Copacabana at Midnight: Collected Poems and Stories

Brian Ray Brewer

Description

Copacabana at Midnight is a collection of poetry and short stories which shares themes with several of the author’s novels. These verses were written in the isolation of life at sea. This work speaks of love, loss, loneliness, betrayal, obsession, possession, horror, illness, death, forgiveness and of the beauty and the power of the oceans.

Sujets

• Collected Poems
• Stories
• Brewing
• Poetry
• Brian
• Brewer

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 12 juillet 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798369402665
• Langue: English

Extrait

Copacabana at Midnight: Collected Poems and Stories
BRIAN RAY BREWER

Copyright © 2023 by Brian Ray Brewer.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023912681
ISBN:
Hardcover
979-8-3694-0268-9
 
Softcover
979-8-3694-0267-2
 
eBook
979-8-3694-0266-5
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 07/11/2023
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
853691
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
-VOLUME ONE-
Cries Primeval
Cries Primeval
XXI.
Half a World You Are Away
Somewhere in the Distant Night
Sleep
II.
Cycle of Clay
XXIV.
When I Wake in Early Hours
Rio
XI.
Steaming On
The Sea of Solitude
VII.
Billy the Black
XXIX.
Tiger in an Iron Cage
XIV.
The Bereaved
The Sky Above, The Depths Below
The Path Seemed Clear
XVI.
Where Do Demons Dwell?
The Crab
Ashes Blow Up From the Urn
Diamonds and You
Christmas in the City
XVII.
Rivers of Red
XXVII.
Innocent and Three
Swells
And Then at the End of Time
In the Fading Light of Dusk
XXXIII.
IX.
XXVI.
Innocence
I Call To You in the Dark of Night
XV.
XXII.
The Beast Within
VIII.
Our Secret Dale
XXXV.
Ode to Oggie
The Music
And Now?
XIII.
IV.
Giant Clamshell
XXV.
Do You Hear Me?
XXXVII.
The Night Before Parting
Persian Rug
Love is Anger
XXXI.
Elephant
XXIII.
The Terror of the Skies
XXVIII.
Little Jimmy Jamberjaw
Shipwreck on the Ocean Floor
My Nights are Not My Own
XXXII.
-VOLUME TWO-
From a Seaman to His Wife
From a Seaman to His Wife
There are Bones in the Closet
Scrimshawed Ship Upon this Tooth
Remember Me Your Photo
I Hear Whispers in the Air
Time is an Unruly Device
Beauty Lies Beneath the Skin
Beer in? Beer out?
These Hours Long, Unmerciful
Moonshadows in the Fullness of the Night
Songs and Laughter Fill the Skies
A Leaf in My Worn Bible
Burnished Skin on Sand-draped Strand
He Knew it All
Crucible of Pleasure
Edgar Allen, Good John Keats and Dear Old William Blake
Window of Remembrance Take Me to the Past
In the Rivers of My Mind
When the Day is Nearly Done
An Ocean and the Andes
The Surf Rolls In. The Surf Rolls Out.
William Blake is on The Make
In the Foundries of Desire
There It is Again
Crocodiles Cry
The Sea’s a Salty Mystery
A Land Bird’s Perched Upon the Mast
Sorrow Rises Up
Complexity of Character
Anger Swells Me Like an Ape
Steel is Hard
Visions of Your Closing Eyes
A Girl I knew, so Beautiful
Longitudes and Latitudes
Night Presses in Upon Us
A Lifeboat in a Stormy Sea
Shadows in Sunlight, Shadows in Dark
Sadness Takes Me like a Swell
The Ghost of a Woman Living
Swells Roll on Forever
Exhaustion Floods my Cylinders
What Waft of Thought
I’ve Only Five Minutes to Send This Note Away
Many-chambered Nautilus
There You are Again
Creator of the Every
When the Busy Day is Done
Who’d Have Thought that Izzy Haff-Waite
Strange Birds Twitter in My Ears
Time is Short, Though Long it Seems
There it is Again
I Ate Too Much. I Drank Too Much
More Than Thirty Years of Bumbling
Where Do You Come From Dreams That Have No Relation to Me?
I Made a Hundred Grand Last Year
Man is Noble Sometimes, True
The Weathercast that Guides Me
The Thing About a Drunk
Through the Mountains
In This Shelled-out, Barren Waste
There’s a Place I Often Go
A Hundred Poems in Two-months’ Time
Down to the Sea in Ships, They Said
-VOLUME THREE-
Copacabana at Midnight & Other Stories
Copacabana at Midnight
Mirror, Mirror
Jack’s Last Dive
Sock Monkey
Hunger
Ride to Perdition
The Lighthouse
Letting Go
The Orb
Falling, Falling
Surviving the Zombie Invasion

