Strider Marcus Jones's Blog: https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/, page 11

Really chuffed to have my poem Where Words Go published in the Neuro Logical Literary Magazine Anthology 2020-2021. My thanks to the editors.

https://www.neurologicalliterarymagazine.com/

Where words go

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/

Delighted to have 2 poems – Salted Slug and Ever After Tomorrow published in Dreich Magazine’s themed chapbook Afterwards. Thank you to brilliant editor Jack Caradoc. .

https://hybriddreich.co.uk/dreich-themes/

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SALTED SLUG

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.

Copyright Strider Marcus Jones

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Really chuffed to have my poem We Don’t Fall published online in Riveting Rants Magazine on 9th July, 2021. My thanks to the editors.

https://rivetingrants.wixsite.com/magazine/post/we-don-t-fall-strider-marcus-jones

We Don’t Fall – Strider Marcus Jones

We don’t fall,

we learn and grow:

there is beauty

in mistakes we make

and light in sadness.

We build a wall

around our glow,

and sleep to break

the cruelty

of madness.

only for a while. That’s all

the sun stays low,

to come awake

like fate with love, rises early

and finds us.

BIOGRAPHY:

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/

Delighted to have my poem Sliding Down Old Ben Bulben published in the Columba online Poetry Quarterly Issue 8, Summer 2021. My thanks to editor Emily Tristan Jones.

https://www.columbapoetry.com/jones.html

SLIDING DOWN OLD BENBULBIN
​
​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/

Thrilled to have my two poems Children of the Revolution and That Blacksmith Fellow published by Fixator Press. My thanks to Poet and Editor Jonathan Butcher.

https://fixatorpress.home.blog/2021/06/17/two-poems-by-strider-marcus-jones/

Two Poems by Strider Marcus Jones

jbutcher1Uncategorized  June 17, 2021 2 Minutes

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

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.

Delighted to have my poem The Dance published in Adfectus: Poetry Anthology by Exeter Publishing. My thanks to the editors.

THE DANCE
STRIDER MARCUS JONES

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/

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Thrilled to have 5 of my poems published on the wonderful Ink Pantry poetry blog. My thanks to editor Deborah Edgeley.

Poetry Drawer: She is a Suffragette: A Woman Does Not Have To Wait: The Two Saltimbanques: Hopper’s Ladies: Oviri by Strider Marcus Jones

Poetry Drawer: She is a Suffragette: A Woman Does Not Have To Wait: The Two Saltimbanques: Hopper’s Ladies: Oviri by Strider Marcus Jones

Posted on 10th June 2021 by Deborah Edgeley

She is a Suffragette

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.

Delighted to have my poem The Word Love published in Crossways Literary Magazine. My thanks to editor David Jordan and poetry editor Anne Daly.

https://crosswaysmagazine.com/issues/

THE WORD LOVE

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.

Delighted to have three of my poems published on Poetry In Surrey Libraries blog. My thanks to editors Neil Richards and J M. Gale.

https://npdsurrey.wordpress.com/2021/05/20/stone-jar-by-strider-marcus-jones/

Stone Jar by Strider Marcus Jones

Posted on May 20, 2021 by jmgale

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.

https://npdsurrey.wordpress.com/2021/05/23/soupy-potions-by-strider-marcus-jones/

Soupy Potions by Strider Marcus Jones

Posted on May 23, 2021 by jmgale

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.

The Vase by Strider Marcus Jones

https://npdsurrey.wordpress.com/2021/05/28/the-vase-by-by-strider-marcus-jones/

1d ago

Image by Lubos Houska from Pixabay

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.

Thrilled to have my Orwellian poem On the Other Side of the Room’s Window published in Dreich Magazine’s themed chapbook ISMISMS. Thank you Jack Caradoc editor supreme.

https://hybriddreich.co.uk/dreich-themes/

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM’S WINDOW

Dried coffee rings on the bedside table,

Where the martyr stubs his cigarette,

And disregards the opened volume

Of T.S.Eliot.

On the other side of the room’s window,

Buses shake past,but can’t be seen;

And when he calls for freedom,

The world spouts semen and war machines.

Cameras in the streets outside,

Watch this enemy within:

But how many Winston Smiths,

Are writing notes, and sneaking gin?

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.