STRIDER MARCUS JONES

 

Lothlorien

 

i'm come home again

in your Lothlorien

to marinate my mind

in your words,

and stand behind

good tribes grown blind,

trapped in old absurd

regressive reasons

and selfish treasons.

 

in this cast of strife

the Tree Of Life

embraces innocent ghosts,

slain by Sauron's hosts;

and their falling cries

make us wise

enough to rise

up in a fellowship of friends

to oppose Mordor's ends

and smote this evil stronger

and longer

for each one of us that dies.

 

i'm come home again

in your Lothlorien,

persuading

yellow snapdragons

to take wing

and un-fang serpent krakens,

while i bring

all the races

to resume

their bloom

as equals in equal spaces

by removing

and muting

the chorus of crickets

who cheat them from chambered thickets,

hiding corruptions older than long grass

that still fag for favours asked.

 

i'm come home again

in your Lothlorien

where corporate warfare

and workfare

on health

and welfare

infests our tribal bodies

and separate self

in political lobbies

so conscience can't care

or share

worth and wealth:

 

to rally drones

of walking bones,

too tired

and uninspired

to think things through

and the powerless who see it true.

red unites, blue divides,

which one are you

and what will you do

when reason decides.

 

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

penciling 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

there's 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.

 

Pyramid Prison

 

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.

 

This Is The Field

 

this is not the field

for truth to grow in.

it's 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 it's place

like all the others, for centuries

in these peasant penitentiaries,

 

without bolting

or revolting

in union, except for Loveless's Tolpuddle few,

who knew what to do

but were jailed, or transported

and thwarted.

 

this is the field

to refuse to yield

in. at Peterloo, sabres slit gullets,

and now, tear gas and rubber bullets,

try to abolish workers’ rights,

but our solidarity is stronger and fights.

 

We Move The Wheel

 

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.

 

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. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 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 numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Our Poetry Archive; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway 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; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine  Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.

STRIDER MARCUS JONES

 

I'm Getting Old Now

 

i'm getting old now-

you know,

like that tree in the yard

with those thick cracks

in its skin bark

that tell you

the surface of its lived-in secrets.

my eyes,

have sunk too inward

in sleepless sockets

to playback images

of ghosts-

so make do with words

and hear the sounds

of my years in yourself.

 

childhood-

riding a rusty three-wheel bike

to shelled-out houses bombed in the blitz,

then zinging home zapped in mud

to wolf down chicken soup

over lumpy mashed potato for tea-

with bare feet sticking on cold kitchen lino

i shivered watching the candle burn down

racing to finish a book i found in a bin-

before Mam showed me her empty purse

and robbed the gas meter-

the twenty shillings

stained the red formica table

like pieces of the man's brains

splattered all over the back seat

of his rambolic limousine

as i watched history brush out her silent secrets.

 

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 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 candlelight

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.

 

The Ascent Of Money

 

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.

 

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. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 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 numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Our Poetry Archive; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway 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; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine  Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.

STRIDER MARCUS JONES

 

Weeds Left

 

weeds left,

wilt in the sun

without work and water.

their seeds

are the wild flowers,

waiting for volcanic wind

and ash to fall,

so the fertile cinders

can colonize herbaceous borders

ending the old age

of selfish sediment

treading it down

in molecules of time.

another Marxist

dons his trench coat

and tears pages from his red book

planting the old words

of revolution

in minds of homogenous compost.

over-privileged gallows begin to swing.

bullets sweat in their chambers

waiting for the right heads.

 

The Darkest Flower Is The Evening

 

again

consensual persuasions

make sensual equations

as we smoke and share a think,

then the same

as she bends over the shingle sink

breasts slapping

on bowl and rim,

peachy buttocks yapping

as i slide in

and out of her velvet purse

each time deeper than the first

two parts making one perfection

of mental physical connection.

 

outsides

i saw two magpies

in the branches of a tree

barbed tower

watching our sharing eyes

shape fractured liberty

slipping the shackles of feudal power.

 

in this then,

i know how all of when

you're gone

reduces me to being one

and the darkest flower

is the evening

opened by your scent

giving everything

and receiving

mine in mind and meldings meant.

 

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.

 

Love Wanes Like Old News

 

she left,

without remorse or love to lose-

and cleft

the music from the blues.

bereft,

in melancholy mental muse-

the theft

of love wanes like old news,

and jests

through pain to wear in new shoes-

the rest,

just words in ink and oral clues.

 

Poets In The Backfield

 

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.

 

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. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 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 numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.

 

STRIDER MARCUS JONES

 

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 Look Through Pixel Stars

 

ensconced in your topiary vegetation,

with the u vowel

and tongue trowel

quickening sensation,

trickles down the eaves

morphia poches,

and smokes through notes

of cuddled conversation-

 

try to pin me down,

your king without a crown,

from cobbled streets

and communist meets

back then, in the day-

that come to this

metropolis

contorted with decay.

 

if i know love at all,

it's moat without a wall-

can come and conquer me,

then share soliloquy.

i look through pixel stars,

ignoring clubs and bars,

in seas above the ground-

waiting to be found

 

in books of chivalry-

embedded into me.

another doing day,

forms and fades away,

as the sky drapes close-

hope constricts, and i compose

these lines of fallow furrows-

my yesterdays, for tomorrows.

 

Isolation

 

so i suit

this solitary shell

of isolation,

with time to think

between the grains of sand,

that complicate

its close compartments

and heavy out

the walk to each sweet segment-

whose footsteps take me back

to blood, bone and flesh-

but thoughts outside these ribboned roots

remain me,

through this grainy grey malaise of days,

to make the wait of wanting-

turn to hope and happenings

that settle on a sunset

while i sleep for their return.

 

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 camonbert-

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.

 

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. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 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 numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Our Poetry Archive; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway 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; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine  Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.

STRIDER MARCUS JONES

 

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.

 

On The Train To El Chorro

 

on the train to El Chorro

something cut me loose,

and i left this tomorrow

of my youth-

in the twilight of a lake,

in the sky mountains break,

rock chasms of echo and truth

brought me to young olive groves,

standing like soldiers in sun-starched rows,

ripe for some buyer and vendor

to trade them

and train them

so profits accrue-

in the style of Milo Minderbender

dealing in Catch 22,

when women loved like floozies,

and sat at the back at the movies-

showing me what to do.

time turned each page

of idealism's rage

into cynicism's age-

on each point of winding track

as i thumbed back

through the book of that tomorrow

on the train to El Chorro.

 

The Ascent Of Money

 

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.

 

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. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal. 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 numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Our Poetry Archive; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway 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; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine  Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.