Strider Marcus Jones's Blog: https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/, page 4

Delighted to have my poem The Door published by brilliant Editor Barbara Leonhard on the fabulous MasticadoresUSA Magazine site today. https://masticadoresusa.wordpress.com...

MasticadoresUSA, poem, poetry

“The Door” by Strider Marcus Jones

Posted by Meelosmomon14 February, 2025

Door Grotto, William Marlow by The Metropolitan Museum of Art is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0
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.

Copyright © 2024 Strider Marcus Jones
All Rights Reserved

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 over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.

Delighted to have my poem Trapped in Manufactured Time published in The Crossroads Literary Magazine. My thanks to Editor John Patrick Robbins. https://thecrossroadlitmagazine.blogs...

TRAPPED IN MANUFACTURED TIME

so lost schooled-
but not a fool,
stands in cold sunshine
on golden heath
where no kings rule
and ancestors of cottons thief,
make poor ends meet for dirty dime-
trapped in manufactured time.
he sits
and fits
in the shadows of its shades
and lines
on Cribden hill-
where clouds spill
like wire brillowed blinds,
imagining a wintered witch
composing pagan spells and rhymes
with bones like martyred blades,
whose burned marrow curses
industrialists and tokened slaves-
to believe a full purse is
how life measures made.
the trees are gone,
and wandering tribes,
who worked and gathered everything as one-
now live down in gas warmed hives,
in settled serfdom's
truths and lies.


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.blogs.... A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.word... reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

Thanks to Editor Barbara Leonhard for publishing my poem The Other Self latinosenglishedition.wordpress.com/2...…

The Other Self

the other self
abstracted in the press
of turned down pages,
gets mucked up in the mess
and shows how unlaminated age is.
if nothing else-
these nude notes
being played behind the curtain
where the stage is,
by soloist strings
and hermit woodwinds-
are far hopes
of uncertain
opening chords
calling out
to the duet
i haven't come to yet.
and afterwards,
if all those afterwards
could talk and kiss and spout,
there would be
no more misery
move it out.

Copyright © 2025 Strider Marcus Jones
All Rights Reserved

***

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 over 200 publications worldwide including: Dreich Magazine; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rye Whiskey Review; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; and Dissident Voice.

Thrilled to have six of my poems published in this stunning issue 30 of 100Subtexts Magazine. Congratulations to editor John Hopper and all contributors. 100subtextsmagazine.blogspot.com/2025...…

Thrilled to have six of my poems in this stunning issue. Congratulations to editor John Hopper and all contributors. 100subtextsmagazine.blogspot.com/2025/01/100s…

NO ROADS


with no roads on our map of conversation,

we began

without plan,

and climbed, into the branches of imagination,

past the twigs and leaves-

those apothecaries

of lost libation,

into houred improvisation-


through its desert wanting rain

after years of stasis,

in a slow camel train

searching for that oasis-

with moving dunes

and negative runes

fending off the grey

in a charmed, nomadic way.


happen then, that this cold acoustic tune,

met your luteful lagoon

of mosaical notes-

and the baton moved,

as was proved

round the wheel with ambient spokes,

conducting without rules

our forgotten fools.


somehow,

go now,

through the eye of words,

to the heart of this rhythm

and the scion of its schism;

then home, like migrating birds

into separate nests-

for now, love rests.



SILHOUETTES OF LOVE AND LUST


i love to watch the chocolate

slowly melt

between your lips

of silky liquid felt,

then lick and lap

soft suck sips

in rhythm with your hips,

making such moments of motion

plough tidal waves in your ocean

as each surge of storm

throbs to be born

until the stone and dust

of autumn yellow moon

casts silhouettes of love and lust

that burst and bloom

through every love-soaked scented night

shuttered from politics so cocooned

in plutocracies of blight.



SO OPEN, BUT SO SILENT TO YOURSELF


so open, but so silent to yourself,

like missing books messing up a shelf-

some unfinished, the others read,

somewhere else in someone's head.

reason is reluctant to be heard

in conscience corrupt by tyranny blurred-

so leave the breaks in moorland grass,

and bound

unfound

where hours don't turn round

inside this glass

duplicity and old division

of curtained cell

instead of prism

equal and parallel-

go, go without trace

into uncovered space

revealing your own face.



