COMING TO GRIPS WITH WHITE KNUCKLES

By

Paul Cameron Brown

Published in 1982 by Williams-Wallace
229 College Street, Toronto M5T 1R4, Canada

©1982 Paul Cameron Brown

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced,
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise or stored in a retrieval system
without prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the
copyright law.

Published with the generous assistance of The Canada Council and the
Ontario Arts Council.
ISBN 0-88795-018-3
Printed and Bound in Canada.

Credits

Many of these poems have been published in:
Bogg (USA)
Wyrd (USA)
Germination
The Antigonish Review
Writers' News Manitoba
Pierian Spring
South Western Ontario Poetry
Repository
Poetic Licence
Writers' Quarterly
Poetry North Review (USA)
Minor Offences
Gut
Sepia (UK)
When Is A Poem (companion issue, League of Canadian Poets)
Konkrete
Wot
Jimson Weed (USA)
The Camrose Review
Interior Voice
The Atlanta Creative Alliance (USA)
Yellow Silk (USA)
Earthwise Poetry Journal (USA)
Authors
The Pegasus Review (USA)




Toute est dangereuse, tout est necéssaire.

KING AND JOHN STREETS

(FOR ISABELLA VACANCY CRAWFORD)

When the shadows are hungry
animals on walls
and theatre goers are
parliamentarians engaged
in a repast or feast
of words.
the lone house stands
as a stone shard or sliver
about to disengage itself
from the eye.

For behind boulders of tenement
walls and vines creeping
to match the red brick of
sumac and the parrot bill of fire escape stairs,
I watch the building
cylindrical in the darkness
crouching thin air
as if an awkward child
were about to make strange
for the dozenth time.

There are few things to duplicate
plaster held by the bite of wind,
open poverty like lesions
refusing to move.
neglect that festers
to pop the endless seams
of the mind like burning
radiator caps,
scalding water to lighten
the lanced up eyes of vermin who
lather these swollen rooms.


[7]

COLETTE

The waitress mainlines
the cup under the saucer
balancing it on the
waistband of her arm
much as a junkie
might tie a tourniquet.

Wiping the glass edge
of the table
clear of croissant crumbs
& watching the barely dry
reflection of her own
image going thru the emotions.
the California chic
pothouse & gardenia
bloom effect of
her work is enough
to leave a dirty smear.


[8]

CHINATOWN I

And a little farther
the Fu Manchu mustache
curved in mock epic proportions
of a scimitar un-sheaved for action,
perhaps the executioner's progress
his victims entombed to their skulls
in rolls of quivering earth--
the parting of the ways
coming as your coin drops
to the rasp of his
tin cup chuckle.


[9]

TORONTO

Quennelles. Lady of the Gold Horse with Diamond Eyes.
A bottle of Napoleon brandy for the Count and two Persian
lions carved in wood.
Salads Nicoise.
Dinners at Pré Catalan in the Bois, a Toronto equivalent.
A girl named Chantilly burning charcoal in the forest.
I drank a cocktail with the girl of the white polo coat.
Or as the cynic said, my pipe is the tent, the tobacco
the days of my life.


[10]

THE DRAPER'S CLOTH

I imagine stars at the dragon's tail,
eyelids ringing with butter.

I want to brush palms as
lightly as two sparks.
take the wand of your waist
in two plush hands
with the pitiless gesture
of a sparrow

We part the leaves in breath,
arouse trees in envy.
I sense colours more vivid
than your tongue
after wine,
explosions to cap the wind.

To enter you in argument--
a bough creeking in underbrush,
svelte panthers hiding.

And afterwards, sheets are open galleys,
oarsmen ploughing breakers
across both sea and night.


[12]

POETS ARE MAGIC BEINGS

She sits within the Magic Lantern
--that facsimile for pleasure,
decor of wineskins where
at $2.50 a garment
extravagance comes extra;
skin like rosy flames
the whisk of smoke
at hearthside
sunlight about her face.

Cherubs arise from those lips
and battle lines are drawn
about the sweet curvature of her breasts.
A tight cashmere sweater rides
comfortably two of the finest King's
deer headstrong thru Sherwood Forest.

And, Merry Man,
firmly planted in Lincoln Green,
the plodding turf growing at odds within my soul--
give this brief to the Sheriff at Buckingham;
I cool my heels, the soft doe lies prostrate at my feet.

She's loveliness,
hair drawn as curtains
signalling the clouds,
eyes that beckon twin doves
to flight, in swift passage, like the arrows.


