By: Strider Marcus Jones

I KNOW YOUR NOTES

sat with you,
reflections bond
over the pond
of summer solstice,

and Mr Blue
sky
with eggy eye
subliminally sends Otis

into ribbons and ripples
of hair and faces,
through sensual trickles
in hidden places

that glances bring
on summer wind.
i know your notes
tacking on water like paper boats,

and the rigging string
vibrating
through notches in the mast
so love and living last.

###

LIFE IS FLAMENCO

why can’t i walk as far
and smoke more tobacco,
or play my Spanish guitar
like Paco,
putting rhythms and feelings
without old ceilings
you’ve never heard
before in a word.

life is flamenco,
to come and go
high and low
fast and slow-

she loves him,
he loves her
and their shades within
caress and spur
in a ride and dance
of tempestuous romance.

outback, in Andalucien ease,
i embrace you, like melted breeze
amongst ripe olive trees-
dark and different,
all manly scent
and mind unkempt.

like i do,
Picasso knew
everything about you
when he drew
your elongated arms and legs
around me, in this perpetual bed
of emotion
and motion
for these soft geometric angles
in my finger strokes
and exhaled smokes
of rhythmic bangles
to circle colour your Celtic skin
with primitive phthalo blue
pigment in wiccan tattoo
before entering
vibrating wings
through thrumming strings
of wild lucid moments
in eternal components.

i can walk as far
and smoke more tobacco,
and play my Spanish guitar
like Paco.

###

NURTURING EACH NOTE

lying back into
you
i share a smoke
all sucked out and stroked
thick cummings swallowed
by you
followed
my drinking sips
from licks
of lips
and clit.
our closeness
breaks the darkness
open
and such things
in touchings
spoken
compose coupled music in the throat
nurturing each note.

in here we hide
under His sheet shroud
from the unsettled crowd
of happenings outside-
top down tycoons and bankers,
royalty and political cankers
seedy greedy opulence driving past
needy kettled poor pandemics
to banquets rustling markets cash
supporting famine and eugenics.

###

OLD CAFE

a rest, from swinging bar
and animals in the abattoir-
to smoke in mental thinks
spoken holding cooling drinks.

counting out old coppers to be fed
in the set squares of blue and red
plastic table cloth-
just enough to break up bread in thick barley broth.

Jesus is late
after saying he was coming
back to share the wealth and real estate
of capitalist cunning.

maybe. just maybe.
put another song on the jukebox baby:
no more heroes anymore.
what are we fighting for-

he’s hiding in hymns and chants,
in those Monty Python underpants,
from this coalition of new McCarthy’s
and it’s institutions of Moriarty’s.

some shepherds sheep will do this dance
in hypothermic trance,
for one pound an hour
like a shamed flower,

watched by sinister sentinels-
while scratched tubular bells,
summon all to sunday service
where invisible myths exist-

to a shamed flower
with supernatural power
come the hour.

###

NO ROADS

with no roads on our map of conversation,
we began
without plan,
and climbed, into the branches of imagination,
past the twigs and leaves-
those apothecaries
of lost libation,
into houred improvisation-
through its desert wanting rain
after years of stasis,
in a slow camel train
searching for that oasis-
with moving dunes
and negative runes
fending off the grey
in a charmed, nomadic way.
happen then, that this cold acoustic tune,
met your luteful lagoon
of mosaical notes-
and the baton moved,
as was proved
round the wheel with ambient spokes,
conducting without rules
our forgotten fools.
somehow,
go now,
through the eye of words,
to the heart of this rhythm
and the scion of its schism;
then home, like migrating birds
into separate nests-
for now, love rests.

###

LOVE IS STRIPPED TO SHARING BREAD

we were kissing
and dancing
to a kitchen song,
talking with our wine
and smoking bong;
then you pushed your pierced pin
of forged fire
further in
the groove of my desire
with your tongue.
later,
up the creaking wooden escalator-
“let me do you” i said
peeling back your petals
with my voice:
love is stripped to sharing bread
abroad-in plain rooms-where Nora and Joyce
reject precious metals.
it brings to craggy green cliffs
that STILL talk-
of two minds, in the sea born mist
of one thought-
why should four legs walk
under clouds adrift.
glum damp rock moss cups
when we go to ground
under body musk
and pagan sound-
the meaning of the hour
when lit lusts flower
fills the air
everywhere
at last
and the future does not imitate the past.

###

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former 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. He is also the founder, editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal.