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Title: Whispers

Author: Paul Cameron Brown

Release date: September 26, 2009 [eBook #30101]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHISPERS ***

Whispers

By

Paul Cameron Brown

Copyright © 1977 by Paul Cameron Brown
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

Part I

RAIN FILM

9  UNDULATE, MY TONGUE
10 RAIN FILM
11 ISLES AND RIVULETS
12 SEAWARD
13 MALINGERING
14 VOYAGE
15 CHRYSALIS
16 THE BELLS
17 THE WORLD OF DYING LOVE

Part II

WHISPERS

19 DARKENING GREEN
20 WHISPERS
21 TRESPASS
22 FOREST SPITTLE
23 SEAGULLS
24 LA DOUCE MER
25 GOURDS
26 RESIGNATION
27 THE BREATH OF CANDLES
28 GREEN EYE SHIELDS
29 INVESTITURE
30 THE SPOKEN WORD

Part III

TESTIMONY

32 SMEARS
33 TESTIMONY
34 FORTRESS SNOW
35 CIENFUEGOS
36 DEVASTATION
37 BEE AN APPLE
38 EMPTINESS
39 CLAWS
40 MOON DARK WORLD
41 THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
42 BARBARY WHITE

Part IV

THE BURNING

44 PENCIL SKETCHES
45 EMPTY WARRIORS
46 THE KEEPER OF THE JEWEL
47 ROWING WITH CRAYONS
48 COLLUSIONS
49 GOSSAMER THREADS
50 A FACE
51 THE BURNING

Part V

THE GATHERING OF DEAD WOOD

53 GREEN ANGELLIGHTS
54 EYES INSIDE
55 THE HYDASPES
56 SLEIGH BELLS
57 ORIFICE
58 PECULIAR MORNING
59 W H E R E
60 THE TREASURE SHIPS
61 HANNIBAL
62 THE GATHERING OF DEAD WOOD

Part I

UNDULATE, MY TONGUE

My tongue undulates, a wave to shore,
knocks a vigorous reef,
then slides to sea once more.

The coral pink horizon of the mouth,
cavernous shores,
my tongue laps pier white teeth
in servitude like an oar.

Heavy drifting, bobbing as a buoy,
the tongue sinks slowly down before
surprising saliva
going ashore.

[9]

RAIN FILM

On the night of the rains,
water was oozing out from
the sky's swollen stitches,
a rash developed across
the meaning of the heavens.

The wooden floors of my attic place
strove for a deeper tone,
a hoarse calling
grew louder as I paced
trying to see rain.

I followed the gravity of the treasure hunt
where each bounce meant a slap
across a table top of tension,
where the window basted winter black rain
and silence paid another call.

I am as much as this water flower, rain.
I am as impressionable as the city that stops for rain.
And I lack the same substance that dooms water to be
a soft pillow feather; excepting this,
I may still shatter this thing, March routine existence
by dabbling in destruction.

[10]

ISLES AND RIVULETS

On your brow, the steppes of Asia
are fetched by deep set eyes.
A colouring distict with mystery
perceives the Polos greeting the Great Khan,
the golden isle of Ciphangu, the sultry east.

I revel in the mystery
of my warm, wet flower.
A pollen bee laden with honey
squirms, embraces with me,
in the abrupt opening of our jar,
serrated edge of the known world.

The air, buoyed and elastic with pleasure, belongs to me.
Tawny, pale rose, your oriental skin
peels back
the tiny veils separating our cultures.
I peer in to find Confucian
lilac, towers of silence,
opal pheasants.

Harmony strains all dogmas.
Rain darts penetrate the gathering pools.
The tiny plastic cup
my life,
inseparable from your hand.

[11]

SEAWARD

Whirl of patterned images,
deep seascape painting
hovering,
rustle, chokecherry
grown in
dark pigmented
stunted cove -
animal growl of pilotless sea,
metallic twinkle of sun
bright, stealing
bitter white
all bird life
rockward;
traces skimming
the intrusion
of pebbly shore,
autumnal night.
[12]

MALINGERING

Malingering,
increase drift
of censure
infrared blotted one.

No noise, just
the splashing of the sea
endless, shrill
birds
gaping a way
into the night's chill.

[13]

VOYAGE

The mystique of the sea,
where waves act as snares,
hang boughs over wet
blackness wherever winds
die driven ashore.

Melancholy vastness-
its pleasure the
dim lights swallowed
in glutton happiness
the further I search
the sea.

[14]

CHRYSALIS

Fury of chrysalis, or crepuscular caterpillar's roosting nest,
Fidgeting cocoon dry in annoyance and the reptile caress
Of empty sound.
See it near the trestle,
Above broad November leaves,
Before winter's closing eye.

Comatose pupa, infringing
In dormancy well primed,
And charged with action
Its focus, brittle reality,
Distant life unaware around even itself.

Waiting, the syringe filled ecstasy is
Barest of autistic treasure
Satiate, 'til spilled and
Molten over toughened silken hide,
The outer dormitory
Hustles to rejoin
Compost spring
Controlling a tidy, energy world

[15]

THE BELLS

The dangling of bells
...amid faint tingling,
the inspirational nature of their lies
between each peal.

Classical repertoire, then dryness.
Heavy swelter, the green ore
iron casting of the golden bell
clangs into the night.
Its dash against dry stone
a special brand of hideousness.

Naked madness,
the jangle of the noise
torn from the throat of night,
tucked between the rage of sightless villagers;
their torn members
toys of plastic
wedged obscene within the dash of withered bells.

[16]

THE WORLD OF DYING LOVE

The long finger of blackness is holding its head for us.
Dingy bue is its shade,
comatose in movement, hazarding a slow swiftness,
it inches toward us.

Relief comes fitfully.
The dragon alone, an upstart
crowned with drunken spending,
has horse colours as ribbons with his eyes.
It cradles a breast of trembling bone.

Misercorde, Misercorde.
I dreamt I saw skeletal slackness
dangling;
the poverty of touch is a casket with love in rumbling sockets.
Craziness is the passion of the engulfed,
dribbling pleasantly.

Presentations extended beyond and into themselves.
Slackness schemes with invalid awareness
in a brothel of hope.
[17]

Part II

DARKENING GREEN

My mind, rarely with me alone,
parts with energy,
the floor boards scuffed
and landing beams just
roosts big enough for pigeons
on leave from fields
darker for their grain.
[19]

WHISPERS

Suppose and this is just supposing,
though it is a supposition of the highest order,
I were to die tomorrow

A roar denoting silence?
At work, if tradition is the dictate,
something eulogistic would find itself being said.

I am more calm.
I perceive their layers more shrilly.
Past the lipservice
and shocked surprise,
whispers, rumours and
the grapevine would bruit
around a different legacy.

And the open bier?
An embrassassment.
What more could be left unsaid?
[20]

TRESPASS

I would imagine
the eyelids fail,
fall closed, shut,
as icicles sit
on porch doors
where old nails rust.

[21]

FOREST SPITTLE

The preciseness of that little moment,
bowler eyes in hot, top rays
effervescent through
spongy forest gloom,
the wet of the happy
unreconciled with the dry outside.
[22]

SEAGULLS

I see many thoughts from a window.
Seagulls in the fashion of summer
and leaves as they quit the year.
Sense impressions, if they are this,
are only images
of what we refuse to follow.
[23]

LA DOUCE MER

Too greedy hormonal levels,
savouring drives and swooned walrus tusks
behind the deep belly
of tireless sea,
propel ocean crates
looser for their water
than blood
to devour cavernous shores,
swilling miniature inland
sweet water seas that
father Champlain called
douce mer lakes;
dubbing there a blow for courage.
[24]

GOURDS

A cemetery overgrown
such that each tombstone is a pauper fungus
crowded, dark with leaves,
or hollow gourds hideous,
in a forest sleep.
[25]

RESIGNATION

Petals that fall into a woodland pool
are servers at a banquet.
Each one dresses for the occasion
like an employee with regrets,
that leaves the house in a somber mood
the morning after his resignation.
[26]

THE BREATH OF CANDLES

The breath of candles,
hot and murky,
on the still air.

Giant factories wave wands
in luxury;
contaminate roving commuter bands
brown, from dirt knitted through white bread hair.
[27]

GREEN EYE SHIELDS

I have stars drying in my eyes.
Heavy seas, in wind.
They have sealed me from the heavy
dragging sockets, otherwise my green eye shields.

I have scars all over my eyes,
to bear the horrible imaginings
that try to come through.

The horror of being alive.
The crusty scenes that pry into trees
glide down, touch me,
a glitter of awful gold steals me,
in its triumph of glow.
[28]

INVESTITURE

Our nights have cruel eyes
And have cast us about too thinly,
Fallen upon us,
Divested the attention of the wind.

Night comes to develop us,
Will polish our minds with
A precision lasting 'til daybreak.
Its damp coolness peaks with wretched effect.

Autumnal decay
Whereby the slow process of vegetation
Displeases the nostril,
Is but a preamble to greater violence
Leading tepid legislation in an orchestra
Toward greater effect.

The thin harmony of our lives
Positions no alarms whereby
We might use them.

The fabric mixture of existence, nothing but investiture,
Props to heighten necessary lies,
Strains at extinction,
The volcanic instrument life itself.

Goals are these same vehicles
To operate weak desires.
Frustration defeats a goal
That will not fit.
[29]

THE SPOKEN WORD

I touch your face -
where strands of whispery hair
dangle your thoughtful gaze through mine.

Clutching,
all the words not said
lie pale and broken
beneath forgery lies.

Eyes, our facial minnows, the mirror
images, flash too brightly
out of the shallows,
out of their stony commitments
towards believing
we cannot agree.
[30]

Part III

SMEARS

A snowy morning
unfolding
I smear my eyes
the crimson details
from my life.
[32]

TESTIMONY

When snow falls, there lives
the shrill cries that
leaves are not alone.

Each flake, a mute testimony
not a leaf falls before
surgery prunes the individual tree.

Cold November after
brown and white conspire,
the forest leaves a bleeding crust,
scar tissue from natural wars.
[33]

FORTRESS SNOW

The embankment lies as heavy
edges on our lives.
The shadows of the rock,
piled drifts huge monotony's ledge,
accumulations by the side of the tree
wear thin visages;
the breath of summer eclipsed.

Snow reigns supreme;
teeters about the rim
of the city's existence.
Pettiness of man's realm -
pretty foliage of the transient,
wrappings upon our lives
brittle near the storm.

The reply of the eternal,
fire on stone
blazons reality
the peaked remains
of snow streaked sun.

Immensity governs us;
clarity of the temporal
fire set by the staccato
of man's rhythm.
[34]

CIENFUEGOS

The white pin wheel of heat turns up the grasses' edge.
Some dried plant stalks shrivel,
then melt openly into layers of fire.
It is end - time for the community's Christmas trees.

Something akin to burnt offerings,
reluctant souls or
hedging captives kept alive
ghoulishly for some cannibal's feast;
this festival of crackling.

They have served their purpose, now.
Bound, no faggots need be applied.
Contumely, the quiet desperation darkens
the child's face.

The headlights rain down on Christmas' debris.
A hundred little fires as cigarette warnings
daub the night air.
The forest of smoke, canyon of the torch,
where black marauders poke the nostril.
[35]

DEVASTATION

Little red berries are
the crop of this stump tree.
They are the prize stubble
where little growth is come.

A transplant of hair after
a serious illness
or after fire ravages
the body's wilderness
is that first sip of broth taken.

Little by little, they bring cautious
hope that more will
stumble into other pocket crevices,
the bits of life amidst the spores of stillness.
[36]

BEE AN APPLE

The taste of an apple,
the cringing of a bee
as sun stops turning
a ladle over their skins;
the fire gold stains
on apple's skin,
the honey yellow, black bits
a hornet wrinkles in.
[37]

EMPTINESS

The threadbare uniforms
we let stare at others
we would refuse ourselves.

The bare walls, misunderstanding,
Support nothing,
taut empty sounds.

The inclusion of everything
excludes nothing
except why it was done.
[38]

CLAWS

Unfolding gazes
throw over
the little reality
surly door.
The dumb
clatter
of ripples
shudder the better life.
[39]

MOON DARK WORLD

The trees
are forming hands
to cloak the sky
with pillow whispers,
until the soft equilibrium
behind laughing eyes
departs down the moon dark world.
[40]

THE ELYSIAN FIELDS

The Elysian fields
gained commensurate with ability
quiet and shimmering in the sun;
varied realms
inverted islands
the angry blessed ones -
thrice born with
the option to survive
on into flesh and blood form.

The conveyer belt of souls
carrying the damaged ones
far into the night,
spitting out the lukewarm
with plenty of latitude
to manoeuvre
in between.

Lavender and the dye from purple shells
in piercing shrieks
extracting the enacted will
of Nietzscheans before their time;
fledglings in a world
ill begotten and
barely within a choosing.
[41]

BARBARY WHITE

How death will steal, from life, to claim us all,
Happy to wrap us in barbary white,
By tapping ash tight fingers, the steel laws of fate,
Will deaden our faces, wrapping our feelings from earthly sight.
[42]

Part IV

PENCIL SKETCHES

Staying home,
I caught naughty elves
watering my piano,
growling inside my head.

Faucet drops
beating out in harmony a drum tatoo
to the tune of a plugged drain,
the careless postures of indifference
retold lives lived on spindle shanks
caught on the obligatory
insipid train
of obliging a pantry full
of ones you love.
[44]

EMPTY WARRIORS

The jungle where the meow goes in, is
a forest for hoodlums.
Trucking up, the empty warriors
breakfast on lost impatience,
apricot fields away.

Now see them speed away.
Their lollipop cars drizzling in the sun.
Their apathetic stares really cantaloupe harvests,
left too long in the sun.
[45]

THE KEEPER OF THE JEWEL

The keeper of the jewel.
I file it down,
keep it smooth.

I can be found any day,
busy disguising the
jaded and unproved.

I follow forget-me-nots
in a forest pool.

I undo knots
in groves of shallow trees.

I pretend unfit sores can sit
alongside water smoothed
pebbles in a sunlit stream.
[46]

ROWING WITH CRAYONS

I see children rowing with crayons
across a park lagoon.

They are sagging,
they have just killed a blackbird playing:

the lot of you,
scribbling to school.

Later on, I retrieved
the pieces of paper, ink covered, from a field.
[47]

COLLUSION

A surtax on the ecosystem;
so many raindrops, mists
and bud breakings
record spring days,
that the movement of sap
fluids and other vital
juices involves all life on a colossal
scale; beyond puny human understanding
why green shoots shed restrictions
at the parochial level.
[48]

GOSSAMER THREADS

I feel like cutting my finger,
hiding upside down
clinking a canteen
shelling peas along the floor.

From the focal point above
anything could be.
Light dripping upon
forlorn gossamer spreads
like a balloon.

Merely the vantage point
of a perspective
quietly threading.
[49]

A FACE

A face in the mist, with rain around,
clings to bare leaves frowning.
A face through the mist, convulsed,
plays stationary, perching from twigs.
A face, not knowing it, trust it is good.
[50]

THE BURNING

The sun is a burning magnet on the water.
Durable, our boat is a sizable pretzel in the arms of the bay.
Warmth with contortion, the clash of passions
tug the funnelled swooned water.

Greenery, that inlet of the ocean,
lies precarious and submerged.
Life, subsidized by water,
is within its hope, bubbling in embers,
froth drunk with suds
hammered against the boat's edge.

What is this, this sky
home of the transparent sun.
Blue agony,
burning up with delerium,
the wet pastel illusion slides against our craniums.

Crass, crass the movement of the waves
across a low bow, excessively pleasant.
All the more
troubled vistas
blue with hegemony over earth,
drowsiness dropping a plague of lapping edges;
a strength pried from graves.
This sea of ours sags, heaves in deep
displacement, fulfills my liquid caress.
[51]

Part V

GREEN ANGELLIGHTS

Green angel lights
stream from the willow tree,
in direct symmetrical bearing
three birds are drawn to it.

In gold, soft patches
of light overreach
the earth,
shadows trace ridges
to surround each teak blown colour.

