Title: Mascara-Viscera
Author: Paul Cameron Brown
Release date: February 4, 2010 [eBook #31181]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Sorour Imani
"The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks". Emerson
9 Flashpoint 10 Marzipan 11 Santo Domingo 12 White China Plates I 14 White China Plates II 15 Mail Drop 16 Headdress 17 Airbrush 18 Swords and Roses 20 Moonrock 21 Smokestack 22 Tickings of a Clock 23 Flashpoint 24 Equinox 26 Penny Wise, Pound Poor 28 Metaphor 29 Embers 30 Skin 31 Asgard 32 Old Brompton Road 33 Street Scene 34 Curse of The Downtown Trade 35 In My Books 36 Made in Space 37 Godiva 38 Pelée 39 Pelée: May 8, 1902 40 Electra 41 Sideway Look 42 Lolita Gardens 43 Unpaginated 45 Sequin 46 Yellow Hair 47 Piltdown Man 49 Spanked 50 The Crowkeeper 51 Cuando-Cubango 52 Onomatopoeia 53 At the Red Throat 55 Shamrock 56 Lost Patrol 57 Blackamoor 59 Up from the Floor 60 Men of Shade 61 Knight-Errant 63 Water Fast (The Pearl Fishers) 65 Tales of a Brave Ulysses 66 Inside Seam 68 Debriefing 70 Naiad Trance 72 Pyromania 73 Tide Charts 75 Village Idiot 76 Clippership 77 Flood 78 Kipper, Tea and Oranges 79 Tank-top 80 Viewer Mail 81 Seagulls 82 Imagistic 83 Living Room 84 High Roller 88 The Garden 89 Canvassing 90 Comments |
1 The moon has a larder and a kitchen, wears a nightcap as Father in the Night Before Christmas. 2 The moon hoards pistachios, marzipan commands the shadows is mustachioed sleeps in a sloop (at least when I look) like the boat owl and pussycat took to sea. 3 And on country nights in high summer fishing nets seem drawn about his face, reveal ribbons of light, eerie panhandlers grubbing quarters; a sinister sailor with a sack on a pitch black wharf. 4 Between clouds, leafy barques the hinge reflected on the thick, ashen door the moon will pirate your senses set them adrift amidst twilight islands in the mind's Outer Hebrides where mystery is king and the hem of robe you kiss is an envelope pilfered.
[9]
1 A thick hole in the dark from which stars pour silver as in pails their runny divide ink-strewn scalps torn from the roof of the sky. 2 Padded footprints giant ferns blooming constellation prints, the wind an athlete pacing about a track drying thru fingerprints thin, nectarine light. 3 Sand down whitest skin moving past your hand a gown, mauve to green, iceberg lettuce, the black festering across a ribcage; while night arranges moths to dusting powder pucker-lipped fronds from afar 4 Afar, the word a gypsy tangled in the waves, foam from a medicine bottle agitated and strewn, bubbles calculated in gasps light into the distance forlorn tree-frogs, the cricket sound round deep --movement of night as a rumbling in the ground,
[10]
In the crypt with Columbus in the crypt with Giovanni of Genoa, the diaspora driven Jew; watching flecks of the cathedral floor jade-eyed and mica afraid yawning down brown the abyss, his skeletal coffin thin accae wood, phlegm coloured flamed ointment of the saints in holy water bridging the little centuries. 2 Serpentine heavens in coiled stars heaving like passion fruit hung down piano wire. 3 Meteors douse the light of black stems, eye holes cut of old Spanish sailors; thin ghosts plundering night. 4 Melange tableaux peut-étre les étoiles sont oiseaux.
[11]
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 batting it, one event at a time in sepulchre movement down a linoleum floor. Two twins burning, fever scalded in frigid water only shock setting in, dying to join the black creek water from which her unwilling buckets borrowed this liquid crucifixion and bitter vinegar. 4 Or the drive-house door, silent in precision, unseen hands before marauding hoofs in unison dark from windows' edge to better hear little poke of sleigh bells or harness rattling grim with a sick man's cough. 5 This admission of spectral animals somehow more unsettling than the young woman next combing her hair at the foot of the bed scaring the daylights out of me picturing the whereabouts of stockinged feet, these tricksters from another world; drum and kettle corps gypsy fife with harbinger doom to rasp of falling broom-- old and yellow silky straw witch's hair-- and a cat dark as the Devil's very bread.
[12]
You could have driven a pick-up truck thru spokes of that moon, so big and radiant this upended water chestnut-- ground mist weeping in the shadows flutter of an old woman's shawl, the clammy smell like a child's fingers to the face, a little unsettling crickets and dew in brigades running tears on the old shoe leather.
[14]
A boat sits on the very shallows of a lake in egg-cup fashion, a tea-cosy covering waves, orchestrating the bob of colours in white enamel blue inverted water. Afar, the boat is a rasher of bacon a strip, stripling, stipend slicing the lake, distancing. The boat is an envelope at the end of the world, planet-sized, pea-green about to spin crazily into the sun at the end of a rifle-sized mail drop. The boat rides amid the between places of things, furtive longings where crones sit within waiting bushes & lizards visit skin, dirge of teeth gnashing the fringe canopy of flowing leaves.
[15]
Stravinsky's Firebird, Debussy's La Mer lilting arrangement like a windmill with a little Hottentot of a bird scurrying over leaves like hot coals, nest a pudding arrangement, oven-shaped, dappled with a string. She is alternatively lady of the green shoots, Empress of an Andes of twigs for this cow-pie upended between trees is fortress and manor, blockhouse and Maginot Line careening between the branches much as a sloth toe ambles across the roof of a forest gingerly stepping on noise, clinging to velvet footpads, sitting between shadows within the roar of a clearing.
