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.blogspot.com/. 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.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms.