when words don’t come easy they make do with silence and find something in nothing to say to each other when the absinthe runs out. his glass and ego are bigger than hers, his elbows sharper, stabbing into the table and the chambers of her heart cobalt clown without a smile. she looks away with his misery behind her eyes and sadness on her lips, back into her curves and the orange grove summer of her dress worn and blown by sepia time where she painted her cockus giganticus lying down naked for her brush and skin, mingling intimate scents undoing and doing each other. for some of us, living back then is more going forward than living in now and sitting hereat this table, with these glasses standing empty of absinthe, faces wanting hands to be a bridge of words and equal peace as Guernica approaches.
Lothlorien Poetry Journal’s first published volume of poetry and prose features the work of sixty- three internationally renowned poets and authors. Join us on our journey in The Fellowship of the Pen. Be moved and inspired by their individual poetic voices from every continent on Earth and discover that there is more to life that unites us than divides us.
Lothlorien Poetry Journal is a literary journal featuring free verse/rhyming/experimental poetry, short stories, flash fiction, video poems and occasional interviews with poets. Journey with us on the road to poems that linger and haunt. Discover poems of enchantment, fantasy, fairy tale, folklore, dreams, dystopian, flora and fauna, magical realism, romance, and anything hiding deep in-between the cracks.
Lothlorien Poetry Journal publishes periodically, 4-6 issues every year. Contributors to each issue ( selected from the best work published on the Journal’s Blog ) will be notified prior to publication and will receive a free PDF copy of the issue that features their work. A print and E-book version of each issue will be available to purchase from lulu.com and Amazon Books.
Lothlorien Poetry Journal nominates for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
I want to go Where words go After we say them And settle on their receivers thought To ease their mind if caught, And warm their heart throughout. I want to roam about Where words hang out When no one hears them, And watch them enter someone else Invisible with stealth To make them hope or doubt. I want to be a word Profound or absurd And be adopted or rejected.
Mark Jones: Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/
your words stung, and hung me upside down, inside out, to watch you swan turned shrew- hairbrush out all memory and meaning, from those fresco pictures on the wet plaster ceiling- that my Michaelangelo took years to paint, in glorious colours, now flaked and full of hate.
the lights of our plaeides went out, with no new songs to sing and talk about- suspended there inside sobs of solitude and infinite despair- like soluble syllables of barbiturates in exhaust fumes of apology and regrets.
you left me prone- to hear deaths symphony alone, split and splattered, opened on the floor, repenting for nothing, evermore- like a salted slug, curdled and curled up on the rug- to melt away while you spoon and my colours fade to grey.
the heart of truth- intact in youth, fractures into fronds of lies and trust, destined to become a hollow husk- but i found myself again in hopes congealing pools and left the field of fools to someone else- and put her finished book back on its shelf.
EVER AFTER TOMORROW
throw all your dreams in a bottle of river- so they can sink and drag you down slow; pick out their seams, make them gone from the giver- over the brink, but dont let it show. drowning, just drink- you’re a spectral forgiver, shades have the means to laugh at each blow- life is to think, it is for the beginner, but less than it seems ever after tomorrow- the cover of sleep screams awake and gives her love with body, scribed with ink inside a rainbow.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/
the dark emerald green descends in a dream that was thin sliding down old Benbulbin.
the mossy rocks set, like elemental clocks don’t move- slow time is worn smooth.
then us hive bugs mortal in summer duds slide past to the bottom hanging on before forgotten.
understanding change- others need to be strange in it all- to repented blame they go walking in lashing rain some less tall-
back to town lank hair matted down in the bar the same drink too far.
Strider Marcus Jones has had poems in several journals and anthologies including Dreich Magazine, The Racket Journal, Trouvaille Review, Poppy Road Review, and The Huffington Post. He has written several self-published books of poetry; most recently, Pomegranate Flesh (2012), Wooded Windows (2011), and Mavericks (2008). He holds a law degree from De Montfort University and lives in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. He is also the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/
voices make their choices in the game- to remain loyal, or abstain and stunt reputation for self gratification.
get real profits of career soon heal the sacrifice of bold ideal- when the grey suits in the system say: preserving status quo, is the wisdom in this play. other tunes, are moments of fame- memorable then forgotten in the main stagnating stream of politics, where embedded institutions share the same out of tune,
out of reach hot air balloon playing unmusical licks treading us down in the gravity of tribal tricks with ghost notes wearing uniforms of halved normality in the foreground and background with loaded guns inside and outside their tunic coats- ready to suppress any massed intention of Bastille insurrection.
you don’t have the right to repeal my name, or make me think and do the same as you. your way, is extinction- only seconds as time reckons, a philosophy founded on myths, twisted in technological trysts tuned to suit you.
THAT BLACKSMITH FELLOW
crumpling crumbling heart
war thump peace pump stall start
cave hunting and gathering in groups
to farms with crops and hoofed livestocks drink beer, eat meat and soups.
that blacksmith fellow, with fire and forge, hammer and bellow, is still the alchemist-
malleolus like his mettles when everybody settles into civil lists.
in us now, the subliminal plough sets our furrows footsteps-
so summer’s run and winter’s plod, with, or without god in and out of upsets.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
pull the roof off knock the walls down touch the forest climb those mountains and smell the sea again. watch how life decomposes in death going back to land to reform and be reborn as something and someone else. there’s no great secret to it all. no need to overthink it through food and shelter fire and shamans clothes and coupling used to be enough with musicians artists and poets interpreting the dance. then warriors with armies religions with god and minds buying and selling stole the landscape and changed time. smash the windows break down the doors melt the keys rub evil words from their spells and puncture the lungs of their wheels before they kidnap you from bed call you dissident hold you without charge wheel you out on a stretcher from waterboard torture for years without trial in Guantanamo Bay. they are selling the sanctuary we made with our numbers bringing back chains making some of us slaves outside the dance in the five coloured rings making winners and losers holding flags and flames.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. Find him at: https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/
her hair tumbles blowing like unfurled cotton through unforgotten fumbles in vegetation of our own interpretation of each other in the dark.
my desk grown out of a tree sown from my lover where i carved these words in the bark sitting in her branches knowing what life is all about as i look out of wooded windows
and absorb it’s shows as it goes through each obscenity of extreme supremacy- a woman must not let a man forget she is a suffragette in her soul and under his blanket so never kept
or chatteled forever to the custom weather of his debt.
