Paul Cameron Brown

“ THE INTRUDER The colouring of spacious flowers rove delicious to the eye. The road above the harbour fickle, carousing in its tendency to pull too gray by sky enamelled water. The tropical foliage, still and languorous, to my touch. Each particle of sunlight dangling as if hoisted from a perfumed ledge. Newly mown grass in streaks, browns serpent-like across the path. Low erogenous puffs of dust are swathed by passing feet. ”

“ The rain is heavy with the stamp of perfumed trees realizing slight restraint on bursting seed. Cloaked in fragrance, tufts of mossy step kiss the opening earth, a basement horizon presumes the darling test of flower across dale & rustling nook, then undresses moist greenery with sumptuous eye. The last is hardest - cat crimson, a fire weed sunset lotion, the rain erased away; nobody special harangues the leaves but birds steal in quietly with tenderness clothed of verdure to pinch a leafy oasis about their forest haunt. ”

“ An erasing wind whips the fields further into bereavement; turns tiny bits of chaff to pursue themselves in a mad St. Vitus dance of cold passion. Starry night. With halos about the moon, pale and languid, big as crimson, far as wind driven flax. The orange pallor, pale with liquid swoon and ability to churn itself about the night sky or flood in endless beams our poorer spectacle below.
[19]
FOR TOM THOMSON I have thrust my fists up to ice in the galactic mire of lake, lured my minnow wriggler eyes as bait to ensnare inroads, lake bed wreaths, across the windchill spine of brooding heart. ”

“ RED ILLUSIONS UNDER GLASS Life as green illusion - the cool fronds of the fern are deep set in firmest soil and the grassy narrows brook a silent, liquid play. Red illusions under glass - quietly picking strawberries where a woman hums to the buzz of flies with the afternoon sun disappearing overhead. Each grasp of the berry a red stain, the darting of seeds, crimson tendrils do confuse the eye with a polka dot starling raucous in glee above. ”

“ The thin supremacy of shadows at dusk disparage the traveller here. Burros strayed lie dead by the highway's edge. The liquid depth of the mountains reinforces vulnerability. The night air is alive with the torment of insects, asplash with sound. Lights carry an eerie message dotted about the hills. Feeling alone is a delicacy to be savoured by the standards of the tropic sun. ”

“ A sky broods from afar, a stalactite sun accounts merely a jot above that thin road into despair. Grass lies everywhere dead, faded tongues above an earth afflicted with scleroderma, deadliest of skin disturbances, forerunner of deeper pestilence. ”

“ Stars in the dark canopy above are cryptic mourners and people frigid sorrow. Black is my colour as I ebb steadily toward their heights. By morning, when the first wisp of straw or dry leaf catches light near this stringent fence, an occasional passerby with the presence of mind shall comment how lifeless fields are in the clutch of brittle snow. ”

“ There are armfuls of crushed bats in the passageway to my heart, each reeking with squeals to alarm the most frightened princess. Only one has stained the pass key and I must find her. A toad abides the thoughtful recess broken under the wall. He is a good toad and mourns the night creaking from the river bed. A monster dragon to the insects making a living near the light - a source of amused contempt to lepidoptrists squeezing the eye's circle, pressing her to release her giddy charms. ”

“ Water is your blood. A vast hoarding, most of this planet's fresh drink is flushed through your bowels, with kidneys separating the renic qualities as snow and sleet, the night side of your character. ”

“ A modern day Tantalus up to his throat in burning lies, his death is to live, in the contemporary sense, the thousand cuts- to bury the skies as a dread Caiaphas into the contradiction, the snares of his being. ”

“ Queer is the effect of sun on a tinted roof; bluebells with poppies, cowslip and tiny brook back of fields redden and given to wheat. A house is a machine processing the water of living a replenished cistern, birds paying a call, a minor animal brushing past an ivy-railed fence. ”

“ Dolphins inveigh the richness of the depths, persuade latitudes to drift about their wake. Pelicans sour the parabola distances between light and sound, become chancy over this distant breath of song. ”

“ They lie thick and bedeviled with fish fur, a dull lavender cached hard to the sun seems to shine a metallic harvest white as desert rocklets scattered to the breeze. A speck of a fisherman dots the horizon. ”

“ The cabin floor, a cold dawn infinity, was a chilblain on frosty morning shadows - the old cupboards staring like flowers through a break in the leaves watched till the latches & hinges were worlds in frozen power, dark rust as thoughts meandering like age. The stamped down clay, the well worn earthen crust that met the door on opening showed the erring calender all its interminable days that waited, like madmen, to remind one of oceanic time. ”

