The Project Gutenberg EBook of Point Spread Poems, by Paul Cameron Brown This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org ** This is a COPYRIGHTED Project Gutenberg eBook, Details Below ** ** Please follow the copyright guidelines in this file. ** Title: Point Spread Poems Author: Paul Cameron Brown Release Date: March 2, 2010 [EBook #31477] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POINT SPREAD POEMS *** Produced by Sorour Imani. POINT SPREAD POEMS POINT SPREAD POEMS BY BY PAUL CAMERON BROWN PAUL CAMERON BROWN Foreword Page TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 9 WINDFALL 11 TURNCOAT 13 GANGLAND 15 NIGHT FISHING AT ANTIBES 17 SABBAT 19 SHIVAREE 21 POINT SPREAD 24 (THE TORONTO STAR, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30,1985) 25 READING THE TIDES: PETROGLYPH PARK 27 FABULIST 28 ACE OF SPADES 29 WILD CARD 30 1920'S FLICKER 31 CANDLELIGHT IN BLACK 32 HIGHGATE 34 CAPE OF GOOD HOPE 35 PICPUS 37 ILLUMINAIRE 38 CARNIVAL AND LENT 40 TERMINAL LIVING 45 MIDPOINT 46 TWINKLING OF AN EYE 47 SERENADE 49 HIDDEN AGENDA 50 ADVENTURER 51 SLIPPER 52 HELLULAND 53 TRINKETS 54 A THIEF'S NOTEBOOK 55 WARHORSE 57 TEETER-TOTTER 58 CHEMIN DE FER 60 WITHIN REACH 62 COUNTESS 63 COUNTESS II 64 PALEFACE 65 CUD 67 CURRENCY 68 REFRESHER COURSE 69 GHOST TALES 70 WANDERLUST 73 PASTICHE 76 BOCA 84 WORK IN PROGRESS 88 HARDCASES "In the five and dime store where I first fell in love with unreality." Lawrence Ferrenghetti WINDFALL WINDFALL Photos along a soft-centred wall like assorted chocolates with prized centres, tiny miniatures-- full portraits the young army major, for one, in battle fatigues come full family regalia. Mounting the staircase (tearing back the chocolate paper) shroud hand on the railing, pressuring the cherry liquid into oozing burst of memory, the nectarine orange of a summer's day. Swing & garden loom into view, the mind plays thoughtscapes, a tag ensemble, along the wall. Old colours (or lack of them) abound-- the antiquated dress & hairdos of grandparents that speak lavishly, into taste buds, across the fallen years. Ivy & ivory fan, kitten on a rocker, cradled baby that amounts to me, the sun coming home to roost on this plaintiff, pleading wall. Passage of thought into this chocolate box-- the lid off stern memory prying forth a directory of mouth-watering choice, or so the advertisers' claim. Yet do we ever thought over what we taut (in our heads) we are? My dad in Kenya (a time and age from this perspective like the peanut brittle) or grandfather, about eight, from the dreamy, dark cream & nougat reaches of layered black space that speaks the aeons ago-- his manner and distance a smoky haze from the twilight "special occasion" Black Magic chocolate box. [9] TURNCOAT TURNCOAT Sitting in the spendthrift dark lilting pennies away, deciphering fate ... . The bed, a warm reach past the pillow like personal mortality in the incest breath of life. Warm stuff of dreams-- the calender with its days mesh & march like soldiers dearly departed (cindered and bludgeoned) or the old sea-faring chest where all men are sailors past light's corner. Sturdy trudgeons, clock bursts thru the room mindful of time and aching, decaying things. Hallow's Eve in movements of the curtains-- a remembered Rembrandt, self-portrait of the old man standing alone in a clammy room, idling the seconds, with drab browns and grays; that sea-faring chest, again, speaking of depleted journeys. Mystic and occult moods, worlds caught in a single glance off the wall paper standing abreast the lamp and the mirror, back from the pace of a single thought. [11] GANGLAND GANGLAND A sailor, "tatoo you," the cigarette Players with tape-deck playing a jaundiced "Yellow Bird", Cerveza, Dos Equiis, the two horses, in red flame, across the label. Trolling in a deep sea-trench (spinners and chubb), the dark night a religious procession, acolyte stars in hymnal to the wind. Across the channel a Party Boat --the words almost demand capitals with actions so diminutive-- creased laughter "to go" cross the waves flicker of lights, siren call then a lemon shark strikes the bait on anchor reel, Horse-Eyed Jack perhaps borrowing the name from the Outback-- think pantomime, enter Wahoo and the aesthetic of fear crazed fish jack-knifing the boat. Someone produces a cheese tray, warm wine the small shark caught