[16]
Iced coffee, wedge of toast-- the sun poking thru cranberry glass delights exquisite Duchess of Berry, her decanters & an hourglass. Halo-hello in your fingertips I said, to a cadaver of light boldly striking a tuning fork to ring an engagement of gold flecks by your bed. Limoges vase for lace and pretty underthings for outside the stream steals my interest, wearing tumbledown silk pyjamas and a peek-a-boo smile that points thru reed curtains. A rustle from her chemise and sun parasol parts green boudoir draping shiny, black rock. The muddle of this earth-time puzzle, brief flutter to the eyelid's butter-- I saw match-flare crocheted into the snake eyes of your dress.
[17]
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 stabbing gables looking curiously like your heart. A tree bandaged in wood manages a feeble handshake with sky cajoling winter. But it is the moon, large and eerie, a golden earring mindful of a Chinese panda that plies its trade. Mandarin-like, a snout so cloud-entrenched soft night barely resembles willow and bamboo shoots the universe left to feed her. Nuggets or nougats? Should I call you "opaque", use coke-bottle glass as a symbol of light-headedness, transparency? Keen vision? Could it be more is known of outer space than your mind or that leaves, frosted with cold, are conducting interviews maliciously within the park fold? Rather (and this is so circumspect) no one owes anyone in the brisk coinage and trade that breeds human waste ... So drivel passes as conversation, a handshake for real investment. A lot in common, the wrong dreams. Pretty awareness, the desolate pennies stumble from our hands. More substance, really, in the rustle of a silk dress or static electricity that pops over orb-sized breasts. Hide and seek peek a boo, you don't need me I don't need you.
[18]
She wears a cat encrusted T-shirt & panties with L*O*V*E guarding the Paradise door & when balm of night casts shadows, her face is moonrock distant to mysterious down storybook crags; her darling form cloaked in twilight garments of an inky earth. Gates of Venus, . . . as if feline whiskers whispered, wan cat eyes in amber dark glowed pale honey in alchemy or blur of soft movement was caress to stars' elopement with the sky. This woman summons fire, stokes furnaces to quicken parchment leaves of flame-thick desire, honed soft on ripples skin tones were curvaceous drift of oars, vivacious breast on buttock's door, more moisture bead holding regal court, this prance down wet & downy stair. Rain is a swift messenger paw prints with descent of night where moon becomes a plaything of clouds' passion, and pincushion upward surge of clammy earth.
[20]
A small fish, its colors embers amid the swirling water; reminiscent of a café in darkness-- the smokestack tablecloth fluttering in the matchbox breeze.
[21]
I began to see old lanterns, books opening/folding within your eyes; a pale light running as silver to the sea. Then crestfallen leaves dangling as from fishhooks or the autumn moon's skeletal lightness tossing a path between waves over this sidewalk, that, with the back streets passing occasional hisses at the main culprit, night. The prim measurement of your smile, not the wan neglect of cool skin tones or fabric always more suggestive of summer colours, sideway movement of shadow into tickings of a clock. Rather mist and clamminess, lipstick in a smear as a thumbprint before the coughing of a motorcar as its elliptical wedge tears darkness away from sight.
[22]
Only marginal chances of finding a Great White in my coffee although the cigaret's tubular belly is flotsam against my hand-- a dirty kerosene color, sleek & grey. 2 And stirring the embers of my cup, suppose the grinds become primitive shark lore of forgotten peoples or death sticks, dry rot teeth, fathoms squinting light.
[23]
The four Equinox sisters, the one, Fox, streaked-- all color, a blur a Bloomingdale's on fire, a wedge between Everest & her fortune. Samantha, the other dun-coloured earth-tide (in full bloom), blossoms vernally & literally busting out of her breeches with eyes like barely sugar. Jubilee. Fête de la vie. Lighthouse keeper beckoning twin shafts of warmth. Camberwell Beauty. Rattan Bar, shooting star. Carraciou (and castanet) an evening song, the most buxom but with dog days & tiresome moods flushed with heat. Tidewater in full ripple, a murmuring of abstract intelligence orchestrating summer's growth. Emerald keeper. Silken flax beguiling smile, wiggling toes. A stickler for detail, she was (with endless contortions) always in the grass. Brumaire, evaporating vapors, the most withdrawn & difficult to know-- a dead leaf combed thru wind-swept hair. Infernally inclined, a modicum of sparse economy idly knotting ice thru a cadaver fence before putting on a brave show-- her stern beauty and most commanding feature, snow, shone like almonds or stars twinkling from an anorexic fist. Alabaster, her prison whiteness this Brumaire. A clock, pier, immovable, still. Firing up the flashlight in the dark like beautiful woods sleeping.
[24]
Fall was a tubercular cousin residing in the country sparse hair, rasping cough. 2 Night air was damaging stringing pumpkins around orange chains, the milkweed pod shivering in open shirtsleeves little noises sifting from burrows in her chest. 3 Fall was... reputedly from another country wore glaring cravats, gold leaf and Rubenesque chain; stalked the lark mocked the breeze. 4 Penny wise, pound poor leaves a shock of hair prematurely white degradingly picked from the comb flung out fireflies crisp bodies to singe fire-cold light. 5 Advancing stairs in poor light, the season became makeshift wallpaper hung by tedious hands. Little seep of plaster dirt escaping the touch, grass bristled by frost where occasional flower was torched with cold savaged bees stumbled from the weeds.
