The Potato Eaters

    The potato eaters -
    grim, weathered souls
    wrenching a meal
    from sandy waste.

    The dark toil lined ridges
    carried from their fields
    to each human face,
    dim, pale light
    as shadowy as
    lives eked out upon this stoney rash of soil.

    Brows, a murky legend
    of overwork -
    deflected hope,
    seasons up in the smoke
    of a potato boil.

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

Every Man's Hand

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Sabbat

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Woodsy Backwoods Poem

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Magpie Tongues

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

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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

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

The Waters Of The Bay Lie Beneath

    An abandoned house -
    dark salved to eclectic;
    crinkly, black pigment of old pine boards
    disparate to the elements.

    The waters of the bay lie beneath.
    A long slope trailing back of brush,
    garbles stones hoarse
    in the throat of a dust-flecked field
    are made more barren
    by the skunk cabbage weeds,
    the ugly, flotsam cloaks
    of horse hair to the neck -
    a hair shirt, coddling abrupt the barren pain
    tilled from empty soil.

    The summer's heat.
    Nameless insect waifs
    wavering, adjusting tumult
    to straighten the tight air
    about the outward door frame.
    Pinched in windows, glass in
    refugee lots billowing about
    urine paper;
    nails a ruddy pick

Paul Cameron Brown

Village Idiot

    Dodder capitulates on his bum,
    skulks under fence posts
    a twitch of Timothy weed prying
    apart his massive lips.

    A strip of lavatory paper
    his golden rule; the
    merrie lad bakes ready made
    surprises to the jowled response
    of his parting brains.

    The mastication of shoe laces
    on tired leather jerkins akin
    to grinding Michelin rubber - his
    reedy voice in overbite haste
    rounding corners like a club-footed
    dog travelling edgewise
    from his master's sight.

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

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