A Woman Does Not Have To Wait
under the old canal bridge you said so i can hear the echoes in your head repeating mine this time when it throws our voices from roof into water where i caught her reflection half in half out of sunshine. that’s when i hear Gerschwin playing his piano in you working out the notes to rhapsody in blue that makes me float light and thin deep within through the air when you put your comforts there. Waits was drinking whisky from his bottle while i sat through old days with Aristotle knowing i must come up to date because a woman does not have to wait.
The Two Saltimbanques
when words don’t come easy they make do with silence and find something in nothing to say to each other when the absinthe runs out.
his glass and ego are bigger than hers, his elbows sharper, stabbing into the table and the chambers of her heart cobalt clown without a smile.
she looks away with his misery behind her eyes and sadness on her lips, back into her curves and the orange grove summer of her dress worn and blown by sepia time
where she painted her cockus giganticus lying down naked for her brush and skin, mingling intimate scents undoing and doing each other.
for some of us, living back then is more going forward than living in now and sitting here-
at this table, with these glasses standing empty of absinthe, faces wanting hands to be a bridge of words and equal peace as Guernica approaches.
Hopper’s Ladies
you stay and grow more mysterioso but familiar in my interior- with voices peeled full of field of fruiting orange trees fertile to orchard breeze soaked in summer rains so each refrain all remains.
not afraid of contrast, closed and opened in the past and present, this isolation of Hopper’s ladies, sat, thinking in and out of ifs and maybes in a diner, reading on a chair or bed knowing what wants to be said to someone who is coming or gone-
such subsidence into silence is a unilateral curve of moments and movements that swerve a straight lifetime to independence in dependence touching sublime rich roots then ripe fruits.
we share their flesh and flutes in ribosomes and delicious shoots that release love- no, not just the fingered glove to wear and curl up with in a chair, but lovingkindness cloaked in timeless density and tone in settled loam- beyond lonely apartments in skyscrapers and empty newspapers, or small town life gutting you with gossips knife.
Oviri (The Savage – Paul Gauguin in Tahiti)
woman, wearing the conscience of the world- you make me want less civilisation and more meaning.
drinking absinthe together, hand rolling and smoking cigars- being is, what it really is- fucking on palm leaves under tropical rain.
beauty and syphilis happily cohabit, painting your colours on a parallel canvas to exhibit in Paris the paradox of you.
somewhere in your arms- i forget my savage self, inseminating womb selected by pheromones at the pace of evolution.
later. I vomited arsenic on the mountain and returned to sup morphine. spread ointments on the sores, and ask: where do we come from. what are we. where are we going.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
if i could take the word love, and give to it the sound of how you speak, then look inside its shell and find you- living out the years like you belong:
i would wear its shape and substance in the shadow of myself, and hold it in my empty hand to not feel so alone- then raise it to my lips and taste its phrase and something more-
as i head home, along that rutted road of fallow fields and ancient tracks, through what was, and is now, and might become- while posing pines, stand and hang in quiet air absorbing spoken thoughts like silent sentinels.
have seat stone jar with heart old as peat; you’ve come this far- seen history shoot itself to repeat the past but nothing else is made to last- why weep and fast, while others sleep and blast this sorrow from the same face tomorrow- and what fool am i to keep thinking that the thinkers will remove the old ways blinkers- and speak.
sleep old name; erase this lame membrane of days- where tracks of trust go to dust and empty in-out trays, crack like blowed skin under amphetamine sun, remembering how promises persist in metaphores of mist-
and that box of rumours the neighbours hold, like chocolate tumours behind lace curtains- knew your rock fired the clay and shaped his pot to aroused assertions- then the moon-tide quickening and coming in, like soupy potions thick and thin, front to back on constellation grainy black.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com
A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has also been published in numerous publications around the world.
standing silent proud, alone, or in a crowd life glazed mood and skin outside and in- for you, i think out loud and take you in- where thoughts abound reversible and convertible- where saying being wrong reaches out beyond the natural need to win. moulded by my hands to this shape that understands; its cloth of clay holds you warm, a mummer masked in costumes storm- react with its receptacle of reason for sorting truths from treason, but you don’t need to have a season to put your flowers into me- swaying here, in wind and wild, as born so be.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
I want more time To ponder life, For understanding In the cosmic soup.
I want to bend time To travel backwards and forwards, To see what was and what will be To fathom actions and consequences.
I want to unmould time From how we shape it, To be free of it Unchained to think.
I want to teleport To the past and now and on from here, Faster than light In the nothingness it takes to make a thought:
To find the answer- To where we come from To who we are To why we are here
And where we are going To be free from time.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
if i could take the word love, and give to it the sound of how you speak, then look inside its shell and find you- living out the years like you belong:
i would wear its shape and substance in the shadow of myself, and hold it in my empty hand to not feel so alone- then raise it to my lips and taste its phrase and something more-
as i head home, along that rutted road of fallow fields and ancient tracks, through what was, and is now, and might become- while posing pines, stand and hang in quiet air absorbing spoken thoughts like silent sentinels.
SUMMER WIND
you remind me of the rhythms in myself-
no house to play to
or the sound in someone else-
that drives their dreams
in simple scenes.
your music, is the motion of the waves
soul troubled too-
by yesterdays,
searching for a sigh that isn’t wrong
to be its song.
your meadow, is a harvest shimmering
in light and hue,
in summer wind,
waiting, for a stranger passing through-
to settle in its simmering.
taste the rain
and take it in you,
long for it to come again-
meanings grow when fates continue
to reach for reasons, and remain.
WHEN THE ROAD FORKS
soft scented ring
on straightened bow,
the joy you bring
inside me now-
the candle burning, slowly down,
the mirror showing more of you-
arched back and shoulders golden brown,
hips rock, hair tumbling too-
as hope and passion rise and fall
in symmetry and space,
the perfect beauty of it all,
enraptures face and place-
and be it now, or beyond this,
with gentle hands and loves soft kiss-
to trace your smile and touch your thoughts,
still, after this, when the road forks.
