Raining Maria Rilke Poem by John Courtney

How many men have tried my thoughts; five hours of sleep on black wallpaper, thick aroma truths for panthers slowly roaming to the theory of an onyx jungle, the television watching my blue skin on a blue chair, early morning that drags her drunk husband home, he likes the way she laughs at the way she's laughed at,

warm water running in the bathroom of my dream where I change my minds,
I think of shaving and remember the tough stubble on the cleft of my father's face:
'A cleft on the chin means the Devil's within! ' I think of walking and learn
to crawl, of talking and learn to cry. I think of eating and find myself gaunt
in the kitchen of my gut, chased there by my grandmother's barley soup recipe.

I think of Bukowski's nose and Fante's legs, their stones growing eyes in
fleshless alleys, the declining property value of a mindless neighborhood,
the kings of ghosts who wildly horsewhip over my days, the bathwater stops
and how many listen further than isolation to the rooftop raining Maria Rilke?

There is also a survivor among my scattered battalion, a woman who waits
like freshly fallen snow in the voices of my dream, not the late night
of abandoned dancing, but a skeleton unbroken to turn the key of my hooded
fate, a privacy among the cypress, handwriting that cooks faces in camping
silences of my nightmare, a woodlouse that uncurls and walks from the attic of my thoughts,
a photograph on the back of my sunvisor, a friend to hold the heavy light.