Strider Marcus Jones's Blog: https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/

https://suburbanwitchcraft.com/issue11

A WOMAN DOES NOT HAVE TO WAIT

under the old canal bridge you said
so i can hear the echoes
in your head
repeating mine
this time
when it throws
our voices from roof into water
where i caught her
reflection half in half out of sunshine.
thats when i hear Gerschwin
playing his piano in you
working out the notes
to rhapsody in blue
that makes me float
light and thin
deep within
through the air
when you put your comforts there.
Waits was drinking whisky from his bottle
while i sat through old days with Aristotle
knowing i must come up to date
because a woman does not have to wait.

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 and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry  https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

The Samaritan Machine & The Mad Hatter Hiding in Dark Matter published in Be About It Press. My thanks to Editor Alexandra Naughton.

https://beaboutitpress.substack.com/p/the-samaritan-machine-and-the-mad

two new poems by Strider Marcus Jones

Photo by Indra Projects on Unsplash

The Samaritan Machine


this field pond

is only my

dissolved

imagination-

thought drops

of summer rain

making fractal ripples

drumbeat on skin.

a portal shared

with cawing crows

reveals

who scams and snoops and shoots

in contract conversations.

this Windsong

of Virginia Creeper,

ruling Bear and Wolfsbane

rustling in black bamboo

trusts its Samaritan Machine

telling it who to redact

in this imposed

dystopian

equilibrium

of dumbed-down masses

worshipping Carousel.




The Mad Hatter Hiding in Dark Matter


in our house

i binned the radio

for playing Strauss-

left the suited rodeo

of casino Faust

and shot the gentry shooting grouse.

into the wild garden

without spun jargon

we went

through rusting arch of rose dissent

onto the precipice of peace

where slush borders grip and grease

like usurping tectonic plates

shapeshifting smaller states.

their innocents bombed and dispossessed

join our shoaled oppressed

of obedient possessed-

while The Mad Hatter

hiding in Dark Matter-

says blame them, instead of Strauss

in suits playing casino Faust

and enslaving gentry shooting grouse.



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. A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry Strider Marcus Jones Poet reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.




Be About It Press is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

https://www.rangermagazine.net/issue13

https://www.rangermagazine.net/jones_issue13

#RANGER

Strider Marcus Jones



Hopper’s Ladies



you stay and grow

more mysterioso

but familiar

in my interior-

with voices peeled

full of field

of fruiting orange trees

fertile to orchard breeze

soaked in summer rains

so each refrain all remains.



not afraid of contrast,

closed and opened in the past

and present, this isolation of Hopper's ladies,

sat, thinking in and out of ifs and maybes

in a diner, reading on a chair or bed

knowing what wants to be said

to someone

who is coming or gone-



such subsidence

into silence

is a unilateral curve

of moments

and movements

that swerve

a straight lifetime

to independence

in dependence

touching sublime

rich roots

then ripe fruits.



we share their flesh and flutes

in ribosomes and delicious shoots

that release love-

no, not just the fingered glove

to wear

and curl up with in a chair,

but lovingkindness

cloaked in timeless density and tone

in settled loam-

beyond lonely apartments in skyscrapers

and empty newspapers,

or small-town life

gutting you with a gossips knife.





The Two Saltimbanques



when words don't come easy

they make do with silence

and find something in nothing

to say to each other

when the absinthe runs out.



his glass and ego

are bigger than hers,

his elbows sharper,

stabbing into the table

and the chambers of her heart

cobalt clown

without a smile.



she looks away

with his misery behind her eyes

and sadness on her lips,

back into her curves

and the orange grove

summer of her dress

worn and blown by sepia time



where she painted

his mirth and mess

lying down

naked

for her brush and skin,

mingling intimate scents

undoing and doing each other.



for some of us,

living back then

is more going forward

than living in now

and sitting here-



at this table,

with these glasses

standing empty of absinthe,

faces wanting hands

to be a bridge of words

and equal peace

as Guernica approaches.





