Resignation

Petals that fall into a woodland pool
are servers at a banquet.
Each one dresses for the occasion
like an employee with regrets,
that leaves the house in a somber mood
the morning after his resignation.

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 Strongbox

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Ponchontas

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Rogue And Privateer

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Haunted Child

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

Swords And Roses

    Some lives have themes.
    Goldfish that stubbornly die;
    compatability only with distant lovers
    - flowers (but no sweet-breads)
    that wilt to the touch.

    Waiting. Charcoal-grey cat
    agreeably on a green linoleum table
    with light basking in....
    a tad playful,
    paws up,
    (classic boxer stance)
    but no one notices.
    Others oblique in their transparency,
    are unmindful of even the empty closet
    and greeting cards that smile hello.

    In the dark
    this room shimmers below
    life-raft status;
    chairs are buoys
    bobbing under waves
    of congealed fright.
    In the morning
    the first pigeons
    rifle over rooftops,
    mad flutterings like your eyes

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

Knight-Errant

    A well-thumbed book
    like a well-thumbed life,
    "whilst you walk this earth"
    yet nothing is "afoot",
    as so many small boys
    throwing stones through the funeral parlour
    glass door.

    A cake-walk? Being alive and interacting
    across the face of the multitude is terrible
    algebra running into unfathomable sums.
    "Doing your sums", my grade school teacher
    used to say and I still am. Whippersnapper,
    learning lessons in a strange stamina
    sort of way.

    One of the multitude died last night &
    is now "resting" in a large, Victorian parlour.
    Even the walls grimace. I went by, caught a peek
    at the assemblage chasing thru rain to see his
    last hurrah. Look, "parlour" can be deadly s...

Paul Cameron Brown

Perhaps

    Perhaps the sky once was shadows,
    the moon lisped 'mongst April's song.
    Now, those warm lips ease
    departing sorrow
    like pressed flowers
    emptied from hallowed ground.

Paul Cameron Brown