Happy to have 3 poems published in the excellent Rabble Review No.8 February 2025 with thanks to the editors and congratulations to all contributors. https://rabblereview.gumroad.com/l/RR8

Trapped in Manufactured Time

by Strider Marcus Jones

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.

Pyramid Prison

by Strider Marcus Jones

in detritus metronomes
of human habitation
the ghost of Shelley’s imagination
questions the elemental,
experimental
chromosomes
and ribosomes
of DNA,
reverse engineered
that suddenly appeared
as evolution yesterday.

her monster mirrors dark wells
of monsters in our smart selves,
the lost humanity and oratory
that fills laboratory
test tubes
with fused
imbued
genes
to dreams
of flat forward faster
distinction
to disaster

and barbarism’s
ectopic extinction.
this is our pyramid prison,
where all souls
and proles
climb the debased
opposite steps of extremism,
like Prometheus Unbound,
defaced
sitting around
the crouching sphinx
abandoned by missing links.

free masons of money and wars,
warp the alter of natural laws,
so reason withers
and wastelands rust
no longer rivers
of shared stardust
in the equal symphony of spheres
in space,
filling our ears
with subwoofer bass,
definitive
primitive
medieval
evil
waste.

The Dance

by 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.