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.



FLOATY BOATY


old tracks and elven voices

through the ages clear,

echo those rejoices

then and now, not here.

into the West they went,

leaving behind her music and her scent

in the candle of her moon

and word warmed room

of silver branches-

where streams flow up

and starlight dances

over the cup

of cerebral foreplay

that makes the melancholy mundane day

go floaty boaty

on mental maps

where lips lapped

and tongue tip tapped

forward and back

on moist moaty-

a sensuous place, where conversations dream,

floated in speech bubbles above the scene,

anchored to each mouth and head-

stroking the music rising from the bed.



LOVE IS STRIPPED TO SHARING BREAD


we were kissing

and dancing

to a kitchen song,

talking with our wine

and smoking bong-

then you pushed your pierced pin

of forged fire

further in

the groove of my desire

with your tongue.


later,

up the creaking wooden escalator-


"let me do you" i said

peeling back your petals

with my voice:


love is stripped to sharing bread

abroad-in plain rooms-where Nora and Joyce

reject precious metals.


it brings to craggy green cliffs

that STILL talk-

of two minds, in the sea born mist

of one thought-

why should four legs walk

under clouds adrift.

glum damp rock moss cups

when we go to ground

under body musk

and pagan sound-


the meaning of the hour

when lit lusts flower

fills the air

everywhere

at last

and the future does not imitate the past.

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, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine;The Recusant, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.

Thankye Editor Nolcha Fox for publishing my poem today. Most appreciated.

“YOU ARE A LONG TIME COMING” by Strider Marcus Jones

Delighted to have my poem Red Sky published in the superb Fixator Press. My thanks to editor Jonathan Butcher.

RED SKY by Strider Marcus Jones

Thrilled to have 6 poems published in Bold Monkey Review. My thanks to editor George Anderson. https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/...

Featuring: Strider Marcus Jones




CHANGELING TIMES

as these middle years back bleed,
the rags of old memories recede
into heirlooms handed on
forged in fondness, been and gone.

no time can turn back its mistakes
or mend the piece an action breaks,
to be the way it was before
its nature changed, to less, no more-

like fragments of the whole
tapestry, that reach out to find a role
in these changeling times
of lost roots and fading lines.

a trace of old hypnotic scent
and lived in words, now cold and spent,
separate in the centrifuge
of time through space and spinning blues.

the face and timbre of fate and facts
grow parallel and parallax,
when love leaves on opposite trains
in summer sun and grainy rains.




THE PATH, THE FENCE, THE FIELDS


we walk by the river

talking inside ourselves,

like rhapsodies in two reflections-

different, but the same.



the path, the fence, the fields-

unknown obstacles that stare

through then, and now, beyond-

have heard love chime before.



ahead the river breaks

going separate ways,

but we stick to the same side

in the willow woods



and farms of flooded fields-

with ascension stroking

each reaction

phosphorus in the rain.




ADUMBRATE LOVES SHALLOWS

goddess of the moon
fusion of light and shadow,
come now, light my room-
make darkness shrink and narrow.

gravitate to me
awake inside unnatural light,
half written, half unknown i be
eclipsed in doubt, but inward bright.

bring your blooms to this fallow bed
alone in fates sad stare,
wrap me in your ethereal thread,
to reset time and covet care.

adumbrate loves shallows
in my sanctum core,
where the pastels fade and pallow
without depth and shade on dwindling shore.




BOOTS OF HARLEY


this universe has no center

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 electra 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.




This Theatre of Show

i want to go
where love songs grow,
on the radio
into someone's heart.

i want to know
if i play too slow,
and fade before the glow
can flame and spark.

i mend a dream,
distil it, to mountains seen
through mind and eyes potcheen,
lotioned by loves mark;

with tongue dabbing gleam
in fast flowing stream
of sweet nectarine
from sun up through sun dark.

i want your glow
in the thoughts i know,
before they dim down low
and depart-

this theatre of show
above and below,
where we all act to know
our own part.

so many vines
in the times
i know,
grape, but fail to flower.
i taste their wine
in its summertime,
but show
i am just a shower.




The Mess of Thrown Off Clothes


i listen

to your love beads glisten

in the flotsam

of my room-



we make them

from samurai sword folds

at forge and loom

in the mess of thrown off clothes.



so many smoke me kisses

at portal doors,

and mithril wishes

on primitive floors-



take us back again

through heath and fen

to imitate

lost landscape-



cycle

and circle

sky and stone

outside and home-



in love in less

with your heavenliness,

and loneliness

durable under duress.




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.blogs.... A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry
https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.word... reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smokey 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. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize x3 and Best of the Net x3.

Thrilled to have my poem Calculus published in Issue 3 of the Candid Review. My thanks to the editors and congratulations to all contributors.

issue three – The Candid Review

Calculus – The Candid Review

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 alchemies 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?

Thankye to brilliant editor Nolcha Fox for publishing my five poems in the superb Chewers by Masticadores. Delighted.

5 Poems by Strider Marcus Jones

5 Poems by Strider Marcus Jones

YOU ARE A LONG TIME COMING

you seem so set
to be the movement on my wreck
you are a long time coming.

deep slide
up
down
after walking
in the town;
alone, pride
is a cup
spilt sound
of restless
self running.

the rustle of your dress
ends my emptiness
you are a long time coming.




WHEN YOUR RIVER IS WILD AND WIDE

lip lap
forward and back
up down around
we are altered and can’t change the gap
sighs mouth mound.

slip slide
rise fall come in go out on tide
caress
confide
rebel be alive

in the saturated beauty of it all
along each width of wall
such tenderness
resists what can oppress
when your river is wild and wide.




AN OLD WELL

an old well,
closely clustered
with the detritus of age
doesn’t tell-
who has whispered
or gazed
into it’s wise abyss
to consummate a coveted wish.
it doesn’t judge
or smudge
the beauty that is spoken
when those lips
fall open
to it’s thoughts and quiet quips-
that thread, is never broken
or it’s bed
shed
in these silent seasons,
that have their reasons
for waiting to be told-
so don’t lie down
or feelings fold
in sadness, like a clown
who hesitates
with the wanderers of fates-
white gold
doesn’t rust
in the trial and trust
of the truth it makes.




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.




MONOCLE

remote ramblings,
stepped and spoken-
like gambling’s
that bloomed-
only to be broken,
wandered
and roomed,
waited on quiet landings
like squandered perfume-
left open.

marxist marches.
mithril kisses under gothic arches-
role playing elf and cleric
in cold caves removed from Berek
the Halfhand’s chronicle,
seem mesmeric-
when seen through monocle.

but the other eye looks back too,
inside this rhapsody with you;
and the light-
switched off.
switched on.
off,
and on,
loving day and night-
through prose phrases
and shared phases
of captured sun and moon-
flying mellow yellow,
on white witches broom;

knows nature’s laws
has moods
and flaws
in her quietudes-
to reason cause,
and fathom clues.

Copyright © 2024 Strider Marcus Jones
All Rights Reserved

Delighted to have 5 poems published in Issue 40. 2024:2 of the brilliant Rochford Street Review in Australia. My thanks to the editor Mark Roberts. Honoured to be featured.

Strider Marcus Jones: 5 Poems

 

*Rochford Street Review

A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.

Current IssueLatest PostsPrevious IssuesExpand submenuAbout Rochford Street ReviewExpand submenuRochford Cottage BookshopStrider Marcus Jones: 5 Poems

by Admin

Dec 082024

MY OLD SOCKS

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.

**

The Mad Hatter Hiding in Dark Matter

in our house
i binned the radio
for playing Strauss-

left the suited rodeo
of casino Faust
and shot the gentry shooting grouse.

into the wild garden
without spun jargon
we went

through rusting arch of rose dissent
onto the precipice of peace
where slush borders grip and grease

like usurping tectonic plates
shapeshifting smaller states.
their innocents bombed and dispossessed

join our shoaled oppressed
of obedient possessed-
while The Mad Hatter

hiding in Dark Matter-
says blame them, instead of Strauss
in suits playing casino Faust

and enslaving gentry shooting grouse.

**

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.

**

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 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 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, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine;The Recusant, The Lampeter Review and Dissident Voice.