Coming to Grips with White Knuckles Part 1

Coming to Grips with White Knuckles.

by Paul Cameron Brown.

KING AND JOHN STREETS (FOR ISABELLA VACANCY CRAWFORD)

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.

COLETTE

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 gla.s.s 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.

CHINATOWN I

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.

TORONTO

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 Pre Catalan in the Bois, a Toronto equivalent.

A girl named Chantilly burning charcoal in the forest.

I drank a c.o.c.ktail 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.

THE DRAPER'S CLOTH

I imagine stars at the dragon's tail, eyelids ringing with b.u.t.ter.

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.

POETS ARE MAGIC BEINGS

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

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 pa.s.sage, like the arrows.

CASHA

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 suns.h.i.+ne wet in her parting hand that all the birds in grace sigh at Saint Francis breathless.

THE JOLLY TUPPER

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 gla.s.s, rich aroma, tresor, like the Jolly Tupper print preparing his bowl, drawing on the clay stem as if from a height watching s.h.i.+ps 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.

VERTIGO

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, longsh.o.r.emen 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 circ.u.mstances.