ADUMBRATE LOVES SHALLOWS
goddess of the moon
fusion of light and shadow,
come now, light my room-
make darkness shrink and narrow.
gravitate to me
awake inside un-natural light,
half written, half unknown i be
eclipsed in doubt, but inward bright.
bring your blooms to this fallow bed
alone in fates sad stare,
wrap me in your ethereal thread,
to reset time and covet care.
adumbrate loves shallows
in my sanctum core,
where the pastels fade and pallow
without depth and shade on dwindling shore.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
ancient lay lines
illuminate oral lore
a global stone grid
black coffee swirling
in a spiral galaxy
stargate in a cup
obelisk to sky
glyphs and hypogean
can we crack the code
leaves are falling
the circle of life and death
undertaker crows
honeysuckle grows
around the arch of midnight
into the wormhole
a trodden nettle
still offers herself to bees
and us to make tea
curious magpies
search ploughed field for baubles
sunlight glints on them
faded photographs
moments hanging on the wall
futures blank behind
cherry blossoms bloom
then fall in wind and rain on
human chameleons
red chrysanthemums
show fractals of clarity
time sows mutations
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, he is the creator and editor of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. His five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
in detritus metronomes of human habitation the ghost of Shelley’s imagination questions the elemental, experimental chromosomes and ribosomes of DNA, reverse engineered that suddenly appeared as evolution yesterday.
her monster mirrors dark wells of monsters in our smart selves, the lost humanity and oratory that fills laboratory test tubes with fused imbued genes to dreams of flat forward faster distinction to disaster and barbarism’s ectopic extinction.
this is our pyramid prison, where all souls and proles climb the debased opposite steps of extremism, like Prometheus Unbound, defaced sitting around the crouching sphinx abandoned by missing links.
free masons of money and wars, warp the altar of natural laws, so reason withers and wastelands rust — no longer rivers of shared stardust
in the equal symphony of spheres in space, filling our ears with subwoofer bass, definitive primitive medieval evil waste.
Strider Marcus Jones Is the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. He is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His work has been published in over 150 poetry journals, magazines, reviews and anthologies in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, India and South Africa including : Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice and Piker Press. He is the author of five books of poetry: Pomegranate Flesh, Wooded Windows, Mavericks, Inside Out and Aspects Of Love. The links to his books can be found below.
For his published poetry books: Aspects Of Love; Inside Out; Mavericks; Wooded Windows and Pomegranate Flesh see: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/strider…
the fabulous beauty of your face- so esoteric, not always in this place- beguiles me.
it’s late, mesmeric smile is but a base, a film to interface with the movements of the mind behind it.
my smile, me- like Thomas O’Malley the alley cat reclining on a tin bin lid with fishy whiskers-
turns the ink in the valley of your quills into script, while i sit and sip
your syllables with fresh red sepals of habiscus, rejecting Ovid and his Amores for your stories.
Strider Marcus Jones Is the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. He is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His work has been published in over 150 poetry journals, magazines, reviews and anthologies in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, India and South Africa including : Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice and Piker Press. He is the author of five books of poetry: Pomegranate Flesh, Wooded Windows, Mavericks, Inside Out and Aspects Of Love. The links to his books can be found below.
For his published poetry books: Aspects Of Love; Inside Out; Mavericks; Wooded Windows and Pomegranate Flesh see: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/strider…
mirror, mirror, in the hall age comes to us all, and looks wither through the play of years slipped away, away in the lapsed lingo of street and road, where tangents meet and move with innocence up summits of experience told, whose fruits we eat then weep when they implode. these reflections in this autumn of adventurous directions, mean more standing in the door of ebb and flow watching people come and go wearing introspections of what they know after listening to a stranger’s small confessions on midnight radio.
the latitude of love paddles an imperial pedalo in someone’s waters- and i had to go native in a foreign land to understand where my own backward blood has brought us.
in the mosque in the mihrab in Cordoba, no one is lost as Christian and Arab respect how they cross over.
inside: the scallop shell, with its white marble hood and cathedral bell above ancient wood, keeps everyone equal and safe from hell- but outside: other forces blow the people and their pedalo.
the other self abstracted in the press of turned down pages, gets mucked up in the mess and shows how unlaminated age is. if nothing else- these nude notes being played behind the curtain where the stage is, by soloist strings and hermit woodwinds- are far hopes of uncertain opening chords calling out to the duet i haven’t come to yet. and afterwards, if all those afterwards could talk and kiss and spout, there would be no more misery move it out.
this now my thoughts open at the image of your name won’t be revealing the secrets they explain- do you do the same on these out walks remembering the rain drop fractals on us feeling.
back we go again, without preachers or bad teachers, harvest high with hope just us and frayed strands of poetry and bands on this bridge of notes our mind spans.
in give we’ve got the bloom of this plot in garden to river shaping start and stop the melting clock of body quake then quiver through the Dreamtime day night and soul spirit lit by landscape light.
we climb the Orange Rock to revert back far but have no Gaelic croft to live in who we are. it has changed hands until the purpose of these lands shoots dissenting music out of birds and sucks all truth from ancient words
somewhere in everywhere everybody happens in the patterns, like flocks of rocks gathered to the lobby of Saturn’s rings, graded and sorted into ugly and beautiful useful things; all something out of nothing but not absolute nothing: it seems matter that Mad Hatter and plectrums of light make tunes of self similarity settle and fight repeating this same existence without remembered resistance.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
voices make their choices in the game — to remain loyal, or abstain and stunt reputation for self gratification.
get real profits of career soon heal the sacrifice of bold ideal — when the grey suits in the system say: preserving status quo, is the wisdom in this play. other tunes, are moments of fame — memorable then forgotten in the main stagnating stream of politics, where embedded institutions share the same out of tune, out of reach hot air balloon playing unmusical licks treading us down in the gravity of tribal tricks with ghost notes wearing uniforms of haved normality in the foreground and background with loaded guns inside and outside their tunic coats — ready to suppress any massed intention of Bastille insurrection.
you don’t have the right to repeal my name, or make me think and do the same as you. your way, is extinction — only seconds as time reckons, a philosophy founded on myths, twisted in technological trysts tuned to suit you.