[26]
There is a star near the hinge of planets, a barn under a cow's lick of moon-- plausible people moving thru an airless universe. Pay attention to the frond of lilac . . . limestone troughs upon which thickets of Indian scalp & devil's paintbrush soar to the horizon and, afterwards, little creeks run with the sparrows of evening time in step to tiny boatmen that echo enamelled snails from the very consonants of earth. Rustle of leaves, some might argue breathless gasps to intone the savagery of little seasonal voices cut off mid-stream. A spate of bees, early colonizers deflower blossoms and strip-mine lava butter of erupting hard-shell tulips: such careless penetrations-- volcanic intrusions entomb their hairy bodies caked with the iron-lung of blackened soot petals, each a cough drop on the heaving breath of a declining afternoon.
[28]
As you enter into dream-- its the unconsciousness which stifles, the thin embers called flame that outdistance the controlled rubric of desire.
[29]
Her emerald top phosphorescent candy glow stick candy, sno' cane-- floss like the mane revealed beneath, spun hair matted/woven into icicle lengths & pubis mink. Her presence as a monk sliding under a cowl, jet-black velvet or midnight eye-liner shadow knotting strands of dark. She comes on waves-- candelabra is a name deft movement of finger caressing storm, bare legs shining wet street lamps decantered ambered wine. Cigarette floating between lips, uncharted voyage of the smile where puffs of smoke are parrots' wings, incandescent show-girls in novelty across the flame.
[30]
In the ardour of an Asgard fire see adders from her vinous fire per adua ad astra. Listen to the wind-- the ageless, intoning wind, a sea-hag encrusted on a mattress of waves. Cat's footfall, breath of fish the flowering beard of a woman.
[31]
"Death is but a sleep"
quaint rationalization
even to Revolutionaries.
Think of Robespierre
holding his bleeding jaw
or Marat outside--
eyeing the inscription,
scofula no longer distracting while
tepidly emptying bath water.
2
Dreams, poetry of painting,
deathly pastel shades alongside
granite canyons
entwined with rosebuds and leaves--
bone horseshoes clanking in the dark.
3
Catch basin, drainage ditch
upon which the raspberry
parts its tendrils and
human remains, the loathing
of the living ("not dead yet...."
...appropriate obscenity:)
scrawled on one Victorian
mortuary, windows knocked out,
coffins in full view a
hand's reach away on a dare
dignitaries in a pile pried loose;
one, few years hence across
the Channel, sworn enemy
to the French.
[32]
No open barge crowded with nameless waifs or junks in a teeming harbour-- just odours spilling from a back alley, stair wells littered with cheap saki bottles, one propped to rifle the door.
[33]
The way I figure it, a number of people are out of control at any given time ... gin rummy & hockey notwithstanding. Mickey bottles and varicose veins are sure signs of indulgence as are, proof-positive, speed-traps & roll your own Black Cat. Sure 'nuff, even Sunday driving stands at the motor edge of frenzy while Mom's apple pie is little more than just peaches & cream home baked greed. Take stock car racing or the trots, Little Orphan Annie Comics or Budweiser. Vice, like charity, starts at home. Each curtails a larger problem and self worship begins the moment your zipper opens.
[35]
Mood food. In deep, deep water without the thought of water bottom, I thought of you. Sous la peau rouge, Chartreuse, I thought of you. Dans le cafe du paradis, ile au emeraude. Cascades aux ecrivisses la belle aux Bois dormant. Tir a l'arc, volcon. Precious little majesty to Words nor necromancy of place names, ma douce. Partout, je te vous.
[36]
Lingerie, black pumps a navel creamy enough to drown a kitten-- the clothes assemble in microwave fashion --crackle of fire-- the silver pants zoom across legs with curves so caress bound a formula racing driver might tumble. As eyes rise in jade lantern face & hair is brushed with all sheen aside, the lady is more than a Godiva or Goldwyn-Mayer cinematic production, this oasis of sparks, twin peaks of McKinley-Matterhorn fame, her calendar of words pulling Oil of Olay & perfumed honey thru each studied remark.
[37]
The night before ... sultry Martinique, a tortoise shell cat climbed, lap to pipe, amid curbs of orange smoke. 2 Mount Pelée, a smoking hard hat with the candle-wax of longing gutting in paraffin for 30,000 souls sent to the Crematorium her harbour hissing lava foam; even coffee beans fused into other metal bits, a danse macabre twittering machine, (nature au contraire), tortoise shell improviso with splotched colours weaving dawn's light & feline crouching. 3 --the curl of her island's paws lanced in heat, brief wisps tugging Pelée's synopsis (dark & smouldering), with cat eyes glowing up the mountain dark into vegetative whiskers. 4 Pull of my pipe full leap of centuries before the bite of the stem dumped fire again
[38]
With the smile of morning in her purse, the dark laughter of her cat napping in the crevice, half-alert, Martinique (angelique) on padded paws climbs from night. I saw her hair-brush the lava to warm the bay, crinkle little St. Pierre jammed into one parking lot, volcanic embrace. In the little museum --the holocaust cenotaph-- Nature pared essentials to the bone, a cauldron of smoke peers from old photographs to cement (danse macabre) bric à brac ivy/stone and coffee beans wedded in grandeur fission-fusion-froideur resembling masses of bees, grotesqueries & beards upstaging even Miro & the distant surrealists; where reality masked vampire fiction to roll sulphuric heat toward belches of St. Pierre's prison. And Cygnet (his name close in French to "Swan") leg-irons) (subterranean chamberling peeking out), undaunted solitary survivor-- the bars on his charnel house were the fingers of God pointing the way free.
[39]
Fantasy, Capri. The edge of a pillow. Certain words--murmur, seashells. A face beckoning thru time, lacy windows with purple shades simultaneously drawn. Tears of gold. Love signs, glass of champagne. A tree of hemlock nearby. A delightful print tablecloth that signals the breeze. The courtier in fancy dress. Twin bottles of vintage wine abreast rider and horse. Potables. A blue eggshell. The sun stirring Virginia Creeper that moves in unison with the wind. Electra and electricity, the current that prods the mind.
[40]
It's snowing and all I can think of are leaves to wrap your memory, leaves pungent as tea, green curls alive with the promise of fire, shutes like fingers to play a tap on your skin. The snow is wet like your eyes at parting, cold as the promise of a winter dawn wet again as city-streets I must tread to make a living, the flask of wine pressed to my lips. On the winter landscape all I see is the ghost white of sheets, our sheets wrapped to keep breath warm the log cannisters of our bed a heady raft upon which to travel to burn up an ocean of delight.
[41]
A man weeps at your ankles, climbs the stairs to peek-a-boo panties, with finger clasps, a Rapunzel lowering your hair, the long-matted braids a skilful weaver turns to gold. An ivy forest in a castle impregnated with doors, the prince overhears the code "let down your hair" and, with perilous grasp, mounts the stirrup wall, foot to clasp, searching cloud grey & storm blasts for billowy mists green within this empress queen. Walking plasticine ledge in the shower with a mermaid soaping her perfumed treasure trove, at an intersection within that woman, her tulip trees explode-- faeryland syrupy, tasting of apricot and sugar cane; a swallow parting indigo sky.
[42]
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 used to open sky. Work out cosmic debts-- figure stone footprints on Hollywood Blvd. en route to Tijuana for a start; I should have been Buddha incarnate or curator at the Hermitage, wild shaman for the Arapaho not a cocoa butter salesman from New Jersey, nagging soda-jerk in L.A. 'bout the time of Marilyn Monroe's quick magic. The Almighty unpacking orange crates, sending Florida cold unravelling karmic debt, brass studs in your eye mowing suckers with your scythe; Birthpath urge, Father Time, de-gutting chickens at Pleasure Farms looking to Hindoos for clues (placing roaches on a lucky few.) This hurdle over stones crass fortitude ensemble, strange melange spewing nails, elbows round thin pain gutter cathedral looming into view where there is more viscera than mirth before ripples of enchantment cause vibrations at four and the phrenology of universal measure is a moon ribcage in light --gazelle of trees a dinosaur in height.
[43]
A youthful bandit this forest-- faltering eyelids in mud troughs & puddles like brisk lies woven thru deception. Stealing autumn into its colours, leaves in birchbark rustle a full mauraude stealth across every breeze. Thief, thief elf with a key, a thousand rasping angels their throaty javelins hurled from branch's edge, brief pageant robbing summer's pantry. Offal of the fall, the lake a sequined glove tossed from a careless hand; a rowboat as a buckle chromatic foam for a finger's fan.
[45]
With that lime green hairnet commonly used by butterfly dispatchers-- something your aunt might have commandeered to put her hair up donkey's years ago, I unjarred the bottle of air & with a pair of forceps tried to wrangle the life juices from a Polyphemeus[1] in a manner akin to Ulysses in that cave three millenia ago; his gentle bleating like the whine of the net across the gelatin fabric of air or the flash of a tomahawk gliding across Custer's golden hair. [1] Large buff silk-moth with two eyespots on the hind wings named for the giant Polyphemeus in the Odyssey. Ulysses had the giant blinded with a sharpened pole.
[46]
Popping out of the dark reddish "Merry Christmas" haze twinking blinking land of Nod (or rather it's Ned, the hefty trucker); eyes, steel-belted radials, in a rig big like Santa Claus; a Stegosaurus swinging sabre-toothed tail & flexing padded paws to gobble night. Loads so dreary-weary their chrome-plated swamps are debris after a tank battle for troglodyte trilobites & chocolate coloured ooze belching brown down funnel flaps to carve deep bellows inside earth. Such energetic slaves to cough & sound their wheezing sandy blasts make for breaks in a clearing for I see our trucker, eons from now, wedded to sentiment and rock perfectly preserved (to the dismay of future inhabitants), a fossilized remnant complete with steering wheel embedded in his chest (forlorn and anatomically correct much as dolls used in assault cases). In a vision, envisage his life replete to the last Raggetty-Anne detail --straw-coloured hair, for one, looms like binder-twine or horse-hair thread tugged from a dirty mattress which props a toque or baseball cap, tobacco staining the resident gum chewing Neanderthal with tartan lumberjack shirt. Contact with Piltdown Man, soggy Homo Erectus given to gunning engines, churning rubber as cavemen might in the La Brera tarpits. Consider a farmer brief centuries ago stumbling onto a similar scene pocketing no cloverleafs of his own pasture's making but concrete expressways looming thru the fog & damp, then coming to his senses, hard-pressed as I.
[47]
Buying up egg rolls at 50¢ a kick, they royally entered our bloodstream --a riot of sensation akin to dynamite caps kicked off in the brain. Later, sitting in the booth a chocolate brown wall to aid the digestion; a frumpy waitress plunks water down to complete the feast. Taken back, the surcharge at such festivities exorbitant, we squander in exact change the full price to do it again.
[49]
"she gallops night by night through lovers' brains...." I see grindstones in the sky, pots of tulips overturned --big tug of the reins and chestnut hair is seen before the windowpane with chance & more chance lost to frost or hungry bees this still autumn eve. Darling, walls that division us are envelopes of passion bridging trust, seal it lest it rust. Skeletal scrapings make for poor bedding (this poor rhinoceros of lies) the devil gliding about so disguised on his tentacle and toenail chair (inviting lair) or is it hiccup and bandaged prayer yet stalwart wall is a rosary bead thick ale and bread to hungry snail or, better, lips to Romeo's blushing pilgrims. Then, sudden, I'm old-- on a bench counting stars where each is a radiant patch of energy leased to the dark, an emblem burst mailed from eternity, spark to cigaret's flame to burn these little suns as cupid tails; your "bright eye, scarlet lip, fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh."
[50]
Moths, if they dream dusk, sport esurient hip-flasks on their wings-- gangster rum-runners better to sully dark, traverse caravans of colour amid silk-routes to dazzle Prester John, cork unscrew the unicorn horn askew. 2 Compte de la Mothe escadrilles/flotillas D'Entrecasteaux with Bougainville discovering well, Bougainvillaea and I, latter day la Perouse, cunningly amuck on coral adoration and wine, (red as scarlet leaves) chenille, frangipanni and the Marquis house colours of the flame-bitten tropics. 3 Let me scandalize why. Watch the sea churn to white bubbles then coat your nostril with brine to run a finger down brown skin passing for the Bronze Age. 4 Notice the invention of sun, a cloak suspended in a canopy-canoe profusion (left over from the first dawn,) oasis of calm, patter of motes and beams. Garden of Shalimar. 5 My sentiments exactly.
[51]
One thing about this type of education, it certainly taught an individual to be philosophical about death. He could ruminate conversably on the ultimate fate of a Greek shade or the Mesopotamian interpretation of the underworld. Even contemplate figuratively what Achilles felt was his true funeral abode. Shoel. The grave. Romantic poetry might have little practical application but it was great conversational stuff. A book or two by obscure authors sure broke the ice at parties, was unbeatable verbal jousting. Too bad the joke was on him for majoring in it. Few people really cared what onomatopoeia was or that Presquile was in Maine. Worse, they acted like you were nuts for studying the Aeneid. The Aeneid! It did, too, have importance. Literature, that is. Why it gave a man depth, a presence, a gracefulness that transcended petty, material strivings. Too bad, one couldn't show the white palms of one's hand for a living or revel in soft flesh as the natural mark of a born aristocrat. O tempora, oh mores: that the classics had fallen so low. It was maddening that literary civilization was within a hair's breadth at being snuffed by the ordinary convention of task bearing. Being a poet, so basic to everything, didn't even show up on Manpower's computer scan. The universities didn't care they were having the times of their lives parsing verbs and conjugating declensions, telling graduates "the pendulum will swing". The best retort for that was the pithy epigram of the working man toiling in honest sweat within the secure bounds of a trade.
[52]
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-chairs with a broom pronouncing the wall base with its touch empty, the empress of bandages leaning to rags on table scraps, sorry gloom of an old building by a pickled lake leaking into ebb twilight. The coronation of the nightmare, the moon with her billowing robes and withered spoon unfolding midstream ... la cauchemar ou dénudée soirée to discover, with wonder, ices with sherbet reek like nightsweats; a windsail of pooled light thru puddles of trees. Brackish backwater-- thoughts of black ice and huddled masses of silver breaking thru the sun's winter curtain as erupting coins.
[53]
Is there anything prettier than that-- to stare into your manifold spaces toward the hook & vine of cathedral leaps, the vaults & crypts as go-betweens of an earthy worship, the supine female form? By quiet pools, thrush in the thicket with red berry behind its eye, miniature sun proceeding by the branch to undress the bark with leaves as passionate culprits kissing dark. Clasped hands upward lies the sky my masterpiece angel, I bite lush meadows, tread spongy brooks, endear daring small of back, crevice taste nape and neck, a beatific pilgrim nearing a fleshy way-station, first charting his compass, fathoming a probe to collect armfuls of starlight & shade, hair, eye, lip like fragrant sea-grape --pine & cedar bough in love-lorn resin smile.
[55]
Blue walls were grottoes, subterranean panels for covert messages, the occasional mot juste squirrelled up thru paint & memory. Something like guitar strings dangling only you employed tear sheets from Rolling Stone (counter-culture fly paper to catch the runny masses). The blue walls existed as firing ranges, gunpowder plots for ideas scribbled on pencil waves like the movement of snakes (or commandoes on their bellies) thru desert sand. Blue walls. Blue grottoes. Blue moods to temper finger oases (tap-tap of skeletal tree on your window pane) crawling thick with pregnant fruition with the bayonet lull of words. Snippets of that legacy (hobnailed like a lost patrol) forlorn as yellowing pages or dusky petals unfolding.
[56]
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? The sun nudging petals at the close of another day. Your eyelids casting shrouds (and shadows), the long funeral walk of your hair across the pillow. Then awakening. You gathering tresses much as a bird trilling feathers. Clandestine, these rendez-vous' Clementines. Air of mystery and melancholy street, the moon up & poking holes in my argument. Tedious fingers, no account matter of factness lasting eternities. Imagine, you & this moon, dowagers together crotchety, decades hence, making tea. Curls of black leaves, grumbling. Blackamoor and sadness, cult king of empty transforming the bright & ruddy complexion into barely honourable dishwater. You can ask what this means. A cough. Twirl of spoon in a cup, deafening answers. I prefer the lonely wine bottle, egret in flight & motion, retaining dignity across a crumpled, brown bag. Listless, linoleum floor.
[57]
They sit in silence. In camera, around the table. Terrifyingly stern, stares that grew antlers in my eyes. It was as if thunder or bolts with electricity were being decreed. The self-important, the pompous, well-fed and self-assured. Here to hazard a fling of the dice--to decide whether another should eat. Employment. The interview. One with yellow tusks protruding to his coffee cup. Eyes, some primordial forest cut for a firebreak back of his soul. And I think of the desperate, those lacking bus-fare to get to such a carnival. Valuable postage money, photocopying, scrimped dollars for a suit to entertain the pumpkins dicing for a worthless garment. A scavenger run, piles of white applications heaped as bones in a graveyard made careless after a violent storm. Or elephants in tow, trunks wrapped around the other waiting for the ringmaster to signal the question important; whether a neophyte new at sharpening his teeth at a daily wage should be allowed presence onto such a hallowed ground. And I think such things are the very matter of evil--that these are vile intemperates with their accursed shortlists deigning to be gracious, shaking hands after the fact. Mafioso manners, the sickly grins back of the shovels used to bury another.
[59]
All the candles are passing out, one by one. They have evaporated their brightness, overpowered limpid cracks in their own flames, seized the outpouring air with hesitant breath to brave a flicker of new hearth while knocking holes against the warm men decorating fireside shade.
[60]
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 serious even if ice-cream and pizza attach dead-pan humour to the term. Imagine, picking the last day of the month to go packing. Finale. "Going down to the sea in ships". Death as voyage escaping prison confines of the harbour. Cliches donate dim glimpses into the apparent. One sees a lot by the moon. Crisp, fall air and leaves yellowing frightened from their wits to end their brief, balloon walk. Such faraway faces of Eve and a boat moored to a dock. Crossing streets -- a gray, fusillade church, knight-errant, breaks the night. Trees chuckle in coves through wispy clouds. Madonna's face in a shawl only it's not on the stained glass window I see her. She seems to be pouting. Ashamed of what we have to go through at the end of this filth and stupidity? Restrictions? Death lifts them in one heave of the casket. More illuminating are the mourners. Dashing thru the sleet in brief poignancy; shrill, old voices that knew the deceased reciting what can only be the obvious. Leaden eyes that cast no shadow. Hardly analogous to being "called home" or "going to their reward". More light is cast by the street lamp, the pale glow of fireflies and neon signs winking-drinking waves like the fisherman's cork. This place is holy to me. A shrine. Night air with mist collecting, watching flames shuffle over hearth-stones; leaves mount a glade. The bitterest berry, flower to lily of the valley. A heart that makes gravelly noise. Tiny angel spread of petals, no black funeral vestments for me. Standing close to the clock and thinking. A luxury bought with time, in every evening weeping in the corner.
[61]
Shopping in their heads --a man a pair of shoes right colour (tan, off-white) shape-- only good physiques need apply, degree, tall; self-confidence a "must". Not yuppie, really, more consumerism as in I made the grade (she really thinks this; meanwhile, she's plump, dull). Standing in the showroom window, she spies the mirror image of herself. Your attitude is your altitude. Of course, he's "polished" (tho' not worn), urbane witty--this goes without saying. Well-travelled, maybe, though potential liability, here, suggestive of footloose. Restless. Perhaps given over to bouts of hedonism--a dangerous portent. Feel I've stumbled back in time, holding court with Cesare Borgia, Lorenzo the Magnificent significantly transformed to a Renaissance courtier. Harpsichord and madrigal in hand (& head,), I recite my litany. I pack a mean wallop-- humour, I mean, for no one on this spic 'n span planet wants somebody too droll. Intensity is a ripple from the sixties. "Relationship", kickback to the after-glow on-glow seventies. Eighties women love "feedback", "interfacing". Its fashionable to think chic. Restless troubadours should be dyed in their own ilk. Sporty chaps are in demand, ones with visceral longing for babies & the peroxide smell of Javex in diaper pails wafting thru their nostrils. Heady brew, Perrier & BMW types. Chrome-plated men with the razzle-dazzle of the Boardroom tugging at their cufflinks. Mutual funds equates with mutual interests. The man's wishes? A dollop of Dijon mustard on you! Hitting the nail on the head. Holding up her middle finger to dry nail polish, I see my future and, golly, does it ever shine.
[63]
Artists (astrologers never lie) are birthed when Venus is rising-- not against cat's whelp (eye of newt, tongue of frog) calamitous mist or London fog; far, ferny forbidding fenn. When Venus rises, yes dons Botticelli's cloak or was it her hair gathered in tresses long by lovely handfuls parading it all on a patty shell --her twin oysters ambrosia a Ulyssean mirroring winedark sea, purpling color of a robin's egg. Artists are born in something of Venus . . . conceived along coral-corral highway lariats, foam of passion modern cowgirl lowering the drapes.
[65]
Having wilderness cracks in emotional facades chinks within to let cabins in. 2 Porous wind examining pavement, foot-sore maybe loose winding entrails of our hearts into lavatory paper; would that it pleased riddled trees --more whistling, poked holes across oasis tracks wandering spaces. 3 Blistering thought, paint flecks chipped in the mica-afraid heat of wan-ton passion; (acknowledging debts to Chinese cuisine) a wan smile left from which I pretend to remember all. 4 Love-smitten to lend the reach of your arm-- sighs, droop to hips heaving a droll verandah (like curtain's edge across the exhausted wall). 5 Besmirched stain, The lavender hoop of your belt is a winding lizard's skin or perspiring rope to anchor the filmy edge of letters written, not sent. The breeze, quiet wind-- a chipmunk with woodchips poked into a grin.