[13]

CASHA

A child-like fawn
moistened nudging &
joyous breath,
an allowance for leave
as her gentle hand
budges my sibling cupping.

And walking in a field of gardens
--our Jardin des Plantes--
a molecule in depth
flowery pennons
near Picardy wet.

Casha tendrils here pinion the eye,
little Annabel Lee
with the sunshine wet in her parting hand
that all the birds in grace sigh
at Saint Francis breathless.


[14]

THE JOLLY TUPPER

Sun on the eiderdown
breaks tiny corners off the bedspread,
declares green plants its bidding
before summoning Fragonard's maiden
off her swing--so richly dressed
in picture from the sunlit wall.

Expensive tabac from an imported humidor
etches tiny leaves
their stems as faces against the glass,
rich aroma, trèsor, like the Jolly Tupper print
preparing his bowl,
drawing on the clay stem
as if from a height watching ships come in.

Smoke cold as blue fungus over outside buildings
follows horses with hooves to split cobblestones
stuck in the city's eye,
more than mountains around
the stone filled ravines
of the rich man's heart.


[15]

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
roll over, gaze at silver buttocks make a commitment to the art
beyond spray painting, ghost watching, navel gazing.

The sky is the final home of the soul, the Sage himself a wanderer
announced.

It was a warm spring evening. Lilac bounded from antler brown
twigs only recently inert. Everything dissolved at once into crying.
The world itself became a tear.


[16]

BEDROOM GLASS

Counted three white pigeons
on a roof, near a gable
silhouetting a barn;
as an afterthought
killed as many nervy bluebottles
on the bedroom glass as
warnings to myself, perhaps,
or the elements pelting the window
with ice beads, tiny crystalline
versions of those distant elephantine birds.


[19]

AHOY

Image throttled in the subconscious,
romantic throwback--
the mind on a voyage round land's end
to eclipse pyramidal fires
set as beacons along rock strewn shores--
her skeletal inhabitants on ice flows
wrapped in bearskins
with dirks between their teeth
slapping one another to keep warm.

Then, alpine ranges carrying
the plight of the Andes in their mouth;
a dull, white sail propped against ship's bow
with a noise like an anvil
coming loose in the brain.

More frightening, sailors mutiny on a diet
of bread as sallow maggots
march in a quarter horse sized trot
across the floorboards.
Such men in the bellows of one's mind
break out rubber dinghies
in quickening escape thru the
maw of an Arctic sea.

Expiry. Dry rot. Sunken astrolobe
and an armada of feelings drifting alone.


[21]

THE POETRY POND

Everyone is a poet, or so the philosopher said. The world teems
with poetry in much the sense the universe teems with life.
A poet or two is squirrelled away in every major office.
Boiler rooms hum with the tooth and nail, robust imagery of
working class poets. The neurological desire to express oneself
transcends even social barriers. Be creative, like a brain surgeon.
My scalpel runneth over amongst all those cerebral ganglia.

The mind washed clean, scrubbed down. Words burn holes on the
paper. Firemen disguised as poets douse the heroic flames.
Sherpas tightly drawn amidst depths of a Himalayan winter
weather a torrent of words. Groggy, I search for breath, am given
oxygen but see writing materials.

In the future, everyone will be famous for five minutes.
We have been promised this by Andy Warhol.
In the present, a day in the life of the poet is within reach of each of
you, my peers.

Barnum and Bailey's fresh from the publishing scene comes to
town, will train talent or so the sign read. But the Big Top can't
accommodate all the poets. Word jugglers sneak under the tent to
court the ringmaster's favour.

Poetry is a religion, said the neophyte before downing its meagre
fare. A window on life confounding reality, fingering experience.
Feast for the intellect, grace and passion abiding as one. Yet, with
poetry becoming as all things to all men and with every man doing as
right in his own eyes, privateers and other assorted scalawags, eager to
toss in their lot with the real Empress, lay ransom to this queen of arts.

Somewhere, every person alive has written a book of poems.
Bushel and a peck, common as gravestones.

My mind was a tabla rosa and the poets could not pick it clean.
And me within reach of this uncontrolled mitosis, arspoetica. I
dread "have a nice day," is already a populist poem. Think my
grade 13 biology is hazy but not my ability to count the poets.

I am holding hands with the poets lest we foam too perilously
at the crest.

Sentenced in absentia to torturing words, pulling wings off
proverbial flies, attacking motherhood.

Worse, performing illegal abortions on the craft.


[23]

WHAT BECAME OF THE SIXTIES?