Strider Marcus Jones – is the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogs…. He is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford/Hinckley, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry are modern, traditional, mythical, sometimes erotic, surreal and metaphysical http//www.lulu.com/spotlight/stridermarcusj…. He is a maverick, moving between forests, mountains and cities, playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain and Switzerland in numerous publications including mgv2 Publishing Anthology:And Agamemnon Dead; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster/Anu; Outburst Poetry Magazine; The Galway Review; The Honest Ulsterman Magazine; The Lonely Crowd Magazine; Section8Magazine; Danse Macabre Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts; Don’t Be Afraid: Anthology To Seamus Heaney.
For his published poetry books: Aspects Of Love; Inside Out; Mavericks; Wooded Windows and Pomegranate Flesh see: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/strider…
A poet, law graduate, and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales, he is also a member of The Poetry Society. His five published books of poetry reveal a maverick moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in over 150 literary publications worldwide including Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice. More about his work can be found here:
when you are broken like a once loved doll, and those spurs, that still hurt, have spoken you blind with methanol- the mental heather that holds it all together, finds you on its well-worn path and in the aftermath, walking alone it takes you home- through the Spanish orange groves where old men sit with expired widows thinking silently i suppose what everybody and no one knows. then musical scripts of hidden songbirds play and mix with secret symbols of illuminati in the terracotta garden for my ghost at its own party of father’s day stardom, while my prince and princess smile at me, with their mother’s Maltese eyes- in their more, i am less but keep my loss disguised. this is their day to me- their prose in how it goes- like lambas bread in what is said as we journey.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany, Serbia, India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: The Piker Press; Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
imagine crossing the Sahara with the Tuareg; sleeping under one vast canopy of stars, consoled by constellations that once looked down on ancient forests and wind worn mountains older than these here now. it all repeats itself— the river beds and rocks return to the sea, where temporary strangers sit like Robinson Crusoe on loud, tractor-raked beaches in smells of salt and missed mussels watching the waves, thinking inside them coming and going like friends to be afraid of— as nature retunes herself ignoring our significance becoming grains of sand.
as this long life slowly goes i find my self returning to look through wooded windows. forward or back, empires and regimes remain in pyramids of power butchering the blameless for glorious gain. feudal soldiers firing guns and wingless birds dropping smart bombs on mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, follow higher orders to modernise older civilisations repeating what history has taught us. in turn, their towers of class and cash will crumble and crash on top of Ozymandias. hey now, woods of winter leafless grip and fractures split drawing us into it. loveslide in days through summer heat waves and old woodland ways with us licking then dripping and sticking chanting wiccan songs embraced in pagan bonds living light, loving long, fingers painting runes on skin back to the beginning when freedom wasn’t sin.
WHY I LIKE IT: Poetry Editor HEZEKIAH writes… Strider Marcus Jones refines a language all his own. While the arrested of us employ our word into service to project our modest biddings, communicating as best we can. His are formed to dance, prance, pluck and strum. Singing and swinging as though they are truly enjoying his penetrating, orphic-like process; happy in their work as they leap and bound off the pages and back. Revealing themselves as they spring from his distinct and galvanizing lexicon, anxiously awaiting to be called into action, to snap to attention, and rejoice in a festival of words and featured imagery. But don’t settle for my pitch, screwballs mostly throw junk—spin googlies. Not Jones, he’s all cricket, he’ll bowl you over with lithe precision and lightning tempo.
MAVERICKS
you taste of cinnamon and fish when you wish to be romantic- and the ciphers of our thoughts make ringlets with their noughts immersed in magic- like mithril mail around me stove dark forest, pink flesh sea touchings tantric- make reality and myths converge in elven riffs of music, so we dance it- symbols to the scenes of conflict, mavericks in dreams that now sit- listening to these pots and kettles blackening on the fire of rhetoric and murderous mettles- before we both retire to our own script.
TWO MISFITS
it was no time for love outside- old winds of worship found hand and mouth in ruined rain slanting over cultured fields into pagan barns with patched up planks finding us two misfits.
i felt the pulse of your undressed fingers transmit thoughts to my senses- aroused by autumn scents of milky musk and husky hay in this barn’s faith we climbed the rungs of civilisation so random in our exile-
and found a bell housed inside a minaret- with priest and muezzin sharing its balcony- summoning all to prayer with one voice- this holy music, was only the wind blowing through the weathervane, but we liked its tone to change its time.
THE BLOOD THAT MAKES US BLACK
imagine yourself, in a photo-fit picture with every nothing that’s new- minus in health, quoting icons and scripture under the whole black and blue.
optimum dreams turn out fake in the mirror facing what’s been like fallen heroes- in so many scenes like a ghost who is giver passing on wisdom, who knows-
the blood that makes us black of two from one, is schooled by fungus fortunes and faiths old hat to be sold on- like tamed-trained gangs, making golden dunes.
VISIGOTH ROVER
i went on the bus to Cordoba,
and tried to find the Moor’s
left over
in their excavated floors
and mosaic courtyards,
with hanging flowers brightly chamelion
against whitewashed walls
carrying calls
behind gated iron bars-
but they were gone
leaving mosque arches
and carved stories
to God’s doors.
in those ancient streets
where everybody meets;
i saw the old successful men
with their younger women again,
sat in chrome slat chairs,
drinking coffee to cover
their vain love affairs-
and every breast,
was like the crest
of a soft ridge
as i peeped over
the castle wall and Roman bridge
like a Visigoth rover.
soft hand tapping on shoulder,
heavy hair
and beauty older,
the gypsy lady gave her clover
to borrowed breath,
embroidering it for death,
adding more to less
like the colours fading in her dress.
time and tune are too planned
to understand
her Trevi fountain of prediction,
or the dirty Bernini hand
shaping its description.
THAT BLACKSMITH FELLOW
crumpling
crumbling
heart
war thump
peace pump
stall start
cave hunting
and gathering
in groups
to farms with crops
and hoofed live stocks
drink beer, eat meat and soups.
that blacksmith fellow,
with fire and forge, hammer and bellow,
is still the alchemist-
malleous like his mettles
when everybody settles
into civil lists.
in us now,
the subliminal plough
sets our furrows footsteps-
so summer’s run and winter’s plod,
with, or without god
in and out of upsets.