Calculus



Darwin can't explain the missing link,

and science, did not invent the goal

of faith in how we think-

but Newton keeps us

sane to find the whole

gravity and reason for our role-

in calculus.



science beyond ours does exist,

in un-deciphered hieroglyphs

and alchemy's of metals

malleable like petals

on spaceships

crashed in Roswell, gone

to Area 51.



like Dedalus, who prayed too good

through Dublin's streets

of saints and sinners,

while whores exchanged their treats

for cash, from winners and beginners-

i walked towards the priesthood,

but woke up wet with wood.



i realised, Carlisle was right in saying:

no lie can live forever-

that the Gods we make together

praying-

don't care or intervene

in human fate and actions-

so Spinoza's God is seen,



in the orderly reactions

of the universe-

creating life, and waiting hearse-

but metaphors of doubt persist

on the road to Armageddon,

for if physics shapes all of this-

what shapes these cloths of heaven?

Visigoth Rover



i went on the bus to Cordoba,

and tried to find the Moor's

left over

in their excavated floors

and mosaic courtyards,

with hanging flowers brightly chameleon

against whitewashed walls

carrying calls

behind gated iron bars-

but they were gone

leaving mosque arches

and carved stories

to God's doors.



in those ancient streets

where everybody meets;

i saw the old successful men

with their younger women again,

sat in chrome slat chairs,

drinking coffee to cover

their vain love affairs-

and every breast,

was like the crest

of a soft ridge

as i peeped over

the castle wall and Roman bridge

like a Visigoth rover.



soft hand tapping on shoulder,

heavy hair

and beauty older,

the gypsy lady gave her clover

to borrowed breath,

embroidering it for death,

adding more to less

like the colours fading in her dress.

time and tune are too planned

to understand

her Trevi fountain of prediction,

or the dirty Bernini hand

shaping its description.





A Woman Does Not Have To Wait



under the old canal bridge you said

so i can hear the echoes

in your head

repeating mine

this time

when it throws

our voices from roof into water

where i caught her

reflection half in half out of sunshine.

that’s when i hear Gershwin

playing his piano in you

working out the notes

to rhapsody in blue

that makes me float

light and thin

deep within

through the air

when you put your comforts there.

Waits was drinking whisky from his bottle

while i sat through old days with Aristotle

knowing i must come up to date

because a woman does not have to wait-

until my speech and face is

naked like a grockle

in those other places

we are coming to

under the blue.

it isn't much, but all i have for us-

me, behind this mask of mirrors.



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.blogs.... A member of The Poetry Society, and nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry Strider Marcus Jones Poet 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.

https://synchchaos.com/

Strider Marcus Jones speaks to reclaiming and holding onto our interior life, emotions, and connection to nature in a world of mass media and technological disruption and deception.

Essay from Strider Marcus Jones

Essay from Strider Marcus Jones
Posted on 12/01/2025 by Synchronized Chaos




Pyramid Prison



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 altar 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.




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

rewrote 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

there’s 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 encyclopaedia-

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.




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 hondfast

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 nature’s 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.




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 HEAD IN HIS FEDORA HAT




a lonely man,

cigarette,

rain

and music

is a poem

moving,

not knowing-

a caravan,

whose journey does not expect

to go back

and explain

how everyone’s ruts

have the same

blood and vein.

the head in his fedora hat

bows to no one’s grip,

brim tilted into the borderless

plain

so his outlaw wit

can confess

and remain

a storyteller,

that hobo fella

listening like a barfly

for a while

and slow-winged butterfly

whose smile

they can’t close the shutters on

or stop talking about

when he walks out

and is gone.

whisky and tequila

and a woman, who loves to feel ya

inside

and outside

her

when ya move

and live as one,

brings you closer

in simplistic

unmaterialistic

grooved

muse Babylon.

this is so,

when he stands with hopes head,

arms and legs

all aflow

in her Galadriel glow

with mithril breath kisses

condensing sensed wishes

of reality and dream

felt and seen

under that

fedora hat

inhaling smoke

as he sang and spoke

stranger fella

storyteller.