The "Haight," in Ashbury lived up to its name.
Sexual pioneers became commonplace.
Agribusiness consolidated the back to the land movement.
Joni Mitchell remortgaged all the tree museums.
Flower power became a snivelling joke.
Groovy and way out once again were associated with corduroy
pants & fire exits.
Fascism was taken over and made respectable by Ronald Reagan.
Jewish mothers and landladies outguessed the War on Poverty.
Strobe lights were said to cause cultural myopia.
The Just Society lost another Vietnam.
Rock music recycled itself in "meaningful dialogue."
Innocence learned a lot from experience.
Contemplation of one's navel was resurrected by phenomena
of the eager and job hunting corporate executive.
Long hair became a symbol of displacement.
Au pair girls received a new lease on life.
Tofu and herbal teas survived even the commune experience.
Primal scream, therapy, in the crunch, outdistanced everything else.


[24]

SIXTIES HANGOVER

"We have all been here before.
almost cut my hair;"
the refrain from Crosby, Stills. Nash & Young
reading more like a law firm letterhead than
any invocation for real social change.
Respectability, that first casualty of the eighties.
What, exactly, was a true child of the sixties?

Here's a few safe bets:
Valedictorians were few and difficult to find for their "irrelevant,"
high school peers. Are you listening Paul and Paula?
Cutoffs. Hitchhiking to California?
All is beautiful. Laid back. Beads.
The sixties were a jukebox that came of age.
Ponderosa shirts were destined to outlive their owners.
Thirty-three is perilously close to being afraid.
Elvis Presley, a blimp at forty, missed the sixties or rather
failed to live them down.
The hullabaloo of freedom was taken for granted, then shelved.
Amid a crescendo of killing only a year and one half of the present
decade duplicates the assassinations of the "violent sixties."
Even the cop troupe withered, crooned Eric Burton at Monterrey.
I think not.


[25]

DASH INTO REALISM: ESCAPE PAD FROM THE SIXTIES

For one, street argot became tougher.
You had to distinguish between what you meant by calling someone
a mother.
The Black Panther influence, no doubt, but a rejuvenation of the
language. Street fighting man. Butchery at My Lai.
House arrest for Lieutenant Calley so strangely appropriate for the times.
So middle class and a tribute to "doing one's own thing":
Rampant, militant individualism, the hallmarks of expression.
Sit-ins, love-ins, peace-ins. The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test,
anyone? The sixties were the highwater meritocracy from the
foremost "me decade".
Getting right on target for the narcissism of the seventies.
Or so it was rumoured.
What's next in the social roller derby?
Cutbacks, retrenchments, accountability.
Even uglier, this new argot of the eighties.


[26]

WHAT COLOUR IS LOVE?

Sixties idols were built to last.
A 70's idol is shoddy and throwaway by comparison.
Whatever became of Carnaby Street or bell bottoms?
The mentality is alive and well (another dreadful anachronism) in
smart up-town boutiques.
The proprietors, though, don't sell little bells to freaks anymore.
Luxurious Persian rugs, instead, are all the vogue.
And bail money for vendors hawking copies of Guerrilla on the
streets of Toronto or Black Panther leaflets in US cities isn't
needed anymore.
Who was Bobby Seale? Who remembers?

The first generation in history, a new consciousness...
Remember the Greening of America?
Escape From Freedom?
The futuristic think tankers?
consciousness III?
Bombers turning into butterflies?
Today's B-52's are punk rockers.

I like my memories, retreat-like, hazy in myopic seclusion.
I suspect social historians for the pleasant dribble they write about
the age.
The age, like it spanned a thousand years, opened new epochs.
More like Adolf's remark about his millennial Reich.
Some doubt the authenticity of the Holocaust. I doubt the sixties.
It, too, lasted what seemed twelve years.


[27]

CHAIN LETTER

I'm sitting in a "sixties bar." No put-on.
All around old Rolling Stones music is playing.
I can tell it's a sixties bar by the spiffy waiter recycling sheets for
tablecloths. The sixties was "into," environment.
It's the eighties now as Heineken was unobtainable in 1969.
Someone reminds me in order to run a tab a credit card is needed.
This seems logical but very out of sorts with the people power
complex I'm nurturing.
Even the jokes above the bar are old hat.
This confirms with certainty that Madcaps is Nostalgia.
It's too built up for Sha-Na-Na, fintails or Nancy Sinatra's,
These Boots Are Made For Walking.
In my sensible decade that tune is considered sadistic. Obviously,
the effect is too sophisticated to imagine I'm even a temporary
time traveller. Still, poetry is a communicable disease
invented in the 1920's by a snooty degenerate named Pound.

