Copyright Strider Marcus Jones from his books Pomegranate Flesh and Wooded Windows.
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 cities playing his saxophone in warm solitude.
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His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; 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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
forage in me amongst the dunes still damp in sun and wind as the tide retreats- for driftwood and strange shaped pebbles. where have they been, these abandoned voices, with colours and textures, wild and domestic, moving and rooted, sooting and scenting the air- being engraved by beauties and conflicts, uncovering how love is only rented jumping ship when it sights new land. inner changes, have not changed anything out there; and when what moved in is all moved out, we can sometimes sit in this displaced time, with drifting belongings and pebbled thoughts, aware of strangers moving slower than the clouds deliberately doing the same.
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.
Forage In Me is one of the 75 poems from my fifth book Pomegranate Flesh available to purchase on:
the stars are those we have forgotten both living and dead, floating in clustered constellations not labouring in rows- with hair growing grey and teeth going rotten singing songs, God’s godless pray. harvesting crops. chants drowned in clocks of tobacco and cotton, the peasants and slaves of civilised nations duped by liberty in recent history- dug out canals, made railways and roads out of tarmac to tread- into factories like tribal junkies hooked on cheap gin and beer instead of joining the cholera’s watery dead- ten to a room in a slum and lead- like human batteries, sleeping without moonlight on sarsen stones, or druid voices in their homes- where thoughts have no dreams or flight, just sleep, recharge, get bled. you have to be poor, to think utopia can be something real- not to exploit or steal that ambrosia aura of women and children and men for the spoken wages of despair- that suck you in, glad but grim when times’ clock punches that card by the door and mass myopia conditions all to labour, keyboard and pen for food and shelter with a roof and fourth wall shanty made out of cardboard, wood and tin in sunny Sao Paolo, where the samba rain leaks in while orphaned children beg and play eating the forage of capitalist waste dodging death squads night and day imitating Socrates at football to hope to taste what’s inside the cold, glistening towers casting invisible powers behind the smoked glass and soldiers of stone leaving blood and bleached bone from over there- where the ascent of money doesn’t care about it all because its infinity is small.
The Dance
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 shamens 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.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones
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.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India, and Switzerland in numerous publications including mgv2 Publishing Anthology; Dreich Magazine; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard e-Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; The Poet Magazine; 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; Danse Macabre Literary 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.
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.Find him on Twitter at @StriderPoet
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 jitty’s 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
Stay a while? The subliminal cuts are coming through These days of deadly boredom, And poets in the backfield Writing Something Interesting.
Hardy, would not like today, Life’s become an angry play; And our deoxyribonucleic acid Carries no imagination, That’s not already put there By a rival TV station.
I can hear you saying, Yes, but we have the right to choose: A colour and a ball of string- Or poets in the backfield Writing Something Interesting.
You said: “The Golden Bird eats Fish In South America And most of the peasants let him, Because of Bolivar.” Yet, millions starved in Gulag camps, And Czechs cried fears when Russian tanks, Thundered through their traumoid streets Pretending not to be elite. As one old soldier put it: “The West and East preach different dreams, But ride the same black limousines.”
Stay a while? These sheets are cold Without your sighing skin; And this poet in the backfield Is writing Nothing Interesting.
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…
the back bone crumbles in its frame twisted and curved inside its vine- upwards, it craves the warm sunshine, aware that mortality is vain.
back to its root- abort an echo with male voice, giving its mother a tough choice- o seductive flute.
a lonely child- different to its brothers, distant from others- growing in the wild.
peek down memory tubes- to poverty collecting wire and wood for food and fire where slum streets stood with imaginary friend, the talking morphine soothes.
into now, the past, the pain- thoughts tumours clot the blood; know your own knots inside the wood- and change to remain, but keep the grain.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones from his second book Inside Out
fast and furious archangel in paint and chrome brings me home- purring megaphonious, combusting with sav and sap that i glimpse peeking into warm grill chintz- then she lifts her corset bonnet and lets me touch her glinting bones secreting home spun pheromones attracting, like moon and sun- mysterious and mnemonic old senses, fallow and fenced soon become drenched quiller and squirter in that linguistic converter- glow mapping, overlapping, slowly blown in the metronome.
KNOTS IN STRINGS
so what if knots in strings bring an end to things that were.
i can undo her tapestry make it gone and move what measures on powers infinity.
found in mound and moat elements made unmade sink and float convex and concave dance a burning wave.
spiny gorse not in bloom sits inside a horse to be taken in, rape from giving creates a living tomb.
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 cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
——————————————
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India 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; Dead Snakes Poetry Magazine; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Syzygy Poetry Journal Issue 1 and Ammagazine/Angry Manifesto Issue 3.
how can i forget the way she sucks me while she smokes my cigarette- tongue strokes tip pokes softly round the rim then deeper in.
the sensual symmetry of close caressing fondle messing with her hair and gentle bobbing of head up-down-there,
so much love i hold, in my hands between my legs, sliding out and in rubbing circles round the sea sound collar of her quim.
we make self similarity in fractals of clarity lying back, looking into each other picking out stars in sky black drapes that cover
what this does to us.
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 cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones from his fifth book Pomegranate Flesh
in these, so close, contented fields of thoughts and flesh caressed by limbs and lute phonetic phrases in this dark loop of days,
i want what more reveals- the undercoat of faith undressed to nature without cages exposing pagan aspects and its ways,
to behold what light conceals in blue and grey stone thoughts that smiles suppress, through the henge of seasons phases in the centre of your circle as it plays.
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 forests, mountains, cities and coasts playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude. His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland in numerous publications including mgv2 Publishing Anthology; Dreich Magazine; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard e-Journal; Poppy Road Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; The Poet Magazine; 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; Danse Macabre Literary 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.
i was drinking tea with Dali in an underworld cafe, arguing down his table on General Franco’s hand- when The Persistence Of Memory that melts my pocket watch made time less rigid- so i fell with names and numbers into old obsidian dreams- where your long legs pointed from six to twelve, then nine to three when you bent them- for me to play and pleasure each exotic segment of your velvet tangerine. Dali left the table to meet Picasso in Paris, while my benzedrine mind replaced- the soft and spent infinity of your face.
CALCULUS
Darwin can’t explain the missing link, and science, did not invent the goal of faith in how we think- but Newton keeps us sane to find the whole gravity and reason for our role- in calculus.
science beyond ours does exist, in un-deciphered hieroglyphs and alchemy’s of metals malleable like petals on spaceships crashed in Roswell, gone to Area 51.
like Dedalus, who prayed too good through Dublin’s streets of saints and sinners, while whores exchanged their treats for cash, from winners and beginners- i walked towards the priesthood, but woke up wet with wood.
i realised, Carlisle was right in saying: no lie can live forever- that the Gods we make together praying- don’t care or intervene in human fate and actions- so Spinoza’s God is seen,
in the orderly reactions of the universe- creating life, and waiting hearse- but metaphors of doubt persist on the road to armageddon, for if physics shapes all of this- what shapes these cloths of heaven?
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones from his second book Inside Out
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 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.
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.
my old socks sheath the feet that fill my boots to walk on land.
hard hands, sweating like peat, still break rocks in imprisoned heat born trapped roots in dynasties of the damned.
the faded thread- diminishes in duty until dead while famous patterns conceal what really happens-
their reasons behind closed doors gain ignorant applause for wars and poverty
rising from floors of serial imperial cruel pomposity.
###
THOSE LEAVES ON THE PAVEMENT
from bud to life to death membranes of breath rustle and hustle for water and wind in self similarity without clarity doing the wrong thing.
each tree, is its own fate landing in landscape rooted in class morphing into towers of steel and glass- those leaves on the pavement rejected with resentment turning brown no history written down.
some of those leaves are people we know- but who perceives why we let them go, after mistakes into what waits with nothing to show when time shakes.
###
I WANT WHAT ORDINARY OTHERS WANT
i want what others want- synchronicity and simplicity in life of free will- sharing some land i can work with my hands no more slave still-
time trapped. lines tapped. steps tagged. voice gagged.
this elite mafia of Orwell and Kafka has built Metropolis on old Acropolis- reducing proles to zombie roles in constitutions of constructed evolutions,
with blood to dust faiths riding like dark wraiths bullets shredding bombing and beheading
the innocents and dissidents to steal their lot and not share what you’ve got.
###
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.
###
THIS TENTATIVE RAFT
my muse i choose the intense interlude of mood
longing in the swim of flesh and skin to show contentment is the rest meant after making love holding all above.
passion rocking and swaying finds ordinary ways of playing back and out those constant streams about tranquill conversations flowing in situations.
this tentative raft is piloted deeper and daft surviving hidden sandbars under unreachable stars-
not to gain fortune and fame but to be different than the same life inside walls and doors behind closed curtains on false floors.
###
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 ourself 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.
###
THE DANCE
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 shamens 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.
###
THE CUP
a smelted celebration of victory and carnal coronation moulded in dark history- the chalice divine to inhuman crime blessing unjust law and futile war.
mine, holds the coffee i pour into me, or sometimes tea when i want to see who are different in the present.
upturning the cup and turning it such to read the leaves- a gypsy’s lore and ancient blood has always understood-
who and what controls the plot, keeps us in the base and dregs looking up, without the legs to climb the slippery clay into dark deceit counterfeit deception and decay.
take back how to think, stand at your own sink and wash away this cold custodian, old Eton and Bostonian suited slick affray-
of corporate hoodies and big house bullies hunting and shooting laughing and looting, smeared in oils that anoint herding us to the vanishing point.
###
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.
does her far beauty know where my thoughts go without her when i walk in lush rain lashing down-
squatting in enclosed fields of remote wheat and barley around told feudal cities and towns- to talk to fate and how it feels to be emptied entirely of hopes sounds-
these evolutions fill rich men’s purses and revolutions are poor universes that try to bend the unequal to be equal without end.
does her far beauty know where my thoughts go with her when i walk in lush rain lashing down-
soaked in moments come to this paradise and precipice belonging bonding thoughts
serendipitous blowing into us-
gives shelter to the self of us and other else- unlike bare rooms we rent to leave behind when change moves us to fit into it- with only our echo and scent of passion and mind.
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 alter 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 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, September 13th, 2020 at 8:03am and is filed under Poetry.
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 playing his saxophone in warm solitude.
The Two Saltimbanques, by Pablo Picasso (Spain) 1960
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.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones
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. His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India 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; Dead Snakes Poetry Magazine; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Syzygy Poetry Journal Issue 1 and Ammagazine/Angry Manifesto Issue 3.
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 cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
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.
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 barsbut 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 affairsand 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.
BOOTS OF HARLEY
this universe has no centre and you’re not there. this sun is only sunny on the hood – its light can’t bend more benter to be fair as time stops running rings in wood. the floorboards creak and pictures speak when I stand in empty corners making room, for ghosts that want to have my seat when they come in from the street after riding like Valhalla under sun and moon. summer shoes, with beards of barley in their soley grooves – still think they’re boots of Harley on electro glide down highway avenues – with a woman’s arms around my waist singing Bob Marley and promising me her taste. foot down. legs braced – rocking back the headboard on the bed and base in the hanging of her breasts where my head would rest, her lips a vanished beauty of the past – explode unload to this contrast – that turns its empty pages in my head unlit, as I lie in bed, running out of Kerouac road – i feel the beat and go to sleep with some more story told.
WORDING WITH A WISE OLD SHAMAN
i danced around the monolith on the dark side of the moon – and waited for the face to speak on Mars: there was no one in on earth to share it with in the gloomthey were going round in circles in their cars. hiking out in Arizona. sleeping underneath the stars; got wording with a wise old shaman in a bar – and he said: ‘we have lost who we are.’ who we are, and where we come from. what to do, and where to go – unite the crystal skulls of wisdom for knowledge that we used to know. back inside my human body, all things here are still the same – time to smoke and drink some coffee, then a walk in the rain – before I glide the astral plaine.
when this fibbing sun dips below this planted plate of fields— and waits to bob back up tomorrow: solitude, sucks the color out of crimson clouds and stars begin their motions over night’s black curtain. this dance of being born— to live and die in sacred elements swirling in dust and gas, in beauty and folly that repeats itself; to what purpose does this engine and design make civilizations form then fade with gods and demons? this ship of consciousness in matter has a stowaway on board decoding cyphers in connections.
two misfits by Strider Marcus Jones
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 handfasting we climbed the rungs to civilization
and found a bell housed inside a minaret— where monk and muezzin shared its balcony chanting together for peace— this holy music was only the wind blowing through the weathervane, but we liked its tone to change its time.
