Thrilled to have 5 poems published in Our Poetry Archive V-6 No.7: OCTOBER 2020. My thanks to the editors.

https://ourpoetryarchive.blogspot.com/2020/10/strider-marcus-jones.html

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CUBIST GHETTOS

I think

To shrink

The distance

Of resistance

Inside self

To all else-

Knowing

Showing

Vulnerability

In the mystery

Leaves what is closed

Openly exposed-

To explanation

Under examination

When there isn’t one

That hasn’t gone

Until roof floor and sky door

Are no more-

Only roulette rubbles

Of drone troubles

Imprisoning

Reasoning

In cubist ghettos

Wearing jazz stilettos-

Flashing flamingo legs

To pink paradise Harlem heads

While new trees grow up mute

And ripen with strange fruit

Some whites too this time

A drowned boy me and mine.

THE PORTAL IN THE WOODS

Seeing somnambulist sunrise

Through open window

Touch your face

After love rides

On moon tides

In ebb and flow

At tantric pace-

Love resides

Tasted

No asides

Wasted

Spices of the flesh

Soaking rooms in Marrakesh

How I ate your truffle in Zanzibar

While you smoked my long cigar.

Back home-

Tribes of bloods

And druids roam

Seeking out the overgrown

Portal in the woods

Where we handfast

In this present of the past

Dance chanting

In stone bone circles

Like ooparts

Practicing

Magical arts

Settling

What chaos hurtles-

Reconnecting rhythms

In living and dead

To those algorithms

In natures head.

We are rustic-

Romantic

In land and sky

The  air  fire  water

To warriors who slaughter

If Us or Them must die.

We wake

For clambake

Pleasure

In a cauldron lake

Of limbs together

Then cut sods of peat

From the bog under our feet

Exposing the pasts

That never last.

CLOUDS OF CHAOTIC CROWDS

Smitten-

Bitten

Like Faustus-

Leave the house dust

With fool’s gold

Unsold.

This conveyor belt lair

A castle in the air

For Dante’s dreams of doubt

To wander about

In, with voices that pretend

To be a different friend-

Oh my, what a frame,

Too big to blame

And beyond a simple say

To save and stay-

So, close the dungeon door

To be what you were before

And walk away

Into the clouds

Of chaotic crowds

Falling as rain

On sterile plain.

DARK DRAWN MAN

dark drawn man

in two – legged sedan,

Diogenes least

the more i am.

a worn down crease-

opens

like blotched butterfly wings,

that drop in tokens

on imaginings-

lost, but living

through drought and giving.

dark drawn man

of wiccan, glam

rock and folk-

who likes a smoke;

hermit and ham,

sometimes a dam

for the waterfall

of it all-

bohemian and gothic,

romantic, hypnotic,

un-photographic

hates cam.

dark drawn man

whose thought beats flam

on sticks

of words

his focus and blurs

without tricks

of prussian blue

and cadmium red

the way Modigliani drew

his mistress on his bed.

Sophocles was right!

the darkest days, catch chinks of light-

running out of Ram,

but love is who i am.

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.

Copyright Strider Marcus Jones

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 smoky rooms.

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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.