I bide my time. It's an oasis for waiting. Old time experiences seem
strangely current in this campy pub.
Occasionally, someone in a zoot suit comes in but realizes he's
missed the last act of Grease.
Old Blue Eyes might make it here if he looked like Bogart in drag.
Like them, Presley was by-passed by the theme of this decade.

There's a fleshy table and chairs with a knock out chick that looks
like my Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
The waiter scowls like vintage Ben Casey.
Beehive hairdos mingle casually with early "Mod."
Rockers wishing Cherry Reds are served drinks instead.
Comfortable sleaze.

The window is up on the future now and New Wave is out to
spray paint graffiti artists all the way.

"Either you are part of the solution or you are part of the
problem." Now there's a sixties homily that still delivers.
Nice to think the social history of three decades is indistinguishable
and that silence comes as its own reward.


[28]

SLAUGHTERHOUSE

You're the aggressor
and your passion exceeds mine
but we're in this slaughterhouse together
and it's near closing.

Vats of prickly ointment
destined to repattern animal skin
and tubs of steaming formaldehyde
rest casually with the more antiseptic
thrill of green sawdust.
Blood is a chameleon, here, changing colours
en route to sausage and Pram but
my hotdogs and donuts are
holding better to the cuttlefish
in this unnatural forest.

The stars are a jangle of planets
in a world where wood became noise;
each ceiling beam, incidentally,
is the wrenched out spine
of a Longhorn steer,
doorknobs pig knuckles
bound for Octoberfest fear.
Even the kindly attendant is an
ogre spying out porkers' throats;
will sit under a bridge
then capsize crates
of young chickens
knife ready at hand.

The squeal of this bovine camp
is recycled on 40 watt amps
through more than decibels of rage;
is a fishly contest designed
to trade off gruel
for fresher prospects.

One armed forklift drivers, for instance,
with realistic Captain Hook hands
jab instructions to
lifeless walls where
underlings the colour of grey slate
form a human paste.

Sound is the monetary exchange,
rabbit dung the troll's own currency--
each scrawl of the pen
confirmed by the work order
upends living things bent over in pain.


[29]

LAVENDER

A mind is a ray of light running to the sea;
an arch of wood upon which birds rest.

Minds roam the ocean's crest, sit as antlers upon a beach,
watch eddies of water trap themselves in the sand.

And minds are in anything but a state of rest--they violate
physics, make mockery of other bodies not in ready motion.

I have seen a mind enclosed above fresh air and sunshine,
frolicking on its own strength, the elasticity of its thought lassoing
all the stars assembled.

Golden points of light caught in this sand with an oval sun
marching blue legions across the sky bring more harmony than
all the stars assembled.

Admiral. Fakir. Harem. They are all here as is batik, geisha,
sarong, teak and gingham. I have seen them in quiet pools near
the atolls.

Rapture is a word to be eaten with persimmon and pears.

The closed wood. Copse and fragrant bush. White mare alone in
a green-studded pasture aback groves and groves of pleasant
trees. Bright insects making a curry of the forest floor with leaves
as trinkets bartered to the wind.

And the endless sky overturned like a bowl across the horizon.
Water and air, the two chief elements in a brisk compound with
earth and fire.

The land itself nursing a presence by the sea as a lizard might
devour a fly on a bough above a tree.

Then there are the granaries of this empire, the washed up logs
darting into footprints from the inlets. A white sand making its
presence felt like a tireless magician. Green strands of the
cucumber bush big with melon, a mother with expectant child
hushed and sitting by a clearing.

"The waters of the stream please me more than the sea,"
coconut groves with hand-me-down messages for the ages.
Strands among weeds, wine bottles as ferrymen ready for
circumnavigation around islands crisscrossing bucolic charts.

And everywhere reefs and coral and sugarbush fish darting
between the sieve of land breaking bread with sea; exchanging
colours from many coloured coats.

Kangaroo, koala, tepee, bayou hula, lei.
Sights which gallop against the senses, act as brigands to mature
reason. Faraway in the mountain fastness of the mind, alpine
meadows look out upon further marvels, exchange cocoa for
quinine, adjust the mind as a stirrup before a long, night ride.

The shaman with a hammock in his catamaran dolefully accepts
the waves as the skin must a tatoo.

The lovely collision of sound with twilight on fragrant sea-grape,
the hush of storm clouds preparing to administer their own
bromide of fire before the appearance of a band-aid patch of
lightning streaks against the divide.

Perhaps lavender is a language here, the juxtaposition of mind
with energy coming to a halt from a brisk canter, then proceeding
to nibble a currant from my hand.


