Turncoat
By Paul Cameron Brown
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.