Poetry ~ Strider Marcus Jones 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. ~ IT'S SO QUIET it’s so quiet our eloquent words dying on a diet of midnight toast with Orwell's ghost- looking so tubercular in a tweed jacket pencilling notes on a lung black cigarette packet- our Winston, wronged for a woman and sin re-wrote history on scrolls thought down tubes that came to him in the Ministry Of Truth Of Fools where conscience learns to lie within. not like today the smug-sly haves say and look away so sure theres nothing wrong with wanting more, or drown their sorrows downing bootleg gin knowing tomorrows truth is paper thin . at home in sensory perception with tapped and tracked phone the Thought Police arrest me in the corridors of affection- where dictators wear, red then blue, reversible coats in collapsing houses, all self-made and self-paid smarmy scrotes- now the Round Table of real red politics is only fable on the pyre of ghostly heretics. they are rubbing out all the contusions and solitary doubt, with confusions and illusions through wired media defined in their secret encyclopedia- where summit and boardroom and conclave engineer us from birth to grave. like the birds, i will have to eat the firethorn berries that ripen but sleep to keep the words of revolution alive and warm this winter, with resolution gathering us, to its lantern in the bleak, to be reborn and speak. ~ CHILDHOOD FIRES late afternoon winter fingers nomads in snow numb knuckles and nails on two boys in scuffed shoes and ripped coats carrying four planks of wood from condemned houses down dark jitty's slipping on dog shit into back yard to make warm fires early evening dad cooking neck end stew thick with potato dumplings and herbs on top of bread soaked in gravy i saw the hole in the ceiling holding the foot that jumped off bunk beds but dad didnt mind he had just sawed the knob off the banister to get an old wardrobe upstairs and made us a longbow and cricket bat it was fun being poor like other families after dark all sat down reading and talking in candle light with parents silent to each other our sudden laughter like sparks glowing and fading dancing in flames and wood smoke unlike the children who died in a fire next door then we played cards and i called my dad a cunt for trumping my king but he let me keep the word ~ WOODED WINDOWS as this long life slowly goes i find myself returning to look through wooded windows. forward or back, empires and regimes remain in pyramids of power butchering the blameless for glorious gain. feudal soldiers firing guns and wingless birds dropping smart bombs on mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, follow higher orders to modernise older civilisations repeating what history has taught us. in turn, their towers of class and cash will crumble and crash on top of ozymandias. hey now, woods of winter leafless grip and fractures split drawing us into it. love slide in days through summer heat waves and old woodland ways with us licking then dripping and sticking chanting wiccan songs embraced in pagan bonds living light, loving long, fingers painting runes on skin back to the beginning when freedom wasn't sin. ~ IN THE COME AND GO, I MIND YOU in the middle, where i find you, i wriggle in behind you all the way. in the come and go, i mind you, what we were is reconciled, you let it stay. this template, for being tender, is our state to remember into grey; beyond the time of soil and ember, into nothingness's timbre- be it, play. ~ ![]() 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 forests, mountains, cities and coasts playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude. His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, India and Switzerland in publications including The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; The Galway Review; The Lonely Crowd Magazine.
1 Comment
6/10/2020 08:38:50 am
Thankye Jose Varghese for publishing these five poems. I am delighted to be in the company of the other gifted poets you have published in Strands..
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