[30]

THE NECKLACE GARDEN

For my part, I spied red berries
on a currant bush
lush in August;
the canopy of leaves
a nesting place for hornets
clocking one hundred
in & out of their ice-castle hive.
Birds had fled in horror,
there was a pallor
around the sun
and nearby a Hubbard squash
grew like Topsy
already several baskets in size.

I threatened suicide
in this herbivorous garden
amid wild canaries and butternuts;
my jangled nerves a lobster colour
only calmed by more grievously
afflicted tobacco hornworms,
their skins pierced by the radar alum
of wasps.

Transformed into insect angels
strumming away the afterlife,
they arrived as ghosts to comfort me.

Fresh, spring potatoes grew like serendipity
under a pleasant summer sky.
The smell of good earth
revived above
the saltpetre muddle
of the humanoid puzzle.

Later, the night became a lavender cloak,
her folds sweet orifices
of a pleasure bound woman.


[32]

PILLAGE

It's chess of sorts but
reeks of you--
the hand carved emerald rook, for one,
and so many Black & White squares
that tiptoe like many a patio stone
between our warring minds.

I think of rollaway mats
lepers use to beg on,
habitually to die on
or marked cards that
outside castle walls
dicers' oaths
must originate from.

I am having trouble
keeping the pieces straight.

I mean, you're White
& concluded the beginning of the end
with first move; still, I'm prepared
for nothing short of winning.

Should we discuss this
growing stalemate near
the Bishop's mitre
and exploding gun
or against hungry faces of expendable pawns
raging, as they say, across Seas of Galilee
on that first night of Storms?

And, when pressed during attack,
is it proper logistics
to prepare the drawbridge,
fondle another dart
for a King's crossbow,
then advance at parapets
with scalding liquid,
the oily spillage
of our tongues?


[33]

DESIRE

Sleep is a striking woman
accosted by various men
while in a dance;
the warring desires thus
present themselves as on
a battlefield--
hunger comes arrayed with
red plumes to befit
his appetites,
sensuality somewhat
decked out as a dandy
in a mauve waistcoat
and, of course, there is
Fear, the most thwarted
of the suitors, bejewelled with a
flashing sabre, rattling it from
the tail of his skinny stick horse,
the pale charger riding
to intercept the beautiful courtesan Sleep
bestowing her favours illicitly
wherein she would but choose.


[34]

PREENING

The sky is red and comes
from Montreal--
you lied to me
the hemlock of the wind
is not this January's
but is ringed with
steel laughter of
another winter.

I saw you wringing sweat
from the eyes of the road,
lie down take the season's
wetness in your mouth,
push apart moist dampness
'til one cavity was
felled and another opened


[35]

CHANCE UPON

As she's lying there in sherbet panties
looking somewhat disaffected, a nez perce
expression bordered by sleep,
think of the Sultan's regalia
his entourage of kings
chance upon dark laughter from Saladein's[1] concubines,
Nell's[2] white turn of the knee
or the pretty bosom of a Confederate
officer's belle . . . all satin & lace ...
perhaps, again, the splendid neck
of Titian's choicest nude.

To further turn the phrase,
ponder a basket of fruit--
the sexual omnipotence
of its texture a dreamy sensuality
thickened by red Emperor grapes
ripened against the elongated nails
of a Pompadour's[3] milk white hand.

[1] Richard the Lion Hearted's adversary
[2] The Merrie Monarch's favourite mistress
[3] Louis xv's courtesan and adviser


[36]

LEAF DOCTOR

You said happiness was a bird
--a hand extended
could bend its perch.
span the perfect wings.

I spoke of swallows.
lived off flies
ebbed when flying.
seldom came to rest.


[37]

TUSSAUD'S

In the wax museum with Attila and Genghis and Tamerlane all so
close in spirit with our century.

At Madame Tussaud's in London: Neill Cream. Burke and Hare. It's
hard to keep the legitimate heroes straight from the villains. I expect
Houdini to make this Niagara Falls and appear at midnight
Halloween.

With so many real and picturesque notables in abundance, I plan
the idea of creating my own arch criminal wax museum assembled
from the hallways and stairwells of my own life.

I imagine employment counsellors from across the years with sardonic
laughs and strings tripping off records to make them authentic.
Then busts of fiendish ex-teachers and hatchet fanatics that
pass as librarians giving me advanced nausea because my card
has technically expired. Think the occasional gesture at remembering
a swine or two from freeway driving might not be entirely out of
place or that mindless clerks administering my life from afar and
costing a future deserve an enshrining.