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.blogs.... A member of The Poetry Society, nominated for the Pushcart Prize x4 and Best of the Net x3, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.word... reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

The Pan Haiku Review Autumn/Winter 2025

www.callofthepage.org/the-pan-haiku-review/

The Pan Haiku Review 魔法 Mahō Mentions
Pronounced as mah/ho
A selection of the very best, while impossible
to include everyone, this is an award or
reward for the readers as much as it is for
the wonderful poets who gave their haiku to
The Pan Haiku Review issue 6 (Autumn/Winter edition).
魔法 translates to magic in English,
and can also be translated as sorcery, or spell.
Below are just a handful of haiku that left me …spellbound

selkie seeking love
midnight lake moonlit ripples
on the water’s skin


Strider Marcus Jones / Paris, France; Salford and Hinckley (UK); Arizona (USA)
魔法

as autumn leaves swirl
into derelict buildings
spirals of decay


Strider Marcus Jones / Paris, France; Salford and Hinckley (UK); Arizona (USA)

Strider Marcus Jones



The Path, the Fence, the Fields


we walk by the river
talking inside ourselves,
like rhapsodies in two reflections—
different, but the same

the path, the fence, the fields—
unknown obstacles that stare
through then, and now, beyond—
have heard love chime before

ahead the river breaks
going separate ways,
but we stick to the same side
in the willow woods

and farms of flooded fields,
with ascension stroking
each reaction
phosphorous in the rain



Velvet Tangerine


i was drinking tea with Dali
in an underworld cafe,
arguing down his table
on General Franco’s hand,
when The Persistence Of Memory
that melts my pocket watch
made time less rigid;
so i fell with names and numbers
into old obsidian dreams—
where your long legs pointed
from six to twelve,
then nine to three
when you bent them—
for me to play and pleasure
each exotic segment;
Dali left the table
to meet Picasso in Paris,
while my Benzedrine mind replaced
the soft and spent infinity of your face

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 Journa, https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society and a three-time nominee for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his five published books of poetry reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. Visit him at https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/.

Poems by Strider Marcus Jones

COME AND SEE

you don’t have to be extreme
to be content,
other forces feed
this show-
they build on what has been
and mingle with consent,
then roam the rivers we invent-
using nature and nurture’s seed
to make it grow.

unshade your grey, reclusive hours
and play your made, profusive flowers
all the way:
don’t let regret upset your dream-
it’s all its light has been
and makes what it empowers
from today.

but hark at me!
not knowing
what i’m sowing
day to day
deliberately-
and yet, i know it’s coming,
comes from going
out of me-

into its tomorrow,
with all its sleeps of sorrow
entangled in its tree,
what i don’t make, i borrow-
come and see.

EIGHT TREASURES OF SIMPLE PLEASURES

a sensual spoken

strawberry cut open

thought

brought

me to your secret place

with my face.

in the altered mirage

that history presents,

your even visage

and words have sounds and scents

that repair

the despair

and remake vanity’s varnished vase

with plain consents

until the figures

in the patterns

and the glaze

reconfigure

what has happened

and are swayed

to be themself

and not the mould of someone else.

i come back to you

in the porcelain white and blue

of Ming and Xiantzi

rustic and romancy

bearing eight treasures

of simple pleasures:

heart’s love

life’s soul

passions blood

mind whole

and wisdom

instead of blindness

to share a kingdom

with unselfish kindness.

DOING NOTHING

doing nothing

is a way

of doing something

with the day

if you leave it open.

just think,

what was, has been

a long drink

from the same stream

and you are not broken.

love flown and fled

shared who you are,

happened, was said

but only so far

sound spoken.

