Really chuffed to have my poem Childhood Fires published in The Racket Journal. My thanks to wonderful editor Noah Sanders. A fantastic journal.

~ strider marcus jones

https://theracketsf.com/

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C h i l d h o o d F i r e s

S T R I D E R M A R C U S JONES


late afternoon
winter fingers
nomads in snow
numb knuckles and nails
on two boys
in scuffed shoes
and ripped