"A nickel short," droned the bureaucrat, "no transfer," secures him
passage to my waxworks.
"Sorry," and "we'll certainly keep you in mind," as a litany of woe
with its users made to memorize and make good all promises ever
made.

Wish the mind and her memories could be enlarged; I would recreate
my own historic scenes to stand alongside Nelson's Death,
the Little Princes in the Tower. Detail Israeli Nazi-hunters to
track down my Adolf Eichmanns.

Instead of samples from Jack the Ripper's handwriting in the waxworks,
rejection slips and the stylized, flowery "we'll keep your
application on file," would be served up as horror epics.

Dunces that compose form letters made to live out the threadbare
future promises. Each human roadblock making decisions out of
ignorance would have his statement dutifully recorded before entering
a world of his own design.

Ad agency types made to explain in effortless detail to packed
houses why their ketchup commercial should stand up.

Crooked garage operators made to oil and grease the chassis of
every car owner hoodwinked since the automobile began.

Football made a crime punishable by fate.

Shyster store owners too cheap to bag my newspaper made to
launder all the soiled white pants across a lifetime.

Tailors that mistakenly think they are being shortchanged
and become vocal made to attend Sartre courses where "hell is other
people," doctrines predominate.

The huckster, the con-man, those who prey on the multitude
transposed from whatever city of origin then made to tramp the
streets of Toronto where every wrong syllable or misbegotten
accent costs them a dollar of their savings.

My whole museum a living aviary, a subway at rush hour where
snotty, telephone receptionists are fed a steady diet of the Biblical
injunction "by words they shall be known."

Well meaning but ignorant people endlessly poking with the "you
should smile more," placed in a house of mirrors with durable
cassettes of Laugh-In.

Belligerent restaurant owners telling kids they can't use the
washroom then made to mop up the waste they helped create.

The world, a stand-up comic throwing away his happy face then
coming to sit in disgust at the unchronicled petty evil of our times.


[38]

VULCANS

Adder toothed flowers snake
the broken ground where
molten tongues cremated
the twisted, bunker forms--
a Latin cross of
green jubilation
lies matted atop a
sweating road, calligraphy in broken stone.

As trembling shale collapses into thin hills,
light fuels to cross the Pale.
A little exploratory weeding droops this lava rain.

A long, dove fence comprised
of stones & rattled by ancient slaves
winds its distance
along the gully
borne in fire, percussion caps,
cretin growth
lobbed under
creeping wire.

Shafts of pioneer light
delight in coral baskets,
empty twilight darts the
agave swords' mauve pitcher plants.

The 1692 Tremens decimated Port Royal[1]
--moved a ravine from
florid to mossy shadow
where antler shoots today announce
temperate plants, eclipse by-gone tropic flowers.

[1] An earthquake destroyed in the seventeenth century not only the
stronghold of Jamaica's pirates but also changed the topography of
the North Shore creating Fern Gully.


[39]

DRY GUILLOTINE

In my childhood, "Verdun," meant madness.
Bars on the windows, cages around the intellect.
Time was a poor keeper of souls, it seems, wore out all but
a fragment of my memories. Musical, poetic. The sounds of clay china
being dropped on the floor. Fierce Celts with a gift for the muse in
keeping with their love of lyricism and war.

Driving by 999 Queen in Toronto accompanies a lot of the above.
A cuckoo bin by any calculation and a reference not meant to be
pejorative. A subject so clothed in solemnity only irreverent
"kidding," can hope to disarm its grasp. Still, the truth must be told.
In university, no one shrinked from whispering the ultimate fate--
a stint in Sydenham or a trip down the road to Cedar Springs.
Delightful euphemisms, the names reminiscent of sonorous rivers,
tree lined groves, peach blossoms across Georgia springs. Or
Ophelia's funeral oration wherein Polonius rightfully alludes to her
sudden falling away amid laughing brooks.

I am reminded of Charrière's desperate attempt to stay sane on Ile
du Diâble, the cutting edge of his dry guillotine--his mind's fabric
giving way to the slightest irritation. In the present, the chant of
a crowd's "jump, jump," to the would be suicide. Then there is the
most foreboding type of all dementia, the collective sort. A strength
through joy movement of the Hitler camp with society's many
institutions set up along the spit and polish order of the Reich.

Indeed, if we think of it, we all have a deep knowledge of madness;
days when the centre is about to break alongside the pit. Days when
wars on the periphery take hold, colours appear different.