[66]
I won't envy the heat this August. The fall (English say autumn) burrowing like urinating dogs thru trees, carrying winter woolies with sniff of air crisscrossing the lion's tamer's path I must trod when snow hits. 2 No, I won't envy searing blasts be they inclement weather or lost souls bargaining with rain. Acceptance . . . they say is the key and the word clangs like chimes into my biology, a grandfather clock to my own chamber music, a little something to cheer and serenade the buffeted spirit. 3 Think still thoughts in gloomy houses when petals cry burst in springtime. This is done in preparation for brighter moments ecstatically greeting November chill, devouring the last chestnut, cursing wheat-cakes over winter's fire. 4 A pleasant page crammed in the tumbler briefcase carrying my life's thimble, rocketing toward a brilliant destiny all 4 seasonal planets orchestrating mood; the patch quilt procupine quill emotion tapestry working overtime like a fish hook thru brain's inner eye, ocular hair shirt pulled on at warning's glance to trigger the way I boil eggs; devour slivers of wood on learning another day kicks ass from the horizontal pillow.
[68]
The leaves on their trumpet flames Richter scale inside pulse stems-- into the gorge, la gorge throat and crevice of the canyon arroyo. Walking the slit into rheumatism earth the twilight pain of Paleozoic ice, Jurassic Age whence rupture sculpted rock River precipice the afternoon dangling like shadow beside taiga sun lost to dark & rain toward the water now, ever, and chemical rushing sound. Chameleon, I would swear this journey was that, worse, sorceress on my emotions; I left pathways contoured with Merlin rock & trees like Babbitt refugees from the Nahanni, fearful Dogrib aboriginals swarming my imagination their scalp-locks loaded for bear. Arabesque boulder, lavender curls of winter-wind swept moss and berets of tiny, dead soldiers. The moisture between you and clearing. Hushed forest an envelope edge of moisture patterns, more leaves in reindeer formation asserting themselves in beckoning sleighs and trance of veined, elfin hand skirting cracks & fissure gloom.
[70]
She had a fireplace-- the sexual kiln of her pyromaniac desire, a brick embedded in heat, white hot coal to ember, her lust flaring red, soot to powder dark as charcoal smear, a walk across shimmering mirror.
[72]
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 of rock
squeezed so tight by
shore's edge that a
grim hammer of stones
intones a warning?
Its back from the wars
to dive, there, among
threads of water
where needle eyes of little
fish ("young fry of treachery")
are so scalpel-like
dunes and eddies
of living colour
shake you.
To slake a thirst.
For adventure.
For precision.
Try a lavender roll of water
curved in bite recess
much as a conch's outer shell
dons triple-ripple effect.
Up the stakes. Skillets off the
meandering edge are pounding
undertows and riptides resemble
porters in foreign airports
who simply smile. . .
Purple dye
on white toga,
water retches up
on land.
A necklace, this activity, in warm shallows.
Consciousness raising--reef life coming
into contact with the bumper edge to freedom.
Heavenly bodies
parry light from the moon,
wrath from a deeper bellows
cough up one hand
raised in silver mourning.
[73]
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.
[75]
Pausing to see light thru chinks the corner door battered barn floor musty webs and pebbled face expect shadows from flecked dust, yet damsel flies with doily edge blanket the air a throaty radiance in angel hair and stepping stones to nearest crevice and laddering place.
[76]
White ermine/white semen, green eyes jade from the night. Eternity falls in sparrow, an inch-worm down a pear-coloured leg, within this droplet lies coiled raptures of a snake, anointed coils musky as in woolen handshake where tributaries turn into socks wrapped to the vertebrae clasp of a teenager's leg. My fingers are frying skillets slow-boiling water, with precision, your rivers & chasms, a vagina white knuckle rafting across your enchantment.
[77]
Our lives evaporating as we talk, flypaper from cosmic ceiling-- We gather stardust, mnemonics, perhaps, re-arrangers of mystic twigs into a pattern. Look to the sky, les nuages, l'ombre les arbres alla primavera "magnificio", said I with real relish & snap of ring-encrusted fingers, distant God, not quite Himself, behind a podium exiting the band shell.
[78]
I was playing sonatas on your skin-- no beauty & the beast scenario though the Tower pulchritude was intact with enough purple agape grape leaves and ivy for a fig-leaved Eve with wind wet at the windows (and later the willows), where gravelly, cloven hooves became party to my thoughts; for you, blessed with a triangular patch, --and something like strawberry-- lay moist & woven into strict tapestry like a mantle covering abrupt oasis of skin (the better to peer in). I scaled the heights not castle vaults, mind you, but the elevator shaft and draw-bridge equivalent of a white charger-- fierce visor in place --armour gleaming-- a sabre rattling at my side be-jewelled & twinkling the key clinking there, to corner distance (time & space) dragons to be dirked and slain. Fiery eye, forked tails donut-sized scales plastered as a calendar or shingler might a tiled roof --the empty spell Bellerophon spying his Lady in a belfry on driving home.
[79]
The sky was a ringed net of honeyed light, (colours from peeled apples) funnelling cloud ... tumbler over dice (the carrot throat lemonade pie) twin coins in a fountain brief lantern spark amid twittering noise. The trees were awaiting giants gathered to fumble about the river noiseless bridge and, I, skyscraper man dangling a reflection, (afternoon tea) muddy me Jimbob expression water angling for dirt.