HERE I AM THE SAME

here i am the same

sitting in the dark with you

turning out the stars

that won’t do.

from the dimmed grain

light of coffee bars

they look so infinitely plain

against the black backdrop

countless where time can’t stop.

once,

everyone has a once-

they lit the canopy

on that journey

now only

tickets of buses and trains

and notes that grew out of numbers and names.

around midnight,

i mull them with moonlight

and stand out in their youth

from this heavy slated roof

i’ve settled under

and wonder

will i ever find

another time to penetrate

and fascinate

your body with my mind.

KNOTS IN STRINGS

so what

if knots

in strings

bring an end to things

that were.

i can undo her

tapestry

make it gone

and move what measures on

powers infinity.

found in mound and moat

elements made unmade

sink and float

convex and concave

dance a burning wave.

spiny gorse

not in bloom

sits inside a horse

to be taken in, fate from giving

creates a living tomb.

Base

i can be cool base

or a fiddle graced-

dependin’

on what mood i’m in-

but heaven

is seven

piano notes

vibrating strokes 

soothing mind and skin.

Strider Marcus Jones (UK)

AUTORE

Strider Marcus Jones (UK)

Published by Agron Shele on September 24, 2025

A Woman Does Not Have To Wait

under the old canal bridge you said
so i can hear the echoes
in your head
repeating mine
this time
when it throws
our voices from roof into water
where i caught her
reflection half in half out of sunshine.
that’s when i hear Gershwin
playing his piano in you
working out the notes
to rhapsody in blue
that makes me float
light and thin
deep within
through the air
when you put your comforts there.
Waits was drinking whisky from his bottle
while i sat through old days with Aristotle
knowing i must come up to date
because a woman does not have to wait-
until my speech and face is
naked like a grockle
in those other places
we are coming to
under the blue.
it isn’t much, but all i have for us-
me, behind this mask of mirrors.



This Theatre of Show

i want to go
where love songs grow,
on the radio
into someone’s heart.

i want to know
if i play too slow,
and fade before the glow
can flame and spark.

i mend a dream,
distil it, to mountains seen
through mind and eyes potcheen,
lotioned by loves mark;

with tongue dabbing gleam
in fast flowing stream
of sweet nectarine
from sun up through sun dark.

i want your glow
in the thoughts i know,
before they dim down low
and depart-

this theatre of show
above and below,
where we all act to know
our own part.

so many vines
in the times
i know,
grape, but fail to flower.
i taste their wine
in its summertime,
but show
i am just a shower.



The Mess of Thrown Off Clothes

i listen
to your love beads glisten
in the flotsam
of my room-

we make them
from samurai sword folds
at forge and loom
in the mess of thrown off clothes.

so many smoke me kisses
at portal doors,
and mithril wishes
on primitive floors-

take us back again
through heath and fen
to imitate
lost landscape-

cycle
and circle
sky and stone
outside and home-

in love in less
with your heavenliness,
and loneliness
durable under duress.



Pomegranate Flesh

ask those
who grow old-
some fruits are nicer
when they’re riper.
you don’t stop
the clock
on the one who chose
you to hold-
her pomegranate
is still your sonnet
of sepia feelings and flesh,
sensuously sweet and fresh.

although the mirror never lies,
it shows the beauty that lives
as it dies
and gives
its own reflection
of your perfection
to me
then and now,
each memory
taken
by the lenses
somehow,
preserved
by your words
and curves
in my senses.

our dance,
that thrilled
in its intricate
tango on the floor,
is still filled
with time intimate
romance
and more-
talking rubicon of reason,
in layer, upon layer of season
so sedimentary
since you entered me-
and i consumed
your silky mesh
of pink perfumed
pomegranate flesh.



