Literary Yard

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‘My old socks’ and other poems by Strider Marcus Jones

By: Strider Marcus Jones

MY OLD SOCKS

my old socks
sheath the feet
that fill my boots
to walk on land.

hard hands, sweating like peat,
still break rocks
in imprisoned heat
born trapped roots
in dynasties of the damned.

the faded thread-
diminishes in duty until dead
while famous patterns
conceal what really happens-

their reasons behind closed doors
gain ignorant applause
for wars
and poverty

rising from floors
of serial
imperial
cruel pomposity.

###

THOSE LEAVES ON THE PAVEMENT

from bud to life to death
membranes of breath
rustle
and hustle
for water and wind
in self similarity
without clarity
doing the wrong thing.

each tree, is its own fate
landing in landscape
rooted in class
morphing into towers of steel and glass-
those leaves on the pavement
rejected with resentment
turning brown
no history written down.

some of those leaves
are people we know-
but who perceives
why we let them go,
after mistakes
into what waits
with nothing to show
when time shakes.

###

I WANT WHAT ORDINARY OTHERS WANT

i want
what others want-
synchronicity
and simplicity
in life of free will-
sharing some land
i can work with my hands
no more slave still-

time trapped.
lines tapped.
steps tagged.
voice gagged.

this elite mafia
of Orwell and Kafka
has built Metropolis
on old Acropolis-
reducing proles
to zombie roles
in constitutions
of constructed evolutions,

with blood to dust faiths
riding like dark wraiths
bullets shredding
bombing and beheading

the innocents
and dissidents
to steal their lot
and not share what you’ve got.

###

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 gossips knife.

###

THIS TENTATIVE RAFT

my muse
i choose
the intense interlude
of mood

longing in the swim
of flesh and skin
to show contentment
is the rest meant
after making love
holding all above.

passion rocking and swaying
finds ordinary ways of playing
back and out
those constant streams about
tranquill conversations
flowing in situations.

this tentative raft
is piloted deeper and daft
surviving hidden sandbars
under unreachable stars-

not to gain
fortune and fame
but to be different
than the same
life inside walls and doors
behind closed curtains on false floors.

###

THE DOOR

the door
between skyfloor
topbottom

is rankrotten

portalbliss
or abjectabyss.

it contains conversations
confrontations,
hiding loves two-ings
in lost ruins-

shuts us inside ourself
with or without someone else.

we,
the un-free,
disenfranchised poor
have no bowl of more-
only pain
on the same plain
as before,
homeless
or in shapeless boxes,
worked out, hunted, like urban foxes-
outlaws on common lands
stolen from empty hands.

files on us found
from gathering sound
where mutations abound
put troops on the ground.

###

THE DANCE

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 shamens
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.

###

THE CUP

a smelted celebration
of victory
and carnal coronation
moulded in dark history-
the chalice divine
to inhuman crime
blessing unjust law
and futile war.

mine, holds the coffee
i pour into me,
or sometimes tea
when i want to see
who are different
in the present.

upturning the cup
and turning it such
to read the leaves-
a gypsy’s
lore and ancient blood
has always understood-

who and what
controls the plot,
keeps us in the base and dregs
looking up, without the legs
to climb the slippery clay
into dark deceit
counterfeit
deception and decay.

take back how to think,
stand at your own sink
and wash away
this cold custodian,
old Eton and Bostonian
suited slick affray-

of corporate hoodies
and big house bullies
hunting and shooting
laughing and looting,
smeared in oils that anoint
herding us to the vanishing point.

###

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

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