Title: Coming to Grips with White Knuckles
Author: Paul Cameron Brown
Release date: January 13, 2010 [eBook #30948]
Most recently updated: January 28, 2020
Language: English
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.
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.
7 King and John Streets (For Isabella Valancy Crawford) 8 Colette 9 Chinatown I 10 Toronto 12 The Draper's Cloth 13 Poet's Are Magic Beings 14 Casha 15 The Jolly Tupper 16 Vertigo 19 Bedroom Glass 21 Ahoy 23 The Poetry Pond 24 What Became of the Sixties? 25 Sixties Hangover 26 Dash Into Realism: Escape Pad From The Sixties 27 What Colour Is Love? 28 Chain Letter 29 Slaughterhouse 30 Lavender 32 The Necklace Garden 33 Pillage 34 Desire 35 Preening 36 Chance Upon 37 Leaf Doctor 38 Tussaud's 39 Vulcans 40 Dry Guillotine 41 Mangroves 42 Pondicherry 43 The Clearing That Is The Trees 44 Humboldt's Current 45 The Gingham Dream Utterance 46 Juniper Trees 47 Distemper 48 Night Winds 49 Amherst Island 50 Ancient of Days 51 Constantly Deliberation 52 The Drunken Boat |
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
"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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
"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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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