in a role reversal lies bludgeoned under the seat, even there a halo glow surrounds the eye and cobalt snout, but it is the grin that takes the edge off antics of the Party Boat some bedraggled hundred yards away this Death's Head cocktail, "What's your poison" leer teeth like naked light bulbs against tenement stairs protean hoodlum a millenia away. [13] NIGHT FISHING AT ANTIBES NIGHT FISHING AT ANTIBES A beach back of bric à brac, wine goblet of sky .... the horizon beginning somewhere between Nod & nigh unto forever with only the sigh of a Casuarina pine or sea-grape to force a smile. It was entering into twilight --our minds were sailing ships, mere vagaries upon the waves, mine more a clippership on the Frisco to China run. Soirèe intimée, apèrtif, digestif? A bottle of rum with Eleuthera for a name --the prettiest coves have steadfast winds dark about portside. Silvery light of stars, the stars like black hansom cabs with livried footmen before shark-toothed clouds, a shark-faced moon, the sight of a shark breaking water, lemon-white its gullet with the Big Dipper stuck in a shark tooth. Diamondhead or Copperback? Carpetbaggers ... the moon's silver tea-set giving birth to wonderment flooding in affection a Raouel Dufy lithograph, some decrepit Neapolitan fisherman zoning his epic life to human proportions. [15] SABBAT SABBAT Picturesque Tituba, steeped in Obeah, in a hairball swoon leads a harangue about witches with some of Salem's more delicate women, obedient children. In verdant outcrops of the imagination fuelled by a beldame's winter fire amid sparks that prance with devils thru tempest gloom covens are conjured so they implicate other pretties with raven hair, arm curled, in desperation, about the moon. With supernatural hands extended the sea is a wretch's bitter vinegar pounding the little, eggshell homes where, at twilight, a dozen village Elders with bell and taper, candlelight and prayer bind parchment oaths to envisage clandestine pacts, sabbats, obscene sojourns. Peculiar cat-- straw hat, thatch and loft a drop of blood sputtering then drawn over piddling flame, the well-intentioned righteous demask the pain-fed frightened. Gibbet, arm's length of braided rope-- gang-plank, gallow stairs that smirk off into Eternity --a lucky few strangled, the adamant burned, fickle apostates swum on a ducking stool. Ice-fire hearths-- bonfire sheaths ravishing the strong carnival veil along pebble-strewn trail. [17] SHIVAREE SHIVAREE These kettle bells. Is it the axe-murderer, with green garbage bag in the shadows? No. Green trees so thick their tops are folded hands or knotted knuckles to make perilous shrubbery by the garden wall. Yet this is a state of mind and shards of multi-coloured glass dot the top of stones. Interesting. Should a sociopath put out his shingle, come calling, a much under-estimated, rude uttering would take place. Still bees are active in the night air, not swarms, but a hum. Pleasant odours waft thru stiller air. There is no charged electricity to things, no tautness or leathery tightness to individual seconds. Still and stricken still. Yet "what ifs" come slithering as if serpents along a pasture floor. The diabolical. Rich desire to impregnate with evil, To embarcation upon conquests. To embolden and make one's mark, however ridiculous to the sane and balanced mind. Horrible. The dirty laundry of just one over-flowering and too abundant mind gone wrong. One single blossom out of place and "killer". Off-kilter. Out of whack. The pickle short of a jar syndrome. Then there's the hoots and shrill cat-calls withered by horse laughs. Guffaws with tattoos and rifle-butts. Laid back "good ole boys" type of humour going wrong soured by too many visits and skunky beers from the Orchid Lounge. Rinky-dink, honky-tonk. Dotting the landscape with worn, thin cars, trouser legs piled up, the "f" and "s" words. Charivari. A timely entry. A buzz set to sound, a faint blinking button with no sound. Suckers in the creek breaking water to catch flies, churning mud bottom by their too turbulent tails; a bird hitting the window only its night. The echo of moths lost to the stars with each jarring knock. [19] POINT SPREAD POINT SPREAD The skull in the box is that of Cornelius A. Burleigh, the first man to be hanged in London, Ontario, August 19, 1830. The public hanging attracted an audience of over 3,000 when the village of London numbered only a few hundred. Because the rope broke, he was hanged twice! The top of the skull was taken on a world tour by Dr. O.S. Fowler, a phrenologist. This part of the skull was presented to the Harris family. (Eldon House brochure) Off memory & a dare, the grave man coming to a bitter end. Burleigh, top of his skull reminiscent of a laundry cup (or toothpaste cap) separated from its yellowing, rightful owner. No jaws of life here-- rather vengeance beyond death, shellac & varnish twist shoved to the withering bone. Phrenology, sinister "fin de siecle" fingering of the intellect's character through guru-dimensions of the head, (pseudo-savant/skulduggery clairvoyant). Thimble-full thinker, sleight of hand smoke'n mirror trophy hunters boisterous crowd in a "hanging mood". Coins flip on the outcome while town drunks reel; The village idiot getting into the "swing" of things. Point spread across the yawn of death ... brittle behaviour, the sharp edge of beetles clicking in the dark. And I thought of institutionalized evil & rabid passion for revenge pursued beyond the final resting place-- most private skeletal remains held up as curios. Medieval burning of a heretic's bones, manure pile for those decried damned; the cross-roads drive your cart over the bones of the dead, the remembered suicide's end. Not so strange given human nature, Lord Byron's silver drinking cup runaway Ethiopian slave (twisted paean to romance) or Hand of Glory, corpse-fresh from the gibbet & famed forges of France. Hair strands as in under a magnifying glass, then shards of clothing/clods of earth covering a shovel. The autopsy-necromancy Nazi intrigue, playing polo with your opponent's skull --Carl Sagan's Broca's Brain red-bearded decapitation floating in a cloud of formaldehyde; sale of skeletons/white slavery filthy lucre all in one utilitarian lust for cadavers .... Robber-birds pinioning their prey ... Mania to collect mania to re-collect, shadow-boxing logic rattle his bones he's only a pauper whom nobody owns. [21] (THE TORONTO STAR, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1985) (THE TORONTO STAR, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1985) Bare bones future Medical schools may be facing a bare bones future, thanks to a shortage of skeletons. According to an article in The Medical Post, most anatomy skeletons come from India and the Indian government has placed a ban on the export of human skulls and skeletons. At Queen's University, 500 students share 300 skeletons, four or five of which have to be replaced every year although the head of the anatomy department says the students take good care of them. Anatomists say it would be extremely hard to duplicate the surface details with plastic skeletons but the option may have to be considered. [24] READING THE TIDES: PETROGLYPH PARK READING THE TIDES: PETROGLYPH PARK " ... A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain ... a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a faery's wing." THE GREAT GATSBY Perceiving the universe as an orchid stem, wild hibiscus crane & heron breaking water --voyage of elliptical, pea-shaped canoe down dancing images of the underworld. This temperature charged, climate-controlled glass geode designed to war on moss and stone munching aphid lichens seems everybit as fanciful as any animal totem. Grim crevice in the rock (animistic female orifice) fertility turtle swollen with eggs carrying Earth thru gorged labours of darting salamander & the spaceman snake. And coming to that rushing sound, (subterranean, evocative stream) or so Algonkians, pensive & puzzled, paused for a thought encased in deep, riverine bowels. Glass slipper, blue guitar --Silent Lake with something of wild dimensions in Warsas Caves (Cyclopean boulders), Serpent Mounds, this runic enchantment with glyphs & a cabalistic moon of May. [25] FABULIST FABULIST Riel veritably in a cockpit-- Gabriel Dumont with his buffalo robe peeking from behind a blind at Duck Lake all ingredients intact, a gallow's walk inevitable given a series of probable givens. Given Riel is an illusionist figuring 3 days back from the grave --that an early prototype of the Gatling gun is in effect, that a Ghost Dance cannot stop bullets. Superior numbers & discipline' mandate the West will