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
For
The Spirit that moves us,
For
Silviane and our daughters,
For
The valiant who resist the zombie
and for the brave who fought it unto death
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge and thank the following people: Neil Bardot who taught generations of mariners the art of written communication and who graciously read and critiqued my early work; Katie B Kohn and Chris Mooney who provoked my writing of these short stories; and finally, Laurie Dove for her editing skill.
-VOLUME ONE-
Cries Primeval
Cries Primeval
Call out your cries primeval!
from the comfort of your chair.
Dream the savage hunter!
Slash the maddened bear!
Sate your wild hunger
with quivering chunks of meat.
Rip the steaming liver!
Howl crazy as you eat!
Slake your thirst in rivers—
blood pouring from the mound
of your feral triumph
torn open on the ground.
Call out your cries primeval!
from the comfort of your chair,
but call not very loudly
lest anyone should hear.
XXI.
Fly, fly
butterflies.
Flutter by
my lady fair.
 
Flit your dances,
tangled trances,
in her tresses
ruby rare,
in her mane
of fiery hair.
 
Weave a garland
rippling bright
in your frolicked
airy flight.
 
Set a crown
upon the head
of living beauty
couched in red,
 
beauty of
unearthly bent
finer than your
silken wings,
 
beauty certain
heaven sent
that glows
in splendid
radiant rings
 
of passion
thrilling warm.
Weave a carpet
in your fashion.
Flit around her
fairy form.
 
Dance her
floating
arabesques
in clouds
of yellow,
purple, green.
 
Spark her smiles
with your wiles,
streaming dazzles
seldom seen.
 
Pirouette plumes
to her above,
coquet spinning
whispered love.
 
Let her hear
in rumors soft
her beauty
touted high aloft.
 
Flutter, flutter
buttered sighs
of rapture
my lost
butterflies.
 
Flutter, flutter
buttered sighs.
Trace her dream
throughout the skies.
Half a World You Are Away
Half a world you are away
and half a world in time
must pass until I cross this prison sea
to crush you to me tenderly
in embrace given once for all
the passion saved unspent.
 
I brushed your farewell tears away
when we kissed apart—
they tingle still upon my waiting touch
and trace salt sadness, soft agony as such
a wound can bring
a stricken man alone.
 
Now set to send this note away
across these waters vast and cold,
stabs of longing pierce down quick
and melancholy wells up thick,
but through my gloom I smile
and feel grateful for this trial—
 
for time is naught, nor is this prison sea
for the pain of loving you from far
is greater joy than all other loves could be.
Somewhere in the Distant Night
Somewhere in the distant night
a beacon flashes saving light,
but where, in which direction, tell,
lies salvation? Behind which swell?
 
The darkened clouds
the cold, black sea
stitch their shrouds
to cover me.
 
I fight the helm to face the swells,
but cold and wind toll drowsing bells.
I strain to pass this mortal test,
but slipping will and hands choose rest.
 
The lifeboat broaches
and ships the sea.
The deep encroaches
and covers me.
Sleep
I fight the wakeful swells of sleep,
pulling hard down to the deep,
down past the currents of the day,
down through dark ink where monsters lay,
writhing in the sucking mud
with their terror and their lust for blood,
 
swimming down through divers’ places,
past my evils past my graces,
down through the crying, through the screams
of my torment-tortured dreams,
kicking through a thousand hells,
through labyrinthine, sepulchral wells.
 
I swim down to the icy floor,
I scratch! I clutch! I pull the door!
I gasp for air where there is none—
black water fills my bursting lungs.
I drift lifeless in the deep.
I’ve overcome! I’ve conquered sleep.
II.
A witch’s wind blows from the North,
a wind of power, health, and heat,
It rushes down the longitudes
to fall as whispers at her feet.
 
It pauses, waiting her command
to tempest, rage, or billow soft
It waits to ravage sea or land
or w