SELECTED POEMS from INSIDE OUTby Strider Marcus Jones
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
of your velvet tangerine.
Dali left the table
to meet Picasso in Paris,
while my benzedrine mind replaced-
the soft and spent infinity of your face.
THE KEEPER
you warm the bone in me,
pump blood through stone in me,
pluck strings unknown in me-
whose notes dissolve the screams
of ghosts that blacken dreams.
proud pictures of the past,
fall out of photographs-
some fade, but others last-
and we become the present in their place-
vibrating beads on strings of symmetry in space.
unravel in my head-
fuse fact and fiction with your timbre thread,
more than moves in blankets on tomorrows bed,
wet with cum and joyful tears-
the keeper, not the tenant of my years.
TWO BEADS
in some quixotic place,
there is the figure and the face,
whose mind transcends that secret space-
in me.
she winds new memories
like ribbons round the helix threads of destiny-
altering perceptions, light and sound
when i turn around-
and find her watching me.
two beads, bound by natures mime,
consent to dance a tango on the silent strings of time,
oblivious to other fruits, that ripen on the vine-
eventually.
WET WARM SYLLABLES
oh seductive angel of temptation,
lying on your bed of divination-
swollen breasts caressing my creation,
lovelips glistening
lovecore quickening
tantric to the rhythm of my tongue
taking you to pleasures peak
in the wet warm syllables we speak-
suck soft, sigh loud, lick long.
through day and nights reality
of making dreams
come true, with no finality
or broken seams,
where words wake the want in longing
a velvet purse
to belong in
and endlessly rehearse-
like a field that sways unbraked
in the bodies of its flowers,
trembling through every breaths intake
of heat and scented showers,
as the day dies down
simmering in bough and gown.
BEADS ON STRINGS
a thought about you-
triggered, by the sight and sound and smell
of something else-
brings it all back.
the old brick bridge,
hunch-backed
over the still canal-
reflects on those reflections gone
dark inside me deep-
which spoke prophetic phrases
that echoed on its ceiling
and fused within my own
bead on this simple string of time.
i felt i knew
each sentence in your senses,
and loves rhythms, rapid and relaxed-
made its own ripples, constant then but absent now,
with sanguine words,
and sagacious phrases
vibrating in the chords of air, like music moulding time.
CHANGELING TIMES
as these middle years back bleed,
the rags of old memories recede
into heirlooms handed on
forged in fondness, been and gone.
no time can turn back its mistakes
or mend the piece an action breaks-
to be the way it was before
its nature changed, to less, no more-
like fragments of the whole
tapestry, that reach out to find a role
in these changeling times
of lost roots and fading lines.
a trace of old hypnotic scent
and lived in words, now cold and spent,
separate in centrifuge
of time through space and spinning blues.
the face and timbre of fate and facts
grow parallel and parallax,
when love leaves on opposite trains
in summer sun and grainy rains.
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.
I LOOK THROUGH PIXEL STARS
ensconced in your topiary vegetation,
with the u vowel
and tongue trowel
quickening sensation,
trickles down the eaves
morphia poches,
and smokes through notes
of cuddled conversation-
try to pin me down,
your king without a crown,
from cobbled streets
and communist meets
back then, in the day-
that come to this
metropolis
contorted with decay.
if i know love at all,
it’s moat without a wall-
can come and conquer me,
then share soliloquy.
i look through pixel stars,
ignoring clubs and bars,
in seas above the ground-
waiting to be found
in books of chivalry-
embedded into me.
another doing day,
forms and fades away,
as the sky drapes close-
hope constricts, and i compose
these lines of fallow furrows-
my yesterdays, for tomorrows
HENGE
in these, so close, contented fields
of thoughts and flesh caressed
by limbs and lute phonetic phrases
in this dark loop of days,
i want what more reveals-
the undercoat of faith undressed
to nature without cages
exposing pagan aspects and its ways,
to behold what light conceals
in blue and grey stone thoughts that smiles suppress,
through the henge of seasons phases
in the centre of your circle as it plays.
SO IT GOES
when i look back
in a moment
of quiet acquired dignity
that comes to some
with age,
it is with patience,
for i was much the same
when everything seemed bigger
than it was
as uncertainty
wore the other shoe to confidence
and followed it step for step.
the energy of youth
that often acts
without respect and understanding-
to bluff and blag its way
in fashion and musical rebellion-
skips like stones
on the ponds of those who have it all
from Parliaments revolution-
but their ripples wane
through treacled trends
in this dumbed down democracy
soothed by drugs and drink.
apathy watches and laughs
at these new roundheads and royals-
jigging their booty
to tunes composed
by capitalist cavaliers-
wearing each despotic Emperor’s new clothes,
and a known assassins kiss of death
waits for anyone who questions-
so it goes.
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 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?
BROKEN JASMINE MEN
a walk through town
ended sat by the cenotaph
on old hill fort trailing broken jasmine,
whose fading sweet scent-
fell over long lists
of remembered names.
women of my own age,
sat showing their beauty
of made up face
and mammarous breasts,
talking down time
with crossed legs
matched to buttery buttocks.
rolling a cigarette
the way my grandfather did-
their children laughed together,
and charged around on green grass
with pretend death stuttering
from their hands and lips-
no mud, or soft thud, of brass bullets
slam into flesh and bone
to silence them forever-
yet.
a smile from one of the women now,
and what do i do-
sit there,
confidence looking down
at my cigarette smoke rise and fall
thinking of broken jasmine men-
but sometimes,
i fashion a secret glance
obvious to them-
looking into beauty,
and lusting,
like these men would-
with them knowing
i have been single too long.
time to go.
i get up,
say goodbye
and walk away
like a branch of broken jasmine,
but not a hero-
the truth is
each age sees
birds of prey
falling away too
into the bay
after flamingo.
YIN-YANG THOUGHTS
i contemplate for hours,
weaving circles round the moon,
using supernatural powers
in an oxygen balloon-
imagining the straight
in the twists and turns of fate.
the truth is ties and tangles
of beads upon a thread,
with answers to its angles
solved in something that you said-
like the canopy of bloom
lighting shade inside a room.
soft, part the peel of pleasure,
real and ripe behold, begin-
imagine of the whole together,
spoken out, and spoken in,
like yin-yang thoughts
beat to beat to balance talks.
IN GAZA
it's time to go
inside this show
of profits
and prophets-
to the motives and motifs
of tenets and beliefs,
that make a man, blow a child to bits-
in Gaza, where blood blurs bible scripts.
the gunslung
gungho,
and unsung
hero-
Goliath shelling David’s ghetto into crypts,
but only Al-Jazeera shows the genocidal clips.
the currency of crime
infests divinity and time,
corrupting ideologies that blow-
through the politics, like a great and secret show.
Copyright Strider Marcus Jones. INSIDE OUT. All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment