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, 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 over 200 publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner and Literary Yard Journal.

HOT ROD

fast and furious
archangel in paint and chrome
brings me home-
purring megaphonious,
combusting with sav and sap
that i glimpse
peeking into warm grill chintz-
then she lifts her corset bonnet
and lets me touch her glinting bones
secreting home spun
pheromones
attracting, like moon and sun-
mysterious
and mnemonic
old senses,
fallow and fenced
soon become drenched
quiller and squirter
in that linguistic converter-
glow mapping,
overlapping,
slowly blown
in the metronome.

I’M GETTING OLD NOW

i’m getting old now-
you know,
like that tree in the yard
with those thick cracks
in its skinbark
that tell you
the surface of its lived-in secrets.
my eyes,
have sunk too inward
in sleepless sockets
to playback images
of ghosts-
so make do with words
and hear the sounds
of my years in yourself.

childhood-
riding a rusty three-wheel bike
to shelled-out houses bombed in the blitz,
then zinging home zapped in mud
to wolf down chicken soup
over lumpy mashed potato for tea-
with bare feet sticking on cold kitchen lino
i shivered watching the candle burn down
racing to finish a book i found in a bin-
before Mam showed me her empty purse
and robbed the gas meter-
the twenty shillings
stained the red formica table
like pieces of the man’s brains
splattered all over the back seat
of his symbolic limousine
as i watched history brush out her silent secrets.

THIS WEIGHT OF WATER

if i could lose
this weight of water from my shoes,
that follows the place i’m walking-

i know it’s not the blues,
or patterns in the grooves
of souls talking-

but the plate of my mistakes
is full and contemplates
what’s left to be worth calling.

i change my shoes,
and tune my station
to your chords of conversation,
and in these wired interludes-
i find life’s translation.

WE MOVE THE WHEEL

we move the wheel
that turns through each mistake,
giving motion
to the roles we chime
until both trickle out of time
like brittle steel
that rusts and breaks
into lapsed devotion.

less, or more,
you imagined it was sure
sharing the road
with you,
treading under dark, grey and blue
sky, wondering where it went going
to unfold
in fates wind blowing
fondling your full face
to some top-to-bottom place.

we have moved the wheel,
only to reveal
our high Metropolis
is still the same Acropolis
of extremes and obscenes
spreading gangrenous genes.

we have separated Dream from Time
and live in mirages
like Bacchus and Libera
duped in an era
condoning crime,
altering the images
of it’s illustrious self
stealing the wealth
of massed, divided synergies.

THE DARKEST FLOWER IS THE EVENING

again
consensual persuasions
make sensual equations
as we smoke and share a think,
then the same
as she bends over the shingle sink
breasts slapping
on bowl and rim,
peachey buttocks yapping
as i slide in
and out of her velvet purse
each time deeper than the first
two parts making one perfection
of mental physical connection.

outsides
i saw two magpies
in the branches of a tree
barbed tower
watching our sharing eyes
shape fractured liberty
slipping the shackles of feudal power.

in this then,
i know how all of when
you’re gone
reduces me to being one
and the darkest flower
is the evening
opened by your scent
giving everything
and receiving
mine in mind and meldings meant.