She is a Suffragette
her hair tumbles
blowing like unfurled cotton
through unforgotten
fumbles
in vegetation
of our own
interpretation
of each other
in the dark.
my desk grown
out of a tree sown
from my lover
where i carved these words in the bark
sitting in her branches
knowing what life is
all about
as i look out
of wooded windows
and absorb it’s shows
as it goes
through each obscenity
of extreme supremacy-
a woman must not let
a man forget
she is a suffragette
in her soul and under his blanket
so never kept
or chatteled forever
to the custom weather
of his debt.
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 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.
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
her cockus giganticus
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.
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.
Oviri (The Savage – Paul Gauguin in Tahiti)
woman,
wearing the conscience of the world-
you make me want
less civilisation
and more meaning.
drinking absinthe together,
hand rolling and smoking cigars-
being is, what it really is-
fucking on palm leaves
under tropical rain.
beauty and syphilis happily cohabit,
painting your colours
on a parallel canvas
to exhibit in Paris
the paradox of you.
somewhere in your arms-
i forget my savage self,
inseminating womb
selected by pheromones
at the pace of evolution.
later. I vomited arsenic on the mountain and returned
to sup morphine. spread ointments on the sores, and ask:
where do we come from.
what are we.
where are we going.
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.
His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain, Germany; Serbia; India and Switzerland in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Literary Yard Journal; Poppy Road 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; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine; Dissident Voice.