“ PASSING I should be busy with words but light distracts me makes for me, in the sowing of its waves, neutral observances, a chilled awareness that the sublime is contained herein the wonders of the commonplace. ”

“ COLD PASSION Some dead undid undid their bushy jaws, and bags of blood let out their flies... Dylan Thomas The land is barren wears straw wisps as an unkempt man might razor stubble. The land is dry, a faded yellow in its barrenness. ”

“ Yet, while the cove pokes like a walking stick, the sun & earth conspire to reclaim this space as their rightful bread. A huge vegetative urge to growth is witness to abundant further life - life in whorls of bamboo shoot, naseberry thatches & canebreak all garnished a short stride across the barrier gate. ”

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

“ The swirling dust, the prohibition of alcoholic drink, are dervishes in the hadji's brain. Everywhere, the ragged people cluster, almsgiving becomes a prayer in the saline night. Any but the Moslem faith caught in the pilgrimmage to Mecca meet swift death. ”

“ KITH AND KIN Once there was a giant who lived in a kneecap, a peculiar giant at that who expelled all reality as a pig might a poke. Not concerned with the dilemma of easing life's toothpaste form into dental crustings or oblivion's dark shadows from lightless paths, the giant assumed guardianship over his fibro-tissual home. The giant could be seen ferrying dwarfed bones over the inter causal dome of flesh and blood. ”

“ MAN In the old air by his rocker, a silent trapeze of thought suspends an aging man. Each movement as of the katydid droning - a monologue with the past; a buzz escaping across still, warm air. Elsewhere, cicadas whittle about the octogenarian heat. Nestled quietly, a supine stare erodes both time & place unto bearded grey - nuances clasped in a breathless chat with death.
[59]
LANDING SCHEMES Omens are the cloth of dreams scissors used to open sky - the future riding birds en route to ariel docking piles. ”

“ In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the centre part of the main road. Little enclaves of activity pass as stores, mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time of year. ”

“ The cry of havoc, all those armfuls of collapsed lilies breaking under the toil of enforced handshakes leaves me like a broken lamp. I have no more shades to patch the plinths or barricade my heart. I have left my love on bended knee in a land I choose to forget.
[39]
KINDLING As a matter of fact, ovens do carry a glazed stare, fireplaces are wont to parry thoughts to kindling before their stoop and on breathless summer nights one is hard pressed to recall cinder and blackened barleys any more vegetatively than upon these harridan pots. ”

“ Surprised at my illogical shift in allegiances, I began stealing thoughts more and more surreptitiously about the naturalness of working a full day, donning the apparel of a civilized man, dropping the white man's burden. Disgust filled me with my former Rousseauian yearnings. With trepidation, one's dreams can erect barriers more effective than the most ill-sponsored illusions. ”

“ OCEAN SEA All that is eternal is circular. - Aristotle Cueta and Tetuan are outposts within the Arab psyche, frail islets jutting their Islamic consciousness into the infidel mind. A mere eight miles separates the tip of North Africa from Iberia's reclining form. ”

“ I am on the essence of the North where latitudes of cold spontaneity remind me the nameless lakes part not easily with their secrets. A man's bones go easily to rot in the frigid perspiration called primeval ooze, precambrian sweat, the tertiary stage syphilitic crawl of advancing ice. ”

“ The False Prophet is in abundance, notwithstanding Western civilization's fierce resistance to his ideas. Minarets, prayer rugs face Mecca five times daily while opium on a mother's breast induces premature death in unwanted infant girls. ”

“ Leonardo was of the opinion creativity might be enhanced a notch should aspiring artists nota bene principalities, bile, their rhumes as tiles then perceive them piecemeal as stratagem, not snuff or random blotch, the heads of diseased pigs but conjuror-sextants toward the stars. ”

“ THE GLOWWORM In slow sutures of pale white - dabbed in growing spume & mud dried earth, a glowworm is obliterated by warm, soft light coming up to elbow particles of near dappled clay that plants dissect, warm as feasts, aloft a muscat lawn. Pale, segmented tortoise - trite in area and jellied purpose, the glowworm oozes headlong through an aroused dark necking furiously with fungus turds and truffles rooted from the pig ground by mice sized swine holidaying on scents and mildew salvaged thru pores & nestling bowels of their planet sized turf. ”