    Perhaps, then, the Red Admiral butterfly
    especially active at the close of day and drawn
    to wooden lawn-furniture or the exposed human limb?

    If none of these
    breathes vigour or tonic
    through my nostrils,
    what of tubs of fresh water?

    Take pea-pods for crude, rudimentary boats
    and children as make-shift sailors,
    then they both shall spy the secrets of seas.
    Bold harbours will be their cues,
    astrola...

Paul Cameron Brown