Strider Marcus Jones (Western Voices 2023)

Bio: 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 worldwide including: Otoliths Literary Journal; Drawn to the Light Press; Setu 2022 Western Voices; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine and Dissident Voice.

 

HATS OF SOCIOPATHIC ECLIPSE

the cream

is a nightmare

seldom a dream,

that blood rare

stream

that rises

unstopped,

soured by bullies

whose wisdom has no worries

and despises

those who are not.

when truth becomes twisted

then hard fisted

and spoken rotten

over all we have forgotten,

you know the mask

want it to last

over us like the past.

they want us to be clones

of skin and blood and bones,

like frightened, servile drones

grateful but outcast.

corruption is the god

of the Significant,

so be wary as you plod

if your mind is wired different-

sordid business

gives soiled forgiveness

now the politics and technocrats

are Fixed:

let your individuality and normality

be the sense and conscience

against these hats of sociopathic eclipse.

***

 

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 its illustrious self

stealing the wealth

of massed, divided synergies.

***

---

Western Voices 2023 :: Setu, February 2023

Strider Marcus Jones (Western Voices 2022)

Bio: 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.

 

POVERTY FEEDS PARADISE

If you want to see poverty 

Don't send your Inspectors to a cleaned-up estate. 

Send them to a real slum 

That's almost falling down, 

Full of heroin-heads and criminals 

Who prowl around the town. 

If you want to see poverty, 

That cannot be escaped- 

Send them where the walls rain in, 

And people live in crates; 

There's lots of them in Britain- 

Where graffiti thatches bricks, 

And muggers lurk on blacked-out stairs 

With guns and knives and sticks. 

If you want to hear poverty, 

Ask the mums and dads, 

Whose teenage sons and daughters 

Sniff cheap glue in carrier bags; 

Or dodge all the dog shit, 

And ask young mums-to-be, 

Why they find a friend in suicide 

On social security. 

It's a walk tall, talk scared apathy 

when verbal violence meets- 

In smoke-free pubs 

Where hoody-thugs deal drugs 

And rule the streets. 

A time bomb is running. 

A social conscience gone- 

Dog eat dog lives on. 

Bad day coming. 

*** 

OLD FLOWERS

old flowers

bloom in the after hours

trailing scent-

and their words still drawn

fill the night and dawn

the way they went.

new to ours,

coffee shops and church clock towers

remember those times spent

in warm

touching’s born

out of movement.

tempting rain showers

in silent bane's empty hours

shuffle and lament-

the thoughts swarm

and mind-bed warm

coupling of consent.

***

I FOLLOW YOU INTO NIGHT

i sense you in summer wind

and try to redefine the Other ring

that binds us

in this tormenting

show of come and go

that minds us.

in the sentence of a sound

i hear your pain

then turn its fate around

to break the blame

mending happenings

and broken strings.

footfalls confide

in shadows that duet in our divide

on a bridge where dark persuasions swallow light

i follow you into night

through corridors uncurtained dreams

in tapestries and surreal scenes.

that corrugated face of time

marks motions set to mime-

on the balcony of fate he leant

where rites and runes evoked her scent-

to hear the music in her ways

smile and quicken upon his gaze.

***

---

Setu, April 2022

Strider Marcus Jones: Poetry (Western Voices 2021)

Bio: Strider Marcus Jones is the founder and Editor of Lothlorien Poetry Journal: https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogs... 

 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:

https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/

 

 

THE MADRIGAL OF VOICES

 

the madrigal of voices

somewhere, in its choices,

chooses and rejoices

back to me-

collecting frozen wood,

from the crofts and slums, of old childhood-

sat here, on this chair

in the numb night air.

 

now, your moonbeams kiss

the winter of me. stirs

ripples on its pond skin

back to the begin.

unpicks the threaded wish

of passion’s positive remark-

while sleep fights

these luminous lights

of limp daggers-

laughing in the dark.

 

somehow, its root

of subdued jasmine and tropical jute,

reaches that closed chamber of your core-

and thoughts transmute,

woven to the nature of its lore.

negativity narrows

when i stroke in your shallows-

forward as before;

but staying in tomorrows,

i enter and endure.

 

 

WHAT EVERYBODY AND NO ONE KNOWS

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.

 

IN THE TALK OF MY TOBACCO SMOKE

 

i have disconnected self

from the wire of the world

retreated to this unmade croft

of wild grass and savage stone

moored mountains

set in sea

blue black green grey

dyed all the colours of my mood

and liquid language-

to climb rocks

instead of rungs

living with them

moving around their settlements

of revolutionary random place

for simple solitary glory.

i am reduced again

to elements and matter

that barter her body for food

teasing and turning

her flesh to take words and plough.

rapid rain

slaps the skin

on honest hands

strongly gentle

while sowing seeds

the way i touch my lover

in the talk of my tobacco smoke:

now she knows

she tastes

like all the drops

of my dreams

falling on the forest

of our Lothlorien.

---

Western Voices 2021 :: Setu, February 2021