IN MAID’S WATER
we’ve left the well-footed
road,
the rutted
and rebutted
road
of shadows cast
by towered glass.
opened closed curtains
for fusty moths,
chanted white spells with Wiccan’s
goths;
left pictured
rooms and halls-
become un-scriptured
hills and squalls-
in maid’s water
pouring down her
erect chalk man,
like a wild gypsy,
love tipsy
partisan,
smelling of cinnabar
and his cigar,
swirling
like whirling
clouds
while the changed wind howls.
THIS IS THE FIELD
this is not the field
for truth to grow in.
its furrowed lips are sealed
with knowing
nothing can sing
in the wrong wind.
the crop is stunted
self expression blunted
opinion gagged
and head sagged
waiting for the final blow
from the farmer’s shadow.
the field hands
cut to His commands
and every leathered face
has served in its place
like all the others, for centuries
in these peasant penitentiaries,
without bolting
or revolting
in union, except for the Tolpuddle few,
who knew what to do
but were jailed, or transported
and thwarted.
WATER AND MIST
let the world do what it does,
and when the desert
comes for us
we will be water-
sow the seeds of new ideas
replace the wars and fears
of decadent thrones
spying on the homes
of those they slaughter.
bring on the people’s revolution,
that returns our stolen
land into our hands
from these swollen
fat cats, with their final solution
and fascist FEMA plans.
let the world do what it does,
and when the guns
are turned on us
we will be mist-
eclipsing everything they’ve done
when we resist.
strike them like ghosts
in the halls of their hosts,
topple their temples of sin-
dissolve all their banks,
then their missiles and tanks,
leave no corrupted survivor-
cleanse what’s within
for a new way to begin
by severing each head from this hydra.
THE DOOR
the door
between skyfloor
topbottom
is rankrotten
portalbliss
or abjectabyss.
it contains conversations
confrontations,
hiding loves two-ings
in lost ruins-
shuts us inside our self
with or without someone else.
we,
the un-free,
disenfranchised poor
have no bowl of more-
only pain
on the same plain
as before,
homeless
or in shapeless boxes,
worked out, hunted, like urban foxes-
outlaws on common lands
stolen from empty hands.
files on us found
from gathering sound
where mutations abound
put troops on the ground.
MIND’S AND MUSK
so now
we both came
to this same
branch and bough-
no one else commutes
from different roots.
me carrying Celtic stones
with runes on skin over bones-
and you, in streams
on evicted land
trashed ancients panned-
our truth dreams
under star light crossing beams.
in here, there is no mask
of present building out the past
with gilded Shard’s of steel and glass
shutting out who shall not pass.
the tree of life breathes
a rebel destiny believes-
we are minds and musk
no more husks and dust.
THE POET SPEAKS: I like the company of people but prefer solitude. I like to listen to people talk, the way they see it and say it. For me, poetry spans our past, present and future. These poems, and those in my books, are about the themes of love, relationships, peace, war, racial, economic and sexual equality, cultural integration, poverty, mythical romance, the magic of childhood and experience of growing old as a Bohemian maverick. The strings of chance and consequences meld with music and art in Spinoza’s orderly chaos of the universe.
Life is hard and uncertain for most of us now, but also rare in our corner of the universe, so I strive to express my own understanding of it. Thinking time is my creative cove. My English teacher, Anne Ryan inspired me to write poetry when I was thirteen. The poems have grown with me and reflect much of who I am now. Some poems sleep for years. Mere jumbles of words, themes and rhythms in subconscious gaseous clouds. Their form and meaning evolve in Spinoza’s orderly chaos. Other poems just happen, triggered by a single word or phrase, a sound, smell, or shape that relates to something from our past, present, or future. Writing a good poem makes me feel like the artist who can paint, or the musician who can play – joy in creating something that others enjoy and feel inspired to try doing themselves.
My first poetical influences were the Tin Pan Alley lyricists and composers like Sammy Cahn, Cole Porter and Rogers and Hart. I love the fun, rhythm and interplay between lyrics and music. Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen influence my poetry in the same way, allowing me to experiment with metaphor, form and rhythms.
Relationships and love are one of the main themes in my poetry. Two books which have travelled with me through life are Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Tess Of The D’urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy is a big influence on some of my work. My favourite poets who have influenced my work include: Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Auden, Dylan Thomas, Bishop, Szymborska, Langston Hughes, Plath, Art Crane, Larkin, Forough Farrokhzad, Neruda, Rumi and Heaney.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between forests, mountains, cities and coasts playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude.
EXOTIC BIRDS & LIFE IS FLAMENCO. Poems by Strider Marcus Jones https://www.artvilla.com/plt/exotic-birds-life-is-flamenco-poems-by-strider-marcus-jones/
EXOTIC BIRDS & LIFE IS FLAMENCO. Poems by Strider Marcus Jones
i love the substance of eccentric style in your beauty- the enchanting glance of old fashioned romance in your smile that softly soothes me after the external joust dust of modernity settles on precious metals sought by Faustus stealing gas and oil from African soil. i love the dink in the middle of your back where my fingers sink when i trace and track the road of your spine in perfect sync of mind with mine. i last, near and far in your scented clouds of cinnabar, singing, with you, want you, words like intoxicating exotic birds- ready to leave poisonous suburbs to disturbed self and same arrogant and vain vices and vines embracing abyss in eclipsed times.
(ii.)
LIFE IS FLAMENCO
why can’t i walk as far and smoke more tobacco, or play my Spanish guitar like Paco, putting rhythms and feelings without old ceilings you’ve never heard before in a word.
life is flamenco, to come and go high and low fast and slow-
she loves him, he loves her and their shades within caress and spur in a ride and dance of tempestuous romance.
outback, in Andalucien ease, i embrace you, like melted breeze amongst ripe olive trees- dark and different, all manly scent and mind unkempt.
like i do, Picasso knew everything about you when he drew your elongated arms and legs around me, in this perpetual bed of emotion and motion for these soft geometric angles in my finger strokes and exhaled smokes of rhythmic bangles to circle colour your Celtic skin with primitive phthalo blue pigment in wiccan tattoo before entering vibrating wings through thrumming strings of wild lucid moments in eternal components.
i can walk as far and smoke more tobacco, and play my Spanish guitar like Paco.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https//stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. —————————————— His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: The Piker Press; Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
Strider Marcus Jones Is the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. He is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His work has been published in over 150 poetry journals, magazines, reviews and anthologies in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, India and South Africa including : Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice and Piker Press. He is the author of five books of poetry: Pomegranate Flesh, Wooded Windows, Mavericks, Inside Out and Aspects Of Love. The links to his books can be found below.