cringe to the Queen's Red Coats; what's more, the iron horse icon "talking leaves" & the superficiality of running a plow over the land's back all take their calculated toll. By some obscure, parboiled magic Riel is transformed to a living room of today: heir apparent to the French Canadian empire (nightmare) or yuppie visionary illuminaire? In the Dominion soup kitchen, the rest of the country acts as a beggar clutching another pot. [27] ACE OF SPADES ACE OF SPADES Parable as metaphor-- profile in hard glint of light, buckskin garb merging from shadow & buckboards-- sandwiching of memory being elbowed thru a Deadwood City saloon door. Noneother. Dead Man's Hand. Cards strewn, last tumbler ... chamber on empty. Yancy Derringer modelling the latest revolver of his namesake, in pit & the palm bullet in the back for Wild Bill, just for a keepsake. Treasure-trove for the funeral parlour: "they done him up well". Peccadillo as provocation. [28] WILD CARD WILD CARD Clayton brothers at the corral, its Earp City today tumbleweed junction for numerous lives, not to mention lies swift-draw artists encased in a memory of stone boots up ... with all the forlorn grace of being pushed in front of a train. [29] 1920's FLICKER 1920's FLICKER John Dillinger and Baby-Faced Nelson in a dream together --one shooting holes thru theories of his untimely death, the other frying in an old-time (e) Electric Chair with balloons waving, bonbons going off, the crowd in a joyous, boisterous mood. The marquee reads: "Public Enemy Number One laid to rest in a shallow grave as gravelly as the heart that beat in his stoney chest." An adjacent sign noted, crime does pay the undertaker but other, good-hearted folks need look no further than the Dempsey-Tunney fight to see which has the bigger box office draw. [30] CANDLELIGHT IN BLACK CANDLELIGHT IN BLACK The ghosts are marmalade thin as rinds across toast or the Weeping Willow, whose green beard leans, crane-like, into a child's backyard. A Morning Cloak butterfly, maroon wet with the paint of morning, cat paws thin filament leaves astride a larder of memories. Dalliance with the past, smoke grey these architects of memory the privet hedge, lone pine tree, jet black caterpillar poised about a green carrot top trigger laced in emperor's gold like fathoms of the sea held ... in quiet repose. [31] HIGHGATE HIGHGATE Angel Inn, come off a sign blown sideways in the sugar and ices night. Old St. Joseph's Cathedral, bottom of the hill, here Andrew Marvell of "coy mistress" fame sports a plaque remembering "time's winged chariot" and farther (further!) up a quaint pub gives accolades (Kudos, too) to the fact, 1666 nefariously was the plague year in London--Parliament Hill, a brief arm stretch away, posited strangled chickens and other assorted heirlooms in vain attempt for poesy to thwart poxy. A stone's throw off in Hampstead Heath guns (Big Berthas) could be heard from the Somme, German dirigibles dropped incendiaries, the wounded entrained at Charing Cross and a rascallion (John Keats by name) drained a draught at Jack Straw's Castle near the Spaniards while Turpin's hanged corpse was soon to resemble good English oaker casks at the Flask. [32] CAPE OF GOOD HOPE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE Poltergeist activity --the sun winding like a staircase onto the pavement, rickety afternoon shooting back thru shawls of the city. Tippy-toe. Curtains ajar, a face at the cross-roads looking, looking for all the world as pavement stones, greasy & black, a thin oiled compliment to Mrs. Blight registered at Old Inn Road. [34] PICPUS PICPUS The day I went to LaFayette's grave, the concierge became our tour guide amid an old ruin of tombstones including bedraggled de Tocqueville's crypt (and he, heir apparant of America, too). There, too, the odd City of St. Louis tribute Fayettevilles after yet another "Saint" Louis, despoiler of the Jews--both sitting, squat and apparant, in summer dust, so shingle-flat, mindful of Place De La Nation, more blood-letting blocks away (so the aristocracy might be healed). A chapel nun then reached in loud silence for our Lord, her black habit / upraised hands forming a brilliant crucifix against sky and altar. Some francs exchanged hands (Monsieur le keeper, after all, obliged us by opening a private cemetery, après heures), the graves looked so wretched-- death stylized in military formation, row on row, every private carrying a field marshall's baton only this time of mortality's making, crestfallen, no Agile Lapin/Moulin Rouge here, in the joyless, little garden (not a bird sang), our old Frenchman narrating/marching on in The Old Guard, Grand Armée fashion a little Napoleonic his cemetery, his brandy like his suspender buttons lost to recent antiquity. Place des Vosges, Place des Vendomes. A dish of plaice at the palais and a royal hippodrome. [35] ILLUMINAIRE ILLUMINAIRE Elfin & gold bug, genie in the twilight of a cave. Virgin On The Rocks --Da Vinci's painting-- aura light seeping toward sun-lit crack of day, the Master's Mona Lisa in the Louvre raptured, luminescence amid aging pigment steeping about rapt multitude. Betwixt pit & pendulum, another canvas-- Da Vinci in a beatific pose (warm light of the room), gentle finger pointing upward, a puzzled crowd with nowhere to see. [37] CARNIVAL AND LENT CARNIVAL AND LENT Jungle, the cave human reservoir & cistern .... quagmire and bog, but no alpine meadow, fairest glance of goodness in soiled wildflower under winter snows. Pebbles into a cesspool, our sometime passions alive in the outback where honey-fuelled ants soothe enemy bones. My blood, tempest-whipped, ardour drawn to the surface fathom marks the depths sees a spectacle on the roads queues/Carnival & Lent, unbridled raw and raging. Jesus would have nails. Poison darts, liana and mangrove sounds with footsteps in the distance the blow-gun or bolo knife attache case / cellular phone ... "I'll kick your teeth down your throat, professionally speaking." Nine to five fecal beings perform the toilet-bowl flush. Tsetse fly with design-- sapient, sand paper rough along the edge, dry rot to the core. Plague rats cluster in a feeding frenzy sampling tidbits. Swirl of the bull fight, colour and scope, only its a supermarket, freeway. Wide angle, wild angel, Umbrage of the uppercut. Tough-mindedness, singleness of purpose, the glacial speed of fairness along the sorted, sordid circles of Spitsbergen. Our species' jailbait reason firing up the flashlight in the dark for a circumspect peek in the woods sleeping. Tell me your adventures in living. Another hour spent strangling a reindeer on the taiga, boreally-speaking. [38] TERMINAL LIVING TERMINAL LIVING "Everybody in the world is frightened of getting cut." Charles Manson I The image complete --collapsing corpses, rag dolls with skulls shot away ... ruby-red blood spurting slipstick/eyeshadow/mascara all so reptilian replete. II The long fingers of the pianist playing rifle fire to a captive audience, stiletto tones; the trance effect, precedes a cobra's strike, summer without smoke. III A glass of absinthe --the Degas painting, Marc Lepine measuring out his vial, measuring the worth of a single woman and finding her long on the call, cartridge shells exploding filaments of smoke (long and blue) like a woman's fingers up from his death gun. IV Existential longing-- vision far ago, a lost world of virile primates where a man's worth transcended his tie-clip (suspenders ready, binoculars steady), letting the stiff upper lip quiver. Then his face the colour of rainwater, shoe leather in that same rain. V "I am not a wallet," but he was someone's son. VI Mystery (wretched Marc, so unfathomable inside your debâcle, mélée that the French so forlornly cloak, enfant perdu). VII Marc, you are not confined to "why", rather representative of a long line of predecessors dead certain they are nobley right. Gender knows no restraint. Male crazies? I see the cloaks and shawls of spectres breaking saloon bottles with an axe cursing demon rum, hear "red alert" at maternity wards after the shootings --boy babies, at risk, from estrogen cranks. VIII Strange, women speak of it, Lepine died for it--his ersatz, clouded vision, no milktoast he, yet so much egg on the face this dirty thing "Justice". Naughty boy taking one too many reprimands from Father, think of Madonna's spankie. IX All the same, Saddam Hussein, Pedro the Cruel (Butcher of Baghdad, Montreal or writhing throes of medieval pillage). Getting one's own lid pried off-- the shaking indignation of Il Duce, Der Fuehrer, the sanctimonious hard-shell pose of Henry, Anne Bolyn in the cell block for being a witch (the reputed third breast