With fakir lowliness,
the throb of water
takes petals from
the sun,
shimmers its passing breath
to a euphony sobbing
in movement.
[53]

EYES INSIDE

There's cadence
a real movement
to the worlds
the gaze inside
a flicker of
your eyes.
54

THE HYDASPES

And I, cooing in my saddle, with lost time.
His weapons and horses the finest.
Beloved of God, engendered fiercely
for the occasion -
with pin stripes
and a drinking vessel
of the most expert silver.

Pharaonic splendor,
ingots of the heaviest gold
borrowed sun bright yet so untarnished
they hold up the morning sky.

Two hands encase that handsome volume -
finest of imported leather and
saddle soap transparent to the eye
so that all might ring forth
its belated vision;
not be dreary earthed with brine
but terse,
furtive inside the gathering glade.
[55]

SLEIGH BELLS

In fury, come the Heavens,
the days, our horsebells
upon a crystal sleigh.
Up slowly until,
the horse carriage wet
and coming up the evening
walk pauses; then snow
before a vanished world.
[56]

ORIFICE

To perforate in adumbration,
as obviator, the sphincter muscle
of intensity; then paint
the world in aperture,
a picture of one's mind.
[57]

PECULIAR MORNING

As if every living thing lived, breathed
its existence
explained why water took the shape
of a container,
studied sharpened awareness of cold,
broke night spots onto a peculiar morning.
[58]

WHERE

a dark, shadow grey moth
rests along the grim hue of brick,
its spattered orange cream underwings scream a Halloween defiance
to the bleariness of stone and city.

And before each fold of its wings,
there rests beyond all the pale fire
and din of a thousand slow eyed
empires, feeling the seethe
of their existence spent
in a fidgeting cauldron
where mediocrity camps
with her dangerous throne.
[59]

THE TREASURE SHIPS

Rich ornamental procession
enough wealth to dazzle a Prester John,
Sheba's queen, even the fawning
burghers of Rothschild's domain.

Reams of it,
Park Avenues in
torrents down a mountain side;
Eldorados,
the gardens of Babylon become shimmering in the sun;
this vulgar display,
this sheer ostentation.

Such are the waters of the rich I now approach.
Peach gold fabulous wealth.
More men of substance here
than all the proverbial luxury since antiquity,
- talents, ingots, ducats -
bars so heavily encrusted with gems
the very floor boards groan
with the largesse.

Never a Buddha's tooth
Pierpont scheme,
crown
or outstretched finger
did circumnavigate
more treasure
than this eye
swelling around
that one treasure chest procured.
Like a ship glutting the Spanish Main
- my treasure ship -
she vies with me
my memories
Midas' gold
or Krupp's iron wealth secured
all of which is a ransom
parleying against the crowned heads of this world.
[60]

HANNIBAL

When Hannibal mowed down Romans
with elephants,
his skill, his artistry,
had the effect of a painter's brush.

He, scraping paint off an easel,
would thrust
empires down,
trample Graeco - Romish influence
into paint spattered dust.

He neither was aware nor knew,
the Alps and Sabine allies,
Capua and other Latin tribes
would ruin his oath,
cause Baal, the false god,
to desert Punic prayers.
[61]

THE GATHERING OF DEAD WOOD

The gathering of dead wood
- driven, pinched in faces between
the strain of Van Gogh's setting -
had all the more realism
hastening down that leaden street.

Churning sockets, burdened with the duress of suffering,
the street in vigorous winter
raced like a bootblack
up from the river. Hedged by
black stems called trees, rows
of withered houses and dim bread shops
propositioned rough headlights
along a promenade of ice stalks
and careening streetlamps.

Fast in the cold,
faces were juggernauts
skating treacherously
over the pond of that closed city.
[62]

Paul Cameron Brown was born in London, England in 1948.
Moving to Canada, he grew up in Kingston before
attending high school in the southern community of Chatham.
He spent five years at University of Western
Ontario in London with summers interspersed between
work and travel. The early seventies saw trips to Europe,
the West and Mexico.

Currently teaching high school in Brampton, his poems
have appeared in Quarry, Nebula, Boreal, Northern
Journey, Stuffed Crocodile, Tightrope, as well as
a number of anthologies in the U.S.

"... one can instantly sense the private and resonant landscape
in the delicate nature... exciting water colour, a true painter of words."
Joe Rosenblatt
Three Trees Press

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