For his published poetry books: Aspects Of Love; Inside Out; Mavericks; Wooded Windows and Pomegranate Flesh see: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/strider…
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones. Pomegranate Flesh.
POURING OUT AND IN
i must have broken every scripture
thinking about the sculpture
of your face
your blossom face.
modelled in skin
with bones hid in
expressions
and confessions-
understanding them
i feel again
impressions of your senses
aroused when sensual steam condenses
on quivering quill and quim
pouring out and in.
smoking in the dark-
still floating, on the pillows, you used to arch
giving up to me
quaffing thirstily-
then, i stand glowing
with sweat like a god
from the peat bog
lovelust growing
mo anam chara
mo ghra.Copyright Strider Marcus Jones. Wooded Windows.
MAVERICKS
you taste of cinnamon and fish when you wish to be romantic- and the ciphers of our thoughts make ringlets with their noughts immersed in magic- like mithril mail around me stove dark forest, pink flesh sea touchings tantric- make reality and myths converge in elven riffs of music, so we dance it- symbols to the scenes of conflict, mavericks in dreams that now sit- listening to these pots and kettles blackening on the fire of rhetoric and murderous mettles- before we both retire to our own script.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones. Mavericks.
EVENSTAR
i wait and listen for the faint fall of her footsteps and the soft lilt of her ethereal voice that hangs in the air to the shape and sound of musical notes that move like Degas’ dancers around the thoughtful beauty of her fabulous face to become lucid with loves weight but weightless and warm once worn as their essence enters me.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones. Inside Out.
FALLING FOR YOU
so far back deep in the magma of you, with thoughts i lack suddenly coming too.
so far back in your words and feelings hue, your molten track a furnace of fire anew.
the pleasures foretold in this word unglued, now mine to behold falling for you.
come love, etch your runes onto sensuous skin, and make my empty waiting rooms ripple with longing.
rich man and peasant understand coins change hand, despite the Magna Carta we must all barter to live —
only communists give nothing something sometimes — same crimes.
so, when reason rains, i drag my convict chains to the barrow bog and cut peat in feral fog where motives meet.
six feet down, sucked back five thousand years the old town settlement appears in full formation of chattel, cattle and battle still at station preserved to serve.
around the round late night fires, power plays and lust desires hearth home homogenous in Mars and Venus making love in animal skins wearing the same sins.
on the long walk home, some alone and those together, believe never can be changed and are called strange.
late afternoon winter fingers nomads in snow numb knuckles and nails on two boys in scuffed shoes and ripped coats carrying four planks of wood from condemned houses down dark jitties slipping on dog shit into back yard to make warm fires
early evening dad cooking neck end stew thick with potato dumplings and herbs on top of bread soaked in gravy i saw the hole in the ceiling holding the foot that jumped off bunk beds but dad didn’t mind he had just sawed the knob off the banister to get an old wardrobe upstairs and made us a longbow and cricket bat it was fun being poor like other families
after dark all sat down reading and talking in candle light with parents silent to each other our sudden laughter like sparks glowing and fading dancing in flames and wood smoke unlike the children who died in a fire next door then we played cards and i called my dad a cunt for trumping my king but he let me keep the word
Strider Marcus Jones – is the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogs…. He is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford/Hinckley, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry are modern, traditional, mythical, sometimes erotic, surreal and metaphysical http//www.lulu.com/spotlight/stridermarcusj…. He is a maverick, moving between forests, mountains and cities, playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain and Switzerland in numerous publications including mgv2 Publishing Anthology:And Agamemnon Dead; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster/Anu; Outburst Poetry Magazine; The Galway Review; The Honest Ulsterman Magazine; The Lonely Crowd Magazine; Section8Magazine; Danse Macabre Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts; Don’t Be Afraid: Anthology To Seamus Heaney.
a rest, from swinging bar and animals in the abattoir- to smoke in mental thinks spoken holding cooling drinks.
counting out old coppers to be fed in the set squares of blue and red plastic table cloth- just enough to break up bread in thick barley broth.
Jesus is late after saying he was coming back to share the wealth and real estate of capitalist cunning.
maybe. just maybe. put another song on the jukebox baby: no more heroes anymore. what are we fighting for-
he’s hiding in hymns and chants, in those Monty Python underpants, from this coalition of new McCarthy’s and it’s institutions of Moriarty’s.
some shepherds sheep will do this dance in hypothermic trance, for one pound an hour like a shamed flower,
watched by sinister sentinels- while scratched tubular bells, summon all to sunday service where invisible myths exist- to a shamed flower with supernatural power come the hour.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
i discover who you are in the notes of my guitar- love songs sad songs, good wronged grown back songs, plucking soft and strong in nowhere for somewhere to belong. chords fill the space around the beauty of your face, with lyrics in the breeze on this road of serendipity, where silver trees mark the way to go, and be.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
why can’t i walk as far and smoke more tobacco, or play my spanish guitar like Paco, putting rhythms and feelings without old ceilings you’ve never heard before in a word.
life is flamenco, to come and go high and low fast and slow-
she loves him, he loves her and their shades within caress and spur in a ride and dance of tempestuous romance.
outback, in Andalucien ease, i embrace you, like melted breeze amongst ripe olive trees- dark and different, all manly scent and mind unkempt.
like i do, Picasso knew everything about you when he drew your elongated arms and legs around me, in this perpetual bed of emotion and motion for these soft geometric angles in my finger strokes and exhaled smokes of rhythmic bangles to circle colour your Celtic skin with primitive phthalo blue pigment in wiccan tattoo before entering vibrating wings through thrumming strings of wild lucid moments in eternal components.