About the Author
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.
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.
JUNE 20, 2020J H telepathic lotus, by strider marcus jones hot ride in you, quick quim cum too, shaft slide deep wide, grip him veined blue. deep throat with smoke, moans moat invoke, tongue like a limpet on your moon- crescent lit syrup spoon. rocked round your rim four fingers in, soft stroke your high note in drab dusk and damp dawn- through its musk warm swarm.
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 cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.
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. ~
IT’S SO QUIET
it’s so quiet our eloquent words dying on a diet of midnight toast with Orwell’s ghost- looking so tubercular in a tweed jacket pencilling notes on a lung black cigarette packet- our Winston, wronged for a woman and sin re-wrote history on scrolls thought down tubes that came to him in the Ministry Of Truth Of Fools where conscience learns to lie within. not like today the smug-sly haves say and look away so sure theres nothing wrong with wanting more, or drown their sorrows downing bootleg gin knowing tomorrows truth is paper thin . at home in sensory perception with tapped and tracked phone the Thought Police arrest me in the corridors of affection- where dictators wear, red then blue, reversible coats in collapsing houses, all self-made and self-paid smarmy scrotes- now the Round Table of real red politics is only fable on the pyre of ghostly heretics. they are rubbing out all the contusions and solitary doubt, with confusions and illusions through wired media defined in their secret encyclopedia- where summit and boardroom and conclave engineer us from birth to grave. like the birds, i will have to eat the firethorn berries that ripen but sleep to keep the words of revolution alive and warm this winter, with resolution gathering us, to its lantern in the bleak, to be reborn and speak. ~
CHILDHOOD FIRES
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 jitty’s 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 didnt 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 ~
WOODED WINDOWS
as this long life slowly goes i find myself 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. love slide 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. ~
IN THE COME AND GO, I MIND YOU
in the middle, where i find you, i wriggle in behind you all the way.
in the come and go, i mind you, what we were is reconciled, you let it stay.
this template, for being tender, is our state to remember into grey;
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate andex 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 playing his saxophone in warm solitude.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland
TAKING OFF MY COAT
each evening
is like taking off my coat.
i sit down
apart from the day
and nothing happens.
i let silence sing
her supernatural note-
in the air, i drown
in how the lonely play
as reality slackens.
curdling in a chair
with arms of broken branches
that used to be
and went somewhere
in circumstance and chances-
now greying, like wild hair
at the end of all its dances
with the gravity
gone from its romances-
i feel time's weight
compress the emptiness of fate,
into some sort of nothing
that held my hand,
and left me something-
to understand.
ON TONQUIN BEACH
moods turn with seasons
shades and sounds;
thoughts walk through reasons
ups and downs.
come sit
by the fireside
close to me,
soft fit
and confide,
watch the sea-
splashing feet break blue water
on Tonquin beach,
tall firs fill a quarter
of sight and reach-
waves wash over shoreline,
a soothing sound,
combing thoughts from time
gives them ground
to mingle and mischief
the mind into mire,
like a selfish thief-
that plays with selfless desire.
Time speaks to his daughter
through this release,
while loves lore restores her
masked belief.
the soft scent thought and taste, inside out of you, is more meant face to face, formed out of knowings new.
the when and wait of it phase and age can’t brown, set to the fate of it time ticks down,
softening temptations lips to elevate with elements of emotion, whose vibrations syncopate when happenings motion-
a simple thread of thought, to leave its bed and become caught, in the welcomings you weave that beckon and believe.
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 http//www.lulu.com/spotlight/stridermarcusj…. reveal a maverick moving between forests, mountains, cities and coasts playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude. His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland in numerous publications.
THE HEAD IN HIS FEDORA HAT by Strider Marcus Jones
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.
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. His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India 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; Dead Snakes Poetry Magazine; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Syzygy Poetry Journal Issue 1 and Ammagazine/Angry Manifesto Issue 3.
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