As a child, madness was watching Ichabod Crane in cartoon form
outrace the Headless Horseman. In Sleepy Hollow trying to put
down the panic in himself. Ichabod, the peaceful school master,
driven to the edge. At war with himself but trying to reassure that
same self the plodding sound of approaching hooves was only dried,
bullrush stems hitting against his head.

Madness is more than Van Gogh offering an ear; Druid priests
garnishing oak trees in a British forest or plaintive Gauguin
abandoning his family at 34, mid-stream in a successful career. It
probably stands behind half the men on skid row, beckons like a
welcome friend before turning fiend and consuming impulse to a
bag lady.

The close relation between the creative impulse and "letting go."
Between the arts and wide eyed eccentricity. Between wanting to be
free. And knowing. Hearing if you go on like that you'll end up on
the Lakeshore. Another pretty euphemism. A dangerous truth left
like an upturned rock for someone to trip on in another garden.

The farthest away anyone can be.


[40]

MANGROVES

How do you survive
in the mangrove swamps--
amid the twitchings of fetid water
& water lice thick as baby tears?

How, with all the wallow of thick muck
making suction noises and the teams in relays
searching nightly with baited hounds, do you pull free?

Your bamboo pole knows every ploy
but is a slender craft ill-equipped
to sparring blows from every quarter,
the undergrowth necessitates.

The closeness of the clammy night
heaved about like so much rotting fruit will draw
the ants . . . devouring like that abundance of cold, yellow eyes--
the firefly swarms that mock your heavy steel machete arm.

Across the drift of darkness
and the insect life
you bat in swarms,
the ultimate danger is not in the cayman giant
or his reptilian cousin named of copper wire,
the Anaconda; or even mindless holes, thick black
ooze that throttles a victim . . . but the two legged form coming,
searching . . . a spectre on hind quarters with a bolo knife stepping
free of that beaded circle, the inner camp.


[41]

PONDICHERRY

Chess pieces resting upon the jade mantle piece
see sampans move quietly
thru warm night,
rich bundles of bougainvillaea crowd market squares
where deck chairs extend
to the Persian Gulf.

Leisured gentlemen
finger walking canes,
hold eyelids thick as goblets,
sharp tridents beside private lairs.

Skin in puffy whiteness bulges under
lamp's white glare, becomes copra gathered
miles from Pondicherry, sesame
oil in rotting casks.

And the Indian heat, closing with certitude
akin to the trance of the snake charmer,
holds his flute poised with the Bengali lancer
riding a slow crop over the prostrate polo ball.


[42]

THE CLEARING THAT IS THE TREES

"They know they are going to the filth of numbers and laws,
to the games anyone can play, and the work without fruit."
Lorca

I want to go walking in troubled marshes
where cold gray coves leave off the mind
and the scent of rushes twist the wind
as fall covers dungeons of angry sparrows.

I want to go quickly to troubled marshes,
hear the squeak of brackish waters
over crocks of sponge bubbles crabbing
their surface.

I desire stands of dead brush
to wave in grave solemnity,
whimpering little houses
off forest glades to flicker
out lamps with
large dogs poised on verandahs
like stone gargoyles.

I want to handle anguish as if
it were an interesting bauble
plucked from the shallows,
a curious snail with ritual markings
or a mauve shellfish
caught in swift eddies
as the tide goes out.

I want to examine canker introspection
as a peevish child might
faint tracings on an old stone
lodged in the most forgotten
corner of a graveyard;
sample its wonders
fingering the many indentations
with more than slight awe
or hear the crashing of waves
far off from the physical restraint
of the marsh or this forgotten
burial plot so near an angry sea.
Then, awaken as if from a dream,
rub troubled memories from my eyes
but never the brain
for on winter nights just before
retiring as the wind stirs packets
of snow or the moon is chased
by skeletal hounds along Gretal trees,
there will come the realization
another day is thru
with another night to pilot away
fresh brush & rubble
before emerging, at night's end,
from the clearing that is
the trees.


[43]

HUMBOLDT'S CURRENT

Cresta roja wine
--colour of
arterial blood,
vena cava of
the alcoholic soul.

And seeing bottles bob
in mainstreams of men's blood
to pistol whip their reddened eyes,
Humboldt's current becomes a rash of drinking,
a map that charts more bloody lies.

The thirst that passeth
all human understanding,
(an alternate Biblical rendering)
certainly body heat surpasses
Vulcan's bellows
adding new faces to Delirium Tremens.


[44]

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
of rich eggs.

After a fashion, onyx enamours pearl and pearl ivory as cays and
atolls are swept to the wiggle of sun's dance on white sand. Eel-like
islands are only pomegranates undigested by the moon.

