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.