The Rake's Progress

    I borrow De Quincey's Confessions
    of an Opium Eater, the aforementioned
    an account of that singular
    Oriental vice,
    whereupon misplacing the volume
    in transit
    from the checkpoint, I attempt
    to capsulize
    the book's misadventures only to
    suffer taciturnity
    on the part of the staff until,
    the duplicity
    of a continued numbers game in
    Chinese wearing
    thin and with lassitude similar to
    the opium habit,
    the Chief Librarian, a girl herself
    of Eastern domesticity
    greets my queries with hushed tones
    and solemnity akin to
    a leering Siamese or bedridden
    Cheshire cat.

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

Claws

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Jolly Tupper

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

Southwark

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

The Hydaspes

Paul Cameron Brown, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Opium.

On reading De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater."


I seemed to stand before a temple walled
From shadows and night's unrealities;
Filled with dark music of dead memories,
And voices, lost in darkness, aye that called.
I entered. And, beneath the dome's high-halled
Immensity, one forced me to my knees
Before a blackness, throned 'mid semblances
And spectres, crowned with flames of emerald.
Then, lo! two shapes that thundered at mine ears
The names of Horror and Oblivion,
Priests of this god, and bade me die and dream.
Then, in the heart of hell, a thousand years
Meseemed I lay, dead; while the iron stream
Of Time beat out the seconds, one by one.

Madison Julius Cawein

White China Plates I

    1
    The moon hummed like a refrigerator,
    light thru shadows
    - the solitude of dusk closing in;
    black scars visible across
    the moon's face shaped like
    mountainous hands, all
    silent, the occasional leaf rustling.

    2
    My fork at plate's edge listening,
    listening to the haunting one eye
    on the staircase wall white
    as the numb light outside palest night.
    Caught off-guard, the musty settee
    and armchair acting as hallucinogen
    to the nostril, the calendar of events
    playing ghostly tag with sheer curtains
    hovering, shroud-like, on the family Bible
    big and brown as the Lord's foot stool.

    3
    The unravelling tale slowly much as
    thick yarn with a kitten

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

Chemin De Fer

    Had I been
    a gambling man,
    eschewing the "shoe"
    of chemin de fer ...
    perpetually perched upon that throne
    ... effete kingdom of the dice.

    II
    I am that gambling man ...
    taking free access to many
    a natural habitat, lure
    of the open road,
    contents under a bottle cap,
    the riverine delicacies
    of female flesh. Svelte, like
    the croupier's green vision of cloth,
    tingley-trigger smooth yet addictive
    to the touch.

    III
    Or the pleasures of Ovaltine
    (not necessarily the brand name)
    ... by the handful or cup ...
    upon a summer's day,
    the mind blur of expensive art.

    IV
    Blackjack. Three card stud.
    The poker-face...

Paul Cameron Brown

A Glimpse Of China. In A Chair.

(Foo-chow.)


From the bright and blinding sunshine,
    From the whirling locust's song,
Into the dark and narrow fissures
    Of the streets I am borne along.

Here and there dusky-beaming
    A sun-shaft broadens and drops
On the brown bare crowd slow-passing
    The crowd of the open shops.

We move on over the bridges
    With their straight-hewn blocks of stone.
And their quaint grey animal figures,
    And the booths the hucksters own.

Behind a linen awning
    Sits an ancient wight half-dead,
And a little dear of a girl is
    Examining - his head.

On a bended bamboo shouldered,
    Bearing a block of stone,
Two worn-out coolies half-naked
    Utter their grunting groan.

Children, al...

Francis William Lauderdale Adams

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