i can walk as far and smoke more tobacco, and play my spanish guitar like Paco.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
sat with you, reflections bond over the pond of summer solstice,
and Mr Blue sky with eggy eye subliminally sends Otis
into ribbons and ripples of hair and faces, through sensual trickles in hidden places
that glances bring on summer wind. i know your notes tacking on water like paper boats,
and the rigging string vibrating through notches in the mast so love and living last.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
he plays his flamenco guitar knowing who you are, seducing his singer to bring her from bleak harbour masts to his contrasts. he knows the equations of her close flirtations and doesn’t judge her glances for wanting what romance is- vibrating in voices and strings of fornicating feelings. her prose photosynthesis illuminates his shades that colour mountains and drops of wishes in mosaic fountains- she loves the Picasso from his pen and horse smell like Andalucian men her reversed body senses inside his defences- as her sea wind billows in his revealing Avalon through the mist, sweet loved, firm kissed.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
pull the roof off knock the walls down touch the forest climb those mountains and smell the sea again.
watch how life decomposes in death going back to land to reform and be reborn as something and someone else.
there’s no great secret to it all. no need to overthink it through
food and shelter fire and shamans clothes and coupling used to be enough with musicians artists and poets interpreting the dance.
then warriors with armies religions with god and minds buying and selling stole the landscape and changed time.
smash the windows break down the doors melt the keys rub evil words from their spells and puncture the lungs of their wheels
before they kidnap you from bed call you dissident hold you without charge wheel you out on a stretcher from waterboard torture for years without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
they are selling the sanctuary we made with our numbers bringing back chains making some of us slaves outside the dance in the five coloured rings making winners and losers holding flags and flames.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. Read other articles by Strider Marcus.
This article was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2021 at 8:03am and is filed under Poetry.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: The Piker Press; Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
you remind me of the rhythms in myself-
no house to play to
or the sound in someone else-
that drives their dreams
in simple scenes.
your music, is the motion of the waves
soul troubled too-
by yesterdays,
searching for a sigh that isn’t wrong
to be its song.
your meadow, is a harvest shimmering
in light and hue,
in summer wind,
waiting, for a stranger passing through-
to settle in its simmering.
taste the rain
and take it in you,
long for it to come again-
meanings grow when fates continue
to reach for reasons, and remain.
WHEN THE ROAD FORKS
soft scented ring
on straightened bow,
the joy you bring
inside me now-
the candle burning, slowly down,
the mirror showing more of you-
arched back and shoulders golden brown,
hips rock, hair tumbling too-
as hope and passion rise and fall
in symmetry and space,
the perfect beauty of it all,
enraptures face and place-
and be it now, or beyond this,
with gentle hands and loves soft kiss-
to trace your smile and touch your thoughts,
still, after this, when the road forks.
ADUMBRATE LOVES SHALLOWS
goddess of the moon
fusion of light and shadow,
come now, light my room-
make darkness shrink and narrow.
gravitate to me
awake inside un-natural light,
half written, half unknown i be
eclipsed in doubt, but inward bright.
bring your blooms to this fallow bed
alone in fates sad stare,
wrap me in your ethereal thread,
to reset time and covet care.
adumbrate loves shallows
in my sanctum core,
where the pastels fade and pallow
without depth and shade on dwindling shore.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.
Metal mania In twisted sculpture; Welded gods With scornful eyes— Inhabit the space of neon galleries Amused by all the gossip and lies Oozing from In the know la de das Who soak their boredom In high-class bars.
—Strider Marcus Jones
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate, and former civil servant from Salford, England, with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
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we move the wheel that turns through each mistake, giving motion to the roles we chime until both trickle out of time like brittle steel that rusts and breaks into lapsed devotion.
less, or more, you imagined it was sure sharing the road with you, treading under dark, grey and blue sky, wondering where it went going to unfold in fates wind blowing fondling your full face to some top-to-bottom place.
we have moved the wheel, only to reveal our high Metropolis is still the same Acropolis of extremes and obscenes spreading gangrenous genes.
we have separated Dream from Time and live in mirages like Bacchus and Libera duped in an era condoning crime, altering the images of it’s illustrious self stealing the wealth of massed, divided synergies.
###
THE HERMIT
off rink i think and sit like a hermit but time isn’t mine to design. the images erased from memory in this cave reverses the lathe of shaped corruption to avoid self destruction. to an unseen, individual, prime residual unlit spark in the integral strum of strings that turns in revolutions rings, the equal hands on the cosmic clock, plays rhythms we know but have forgot, neither quick or slow, but just so, with natures tow. this solitary Eden, paradise without our seed in beneath the clouds of atmosphere, alters with us here overthrowing Older Orders without consent in the deafening, silent firmament and near in conditioned fear.
###
I WANT TO BEND TIME
I want more time To ponder life, For understanding In the cosmic soup. I want to bend time To travel backwards and forwards, To see what was and what will be To fathom actions and consequences. I want to unmould time From how we shape it, To be free of it Unchained to think. I want to teleport To the past and now and on from here, Faster than light In the nothingness it takes to make a thought: To find the answer- To where we come from To who we are To why we are here And where we are going To be free from time.
###
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
it was summertime with flowers colouring the pantomime in feudal fields as i walked on flat wheels with your humming bird in my head from the tropical warm of your bed- where we bent the grass again and made the rain that doesn’t come from clouds dampen skin rumpled shrouds.
i watched your beauty glisten sweetly while i held you like Bernini before you went to work flaked in bark of silver birch naked chalice south and siren priestess mouth of pagan church.
you were converting fussy ghosts and their sullen hosts from bribed tribes walking past without guides- some, so inverted and duped like shades with every ethic stooped labouring like quislings under Darwinist siblings- slowly drifting back to druid stones that serve us more than glorious domes, more equal in each equinox of chaos turning natures clock.
i know, i ramble for reasons to make sense of changing seasons- and find none where i am one- only fallen lintels on the floor like broken words that speak no more at sunrise and sunset remembering what we forget.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between forests, mountains, cities and coasts playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude.