[80]
There in the cosmos-- white dwarfs launch a black rooftop imagistic, clean as a pantry, the twilight roads with ledges lean like raw openings. And coming upon stars in a country woodhouse --cold, big as frozen pears, each breath of light visible thru chinks & clusters of broken ceiling wood; hands raw & nipped sawing logs-- breath menacing the depths on inner space, something pale and profoundly suggestive.
[82]
If anatomy were a contact sport, the stomach would be a football éstomac, hammock sagging . . . . the container of riotous living pried loose. And the head-- a barrel of nails, binder-twine unravelled into knots; the brain a cauliflower for flavouring, precious little else. Spare the heart its dagger pleasure inveighed from the start.
[83]
1 Terrorism-- left-wing nerd (twin grapefruits in his hand gives it away) winging a stiletto shoe, spitting on an ashcan to bring up a bruise or two. 2 Visions are steadier-- I see in the shimmer blue veins to target, a silhouette of the rich, fur wraps in their Bentleys time to bring up tar, kick ass in Knightsbridge with my holiday bomb blast. 3 Bag snatching can be dangerous let go if you don't want to be dragged over cobbles behind a Vespa. 4 The Harrod's sign, "please keep moving" meant business. 5 Pretoria calls as does Manila. Later, perhaps, Jerusalem, Beirut, Rawalpindi. 6 Closer to home (I am of the Red Army faction) is the Bologna train station. 7 Counting hours down my button line, three less then pay-off, squeakily clean. 8 London seems indifferent to my destiny; even the tube buskers and streeties see not a harbinger but another shuffling cold-assed long hair. 9 The wired whisky bottle in the airport locker will make La Guardia look to the Statue of Liberty for deliverance, 10 I'll send the Hotel Crillon so far up the Eiffel they'll have to sandblast the sky. 11 My mentors spic 'n span boys no wild-eyed radicals with socks that won't stay up, rather gumless wizards taking Confederate rain, mainlining a little to keep the nerves steady, orders direct from Moscow with money laundered a bit, beats haphazard work and petty contracts on local businessmen. 12 Cells (I like the word) master-mind co-ordinate and synchronize revolutionary inter-cooperation. A swine in Munich is the same swine without his leather jerkins in Santiago. 13 Brains coming apart on soles of shoes a pantheon of causes to choose, let's see, neo-revisionism counter-revolutionary criss-crosses with degenerate bourgeoise capitalist turncoat, (both must die) the urgency lies in which commands my holier dross. 14 Brothers in the struggle need empathetic eyes to square off the titanic quarrel. 15 Cleanse the body politic, reads one directive. Rub not ointment but horse radish over decomposed, societal skin, a brisk cleansing with your strigal but one revolutionary application. 16 "De-stabilize", the latest buzz word flies to the manure heap just kick in the door-- those planter's peanuts know the score. 17 "Property is theft" I'm lisping in the burning sun, Ethiopia done Tigré and Eritrea key components on the Horn's chessboard, mere human paste re-patched, re-worn. 18 Ditto, "take-out", liquidate. Run a new poker thru the rubble. A good anarchist's cathedral accomplishment is the chicken coop's destruction. 19 Make the rich pay. Squeeze the goose to the pips. All power to the people; a gun run is a good itch, works up a powerful thirst for Justice; good mercy disguised brother Lenin as a simple dock worker, the plague-bacillus quickens. 20 Orange filaments of smoke are better than the factory whistle, a good arsonist recruits his own flames, fans his own fire. The crackle of desire over hearth stones is reward enough in itself.
[84]
And like a cobbler at a bench I return to my musings why Kensington Gardens with its grand, theatrical entrance is gateway to London's poor --why the stiff Victoria and Albert monument or grand canopy to the Hemispheres has a bison for the Americas or sultry elephant of Asia fame (India being the brightest jewel in the Empress' crown); why other archetypal animals at their pleasure are carved in gleaming milk white when the rich at their leisure, to and fro, dine elegantly as tight buds arranged on a stem. 2 I've not mentioned the poor come to the Serpentine a little ways up in Hyde Park only to be chased out of Kensington at closing-- the cobbler at his bench, croupier at Whites, the elephant as a hatchet beast run amuck in the stellar pool of the eye's fixed poor.
[88]
And I thought of things, things that come in small clutches, tiny memories, thoughts evoking the approach of time or footsteps about to open graves. More things than the troubled single entities we attach to them; things marbled with the elasticity of rain, rumours of war, pitch black leaves in the bottom of a pond where the whelp of a dog tries to outrun night.
[89]
...unrestrained, imaginative writing. Brown's magic is the vibrating universe, his sympathy is his ability to receive these vibrations. Sympathetic Magic captures the movement of life in its intervals-- his poems resemble stopped action photographs from a film. THE TORONTO STAR ...the poetry is fine... rewarding reading... Almost every poem in Sympathetic Magic boasts an admirable image or two. Brown can write, without a doubt. POETRY CANADA POESIE ...wry humour. The poet revels in image and can use it well. Paul Cameron Brown is capable of interesting, even arresting work. CANADIAN BOOK REVIEW ANNUAL 1985 Le voyage exotique devient parfois fantistique... Se plonger dans les pages de "Sympathetic Magic", c' est partir pour un autre monde oil Paul Cameron Brown envoute par les mots et les images. DIPLOMATIC OBSERVER
[90]
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