The amber breath of growing leaves is rich dark coffee stolen as in
a smile.

Almond drink is refreshing as the tips of cloven hooves to the dried
earth.

One might hesitate to watch firm nipples being given as broaches to
a king but the sandpiper is a river barge commanding slow access to
the next water.

Near barely lit lamps alongside make-shift beds, a woman with olive
skin prepares her toilet.

Hatchet brown birds beseech her with brittle songs stolen from
one wing.

A cathedral bowl lies overturned in the warm twilight of lovers
kneeling before the growing strength of day.

Stone stars are flattened by the glare of sun and shell encrusted
beaches bear a passing resemblance to chalices strung around an
avuncular stretch of land.
Perhaps in the hunted meadow near red spined caterpillars feeding
near the larvae of the elephant hawkmoth, a cistern will open the
earth and drink as a thirsty spoon.


[45]

JUNIPER TREES

Sitting as Buddha on a chocolate juniper
--the theme of madness
thirty cinnamon centres
Ophelia squares;
Brunelleschi floating down a fallen river
on nougats, perhaps onyx pears.
The sleek eyes of a cat stare floodlit topaz,
ocelot rings round her burning mask.

And sipping dry wine
Beaujolais, decantered Anjou
with iron doors not Ghiberti's fashioning but sweet meadows waving
fresh, summer grass.

And I at the garnet Buddha box--
a cold winter day pledging choices
pale, juniper tree
the carnival log egging up thick cordial;
the inlaid satin box hovering about silent, apple wedge
a child's fantasy, orgeat or bordeaux,
lactose fudge, bon appétit
syrupy taste of Burgundy cherry.

The axe ring of squirting tissue
with drone of passing feet
up finger stairs
until the rustle of cloth
crosses the turquoise box,
clamours almond clusters
into the courtyard cafe.


[46]

DISTEMPER

Looking into the glassy crucifix of water.
slits of rock form stigmata across creviced limestone--
green pools with an occasional fish passing
air bubbles to the top
the eerie night crumbling under shafts of starlight
with the smell of hemlock pods & cedar bringing
nard and precious stone within
crowns of natural thorn--
this body of muskeg pressed onto
aromatic herbs then borne away
along the road to a wooded Calvary and
the sense of Christ
in that light at dawn.


[47]

NIGHT WINDS

They made us sit alphabetically in rows.
Green oranges are sprayed systematically
in volcanic soil near pummelled surf.

One stood to answer questions,
was called after the surname,
requested permission for trivials.

Outrigger canoes with barnacles in tow splash
menacingly near coral reefs. Under a lazy orange-ripple
moon halfing itself between stages of growth,
night winds taunt puffish clouds.


[48]

AMHERST ISLAND

In winter, you were
a flash of light,
tundra against
Arctic floor

Warm breath
stirred yr
summer's breast
and I saw
windblown hair
the colour of kelp
transfix
the lavender print
of a scalp strewn
shore

Later,
tiny bits
from
a calico dress
became domiciled wings
off butterflies,
miniature bitterns
ever more shadowy
strewn across the Barrens,
an unbridled strength from that

Faraway isle released to orchestrate sunlight
amongst all colonies that flower--
a statuesque Red Admiral,
Banded Purple,
feckless Comma
all aswirl to the
pipes of a Devil's Paintbrush,
stranded drumfish, sage,
and tubercular ragwort


[49]

ANCIENT OF DAYS

It's Epsom but could pass for Epping,
New Forest or Dumbarton Wood.

There's ivy of the thickest
English sort not commonly
found in America; sprigs
growing across open ground
mantling it.

Shiny to the eye, soft encircling
the touch, I am reminded of blue waters,
green grass Blake's Ancient of Days:
an old man's beard stepping from the trees,
Spanish Moss so unearthly it covers a
southern forest.

There are tendrils in herbal potions of unbroken lips that move
across both dew and clover.

I see Druids reciting psalms, weaving ivy along garlands
of oak, the incantation set before a British lake--
briar baskets carrying the trusting dead;
food offerings transversing the waters.

The ivy calls to mind all these things,
just a sprig held tightly yet aromatic beyond imagining,
my timorous English settlers seen thru a spate of leaves
clutching their holly on Roanoke island.


[50]

Constantly Deliberation

The Drunken Boat

Biography

Previous titles by Paul Cameron Brown include fiction, poetry,
chapbooks, illustrations and broadsheets by a number of Canadian
and American presses.

". . . A master at evoking mood and atmosphere" The London
Free Press

". . . Beguiling writing indeed" The Canadian Author and Bookman

The End