Poet/Photographer Jennifer Matthews’ poetry has been published in Nepal by Pen Himalaya and locally by the Wilderness Retreat Writers Organization, Midway Journal, The Somerville Times, Ibbetson Street Press and Boston Girl Guide. Jennifer was nominated for a poetry award by the Cambridge Arts Council for her book of Poetry Fairy Tales and Misdemeanors. Her songs have been released nationally and internationally and her photography has been used as covers for a number of Ibbetson Street Press poetry books and has been exhibited at The Middle East Restaurant, 1369 Coffeehouses, Sound Bites Restaurant in Somerville and McLean Hospital.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
i don’t do remembers, or regrets, not knowing, i belong in what comes next- without the edge and angle of pretext, find me in the forest of forgets-
watching your perfections dance and breathe in my fires flames then read out gypsy leaves; imagining your whispers in the wind and trees- before they fade, and fall, and leave.
back inside the house, picture rails of love hang empty from bent hooks, that promised plenty, leaving frameless tales in musty trails-
to dusty cabinets of more trinkets and traces- whose duality displaces sky and floor.
The Head in His Fedora Hat
a lonely man,
cigarette,
rain
and music
is a poem
moving,
not knowing-
a caravan,
whose journey does not expect
to go back
and explain
how everyone’s ruts
have the same
blood and vein.
the head in his fedora hat
bows to no one’s grip,
brim tilted into the borderless
plain
so his outlaw wit
can confess
and remain
a storyteller,
that hobo fella
listening like a barfly
for a while
and slow-winged butterfly
whose smile
they can’t close the shutters on
or stop talking about
when he walks out
and is gone.
whisky and tequila
and a woman, who loves to feel ya
inside
and outside
her
when ya move
and live as one,
brings you closer
in simplistic
unmaterialistic
grooved
muse Babylon.
this is so,
when he stands with hopes head,
arms and legs
all aflow
in her Galadriel glow
with mithril breath kisses
condensing sensed wishes
of reality and dream
felt and seen
under that
fedora hat
inhaling smoke
as he sang and spoke
stranger fella
storyteller.
Hopper’s Ladies
you stay and grow
more mysterioso
but familiar
in my interior-
with voices peeled
full of field
of fruiting orange trees
fertile to orchard breeze
soaked in summer rains
so each refrain all remains.
not afraid of contrast,
closed and opened in the past
and present, this isolation of Hopper’s ladies,
sat, thinking in and out of ifs and maybes
in a diner, reading on a chair or bed
knowing what wants to be said
to someone
who is coming or gone-
such subsidence
into silence
is a unilateral curve
of moments
and movements
that swerve
a straight lifetime
to independence
in dependence
touching sublime
rich roots
then ripe fruits.
we share their flesh and flutes
in ribosomes and delicious shoots
that release love-
no, not just the fingered glove
to wear
and curl up with in a chair,
but loving kindness
cloaked in timeless
density and tone
in settled loam-
beyond lonely apartments in skyscrapers
and empty newspapers,
or small town life
gutting you with gossip’s knife.
Strider Marcus Jones is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from England with deep Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry are modern, traditional, mythical, sometimes erotic, surreal and metaphysical. When not writing, he can be heard playing his saxophone and clarinet (just ask his neighbours).
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland in numerous publications including DM; mgv2 Publishing Anthology; And Agamemnon Dead; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster/Anu; Outburst Poetry Magazine; The Galway Review; The Honest Ulsterman Magazine; The Lonely Crowd Magazine; Section 8 Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts; Don’t Be Afraid: Anthology To Seamus Heaney; Dead Snakes Poetry Magazine; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Syzygy Poetry Journal Issue 1 and Ammagazine/Angry Manifesto Issue 3.
we walk by the river talking inside ourselves, like rhapsodies in two reflections- different, but the same.
the path, the fence, the fields- unknown obstacles that stare through then, and now, beyond- have heard love chime before.
ahead the river breaks going separate ways, but we stick to the same side in the willow woods
and farms of flooded fields- with ascension stroking each reaction phosphorous in the rain.
SO IT GOES
when i look back in a moment of quiet acquired dignity that comes to some with age, it is with patience, for i was much the same when everything seemed bigger than it was as uncertainty wore the other shoe to confidence and followed it step for step.
the energy of youth that often acts without respect and understanding- to bluff and blag its way in fashion and musical rebellion- skips like stones on the ponds of those who have it all from Parliaments revolution- but their ripples wane through treacled trends in this dumbed down democracy soothed by drugs and drink.
apathy watches and laughs at these new roundheads and royals- jigging their booty to tunes composed by capitalist cavaliers- wearing each despotic Emperor’s new clothes, and a known assassins kiss of death waits for anyone who questions-
so it goes.
MEPHISTOPHELES IS NOT ABOUT
this coffee is hot-
but paradise is cold,
and Mephistopheles is not
about, tempting me with gold
and pouting pleasures of the flesh
with their alluring mesh-
so Morpheus to hold
in broken secrets being told.
this dreamer in his underwear,
parts from the bottle, and leaves it there-
some touched,
not much
with stale camembert-
no fun alone,
moving around inside, unknown-
disturbed from bed to chair.
it synchronizes well,
how past and present both compel
a sleep on understanding-
the beat of love with sand in
the texture of its taste,
trapped in silence,
waxed to waste-
with nothings nonsense
in its face.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones. All Rights Reserved.
it was no time for love outside- old winds of worship found hand and mouth in ruined rain slanting over cultured fields into pagan barns with patched up planks finding us two misfits.
i felt the pulse of your undressed fingers transmit thoughts to my senses- aroused by autumn scents of milky musk and husky hay in this barn’s faith we climbed the rungs of civilisation so random in our exile-
and found a bell housed inside a minaret- with priest and muezzin sharing its balcony- summoning all to prayer with one voice- this holy music, was only the wind blowing through the weathervane, but we liked its tone to change its time.
THE DOOR
the door
between skyfloor
topbottom
is rankrotten
portalbliss
or abjectabyss.
it contains conversations
confrontations,
hiding loves two-ings
in lost ruins-
shuts us inside our self
with or without someone else.
we,
the un-free,
disenfranchised poor
have no bowl of more-
only pain
on the same plain
as before,
homeless
or in shapeless boxes,
worked out, hunted, like urban foxes-
outlaws on common lands
stolen from empty hands.
files on us found
from gathering sound
where mutations abound
put troops on the ground.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones. All rights reserved.
Article © Strider Marcus Jones. All rights reserved.
