Mascara-Viscera.

by Paul Cameron Brown.

FLASHPOINT

1 The moon has a larder and a kitchen, wears a nightcap as Father in the Night Before Christmas.

2 The moon h.o.a.rds pistachios, marzipan commands the shadows is mustachioed sleeps in a sloop (at least when I look) like the boat owl and p.u.s.s.ycat took to sea.

3 And on country nights in high summer fishing nets seem drawn about his face, reveal ribbons of light, eerie panhandlers grubbing quarters; a sinister sailor with a sack on a pitch black wharf.

4 Between clouds, leafy barques the hinge reflected on the thick, ashen door the moon will pirate your senses set them adrift amidst twilight islands in the mind's Outer Hebrides where mystery is king and the hem of robe you kiss is an envelope pilfered.

MARZIPAN

1 A thick hole in the dark from which stars pour silver as in pails their runny divide ink-strewn scalps torn from the roof of the sky.

2 Padded footprints giant ferns blooming constellation prints, the wind an athlete pacing about a track drying thru fingerprints thin, nectarine light.

3 Sand down whitest skin moving past your hand a gown, mauve to green, iceberg lettuce, the black festering across a ribcage; while night arranges moths to dusting powder pucker-lipped fronds from afar

4 Afar, the word a gypsy tangled in the waves, foam from a medicine bottle agitated and strewn, bubbles calculated in gasps light into the distance forlorn tree-frogs, the cricket sound round deep --movement of night as a rumbling in the ground,

SANTO DOMINGO

In the crypt with Columbus in the crypt with Giovanni of Genoa, the diaspora driven Jew; watching flecks of the cathedral floor jade-eyed and mica afraid yawning down brown the abyss, his skeletal coffin thin accae wood, phlegm coloured flamed ointment of the saints in holy water bridging the little centuries.

2 Serpentine heavens in coiled stars heaving like pa.s.sion fruit hung down piano wire.

3 Meteors douse the light of black stems, eye holes cut of old Spanish sailors; thin ghosts plundering night.

4 Melange tableaux peut-etre les etoiles sont oiseaux.

WHITE CHINA PLATES I

The moon hummed like a refrigerator, light thru shadows --the solitude of dusk closing in; black scars visible across the moon's face shaped like mountainous hands, all silent, the occasional leaf rustling.

2 My fork at plate's edge listening, listening to the haunting one eye on the staircase wall white as the numb light outside palest night.

Caught off-guard, the musty settee and armchair acting as hallucinogen to the nostril, the calendar of events playing ghostly tag with sheer curtains hovering, shroud-like, on the family Bible big and brown as the Lord's foot stool.

3 The unravelling tale slowly much as thick yarn with a kitten batting it, one event at a time in sepulchre movement down a linoleum floor. Two twins burning, fever scalded in frigid water only shock setting in, dying to join the black creek water from which her unwilling buckets borrowed this liquid crucifixion and bitter vinegar.

4 Or the drive-house door, silent in precision, unseen hands before marauding hoofs in unison dark from windows' edge to better hear little poke of sleigh bells or harness rattling grim with a sick man's cough.

5 This admission of spectral animals somehow more unsettling than the young woman next combing her hair at the foot of the bed scaring the daylights out of me picturing the whereabouts of stockinged feet, these tricksters from another world; drum and kettle corps gypsy fife with harbinger doom to rasp of falling broom-- old and yellow silky straw witch's hair-- and a cat dark as the Devil's very bread.

WHITE CHINA PLATES II

You could have driven a pick-up truck thru spokes of that moon, so big and radiant this upended water chestnut-- ground mist weeping in the shadows flutter of an old woman's shawl, the clammy smell like a child's fingers to the face, a little unsettling crickets and dew in brigades running tears on the old shoe leather.

MAIL DROP

A boat sits on the very shallows of a lake in egg-cup fashion, a tea-cosy covering waves, orchestrating the bob of colours in white enamel blue inverted water.

Afar, the boat is a rasher of bacon a strip, stripling, stipend slicing the lake, distancing.

The boat is an envelope at the end of the world, planet-sized, pea-green about to spin crazily into the sun at the end of a rifle-sized mail drop.

The boat rides amid the between places of things, furtive longings where crones sit within waiting bushes & lizards visit skin, dirge of teeth gnashing the fringe canopy of flowing leaves.

HEADDRESS

Stravinsky's Firebird, Debussy's La Mer lilting arrangement like a windmill with a little Hottentot of a bird scurrying over leaves like hot coals, nest a pudding arrangement, oven-shaped, dappled with a string.

She is alternatively lady of the green shoots, Empress of an Andes of twigs for this cow-pie upended between trees is fortress and manor, blockhouse and Maginot Line careening between the branches much as a sloth toe ambles across the roof of a forest gingerly stepping on noise, clinging to velvet footpads, sitting between shadows within the roar of a clearing.

AIRBRUSH

Iced coffee, wedge of toast-- the sun poking thru cranberry gla.s.s delights exquisite d.u.c.h.ess of Berry, her decanters & an hourgla.s.s.

Halo-h.e.l.lo in your fingertips I said, to a cadaver of light boldly striking a tuning fork to ring an engagement of gold flecks by your bed.

Limoges vase for lace and pretty underthings for outside the stream steals my interest, wearing tumbledown silk pyjamas and a peek-a-boo smile that points thru reed curtains.

A rustle from her chemise and sun parasol parts green boudoir draping shiny, black rock.

The muddle of this earth-time puzzle, brief flutter to the eyelid's b.u.t.ter-- I saw match-flare crocheted into the snake eyes of your dress.

SWORDS AND ROSES

Some lives have themes.

Goldfish that stubbornly die; compatability only with distant lovers --flowers (but no sweet-breads) that wilt to the touch.