When You Came In

the air
tore into shreds
around our heads
in the room
when you came in.
bare
words
flew out of your chair
like accusing,
hysterical birds
and pecked at my plume
of silence
spitting vile violence.
i wore the harness
of your darkness
and pulled its load
of false truth
behind my youth-
you told me i was old
and i lost a tooth.
in the scene, that cut the cable,
while we both sat at the table
in the garden-
love’s sour jasmine
drooped,
poisoned in its ruined roots,
then you wept to me
and went to him
tears
trailing,
years
jading,
fading
beauty
again.
that was there.
that was then.
a solar flare
of raven hair
around its star,
last light more magnificent than most,
close
but far.

Strider Marcus Jones (UK)

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/.

He is 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 numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.

https://www.creativeprocess.info/cardona3/strider-marcus-jones

Calculus

By Strider Marcus Jones

Darwin can’t explain the missing link,
and science, did not invent the goal
of faith in how we think-
but Newton keeps us
sane to find the whole
gravity and reason for our role-
in calculus.

science beyond ours does exist,
in un-deciphered hieroglyphs
and alchemies of metals
malleable like petals
on spaceships
crashed in Roswell, gone
to Area 51.

like Dedalus, who prayed too good
through Dublin’s streets
of saints and sinners,
while whores exchanged their treats
for cash, from winners and beginners-
i walked towards the priesthood,
but woke up wet with wood.

i realised, Carlisle was right in saying:
no lie can live forever-
that the Gods we make together 
praying-
don’t care or intervene
in human fate and actions-
so Spinoza’s God is seen,

in the orderly reactions
of the universe-
creating life, and waiting hearse-
but metaphors of doubt persist
on the road to Armageddon,
for if physics shapes all of this-
what shapes these cloths of heaven?

Previously published in Issue Three of The Candid Review, 2024.

The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process

The civilised world faces a stark choice between surrendering our human rights and freedoms to plutocrats like Putin and Trump with their billionaire technocrats like Musk, reducing us all to serfdom under global surveillance by Artificial Intelligence or, we can help to create a new renaissance in the Arts, Culture and The Creative Process embracing all cultures and social backgrounds to inspire inclusive creativity, social justice and empathy in the humanities as a counter balance against social exclusion and political extremism. This project is fundamental in inspiring and steering this process but it must support and encourage those from poorer social backgrounds.

What was the inspiration for your creative work?

I am one of those kids who grew up in poverty but never gave up due to inspiration from my teachers and parents.

Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation? Forests, mountains, coastal waters, the desert, all animals, birdsong, summer rain and snow. Climate change is real. It is happening now and unless we all admit it and start behaving more responsibly to help alleviate its cataclysmic destruction the next generation will be reduced to living in a Mad Max world- until the nuclear power stations go into meltdown.

Photo credit: Strider Marcus JonesStrider 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 with multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.

Strider Marcus Jones

OPA Year Book 2025Poetry For JusticeStrider Marcus Jones

January 27, 2025 opainternationalLeave a comment

Lothlorien

i’m come home again
in your Lothlorien
to marinate my mind
in your words,
and stand behind
good tribes grown blind,
trapped in old absurd
regressive reasons
and selfish treasons.

in this cast of strife
the Tree of Life
embraces innocent ghosts,
slain by Sauron’s hosts
and their falling cries
make us wise
enough to rise
up in a fellowship of friends
to oppose Mordor’s ends
and smote this evil stronger
and longer
for each one of us that dies.

i’m come home again
in your Lothlorien,
persuading
yellow snapdragons
to take wing
and un-fang serpent krakens,
while i bring
all the races
to resume
their bloom
as equals in equal spaces
by removing
and muting
the chorus of crickets
who cheat them from chambered thickets,
hiding corruptions older than long grass
that still fag for favours asked.

i’m come home again
in your Lothlorien
where corporate warfare
and workfare
on health
and welfare
infests our tribal bodies
and separate self
in political lobbies
so conscience can’t care
or share
worth and wealth:

to rally drones
of walking bones,
too tired
and uninspired
to think things through
and the powerless who see it true.
red unites, blue divides,
which one are you
and what will you do
when reason decides.

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 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 reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.