John Courtney Poems

Fairly certain I was dead
I decided to stop for lunch
in a strong crimson hallway
three rooms from the body.
...

At dusk my sweet faces cook on blood-shot shores,
the trees swing and are boys and are thirsty like I am.

Thunder and the lamp of other language
follows the scented harvest of a disabled shadow.
...

In eyes I'll travel
against summer music
scaffolds of Rimbaud
hitchhiking backwards
...

You'll find a window open
facing the night,
one pair of athletic shoes
under blue jeans
...

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:
...

I am opening my eyes to let them see,
their body led by foreign mules;
a signpost trampled by leaders, my voice
trying to check into the wrong world,
...

I.

there is a woman
who stays
...

Sometimes I go back
to my mother's arms
I watch her mouth
and a king
...

We reference liars. It begins again
with removal looking for either a
pill or birds to steal with stilling
dust. The vanity often bends to fit
...

Hauling life from the seed
darkness kissing silence
in peripheral bedrooms
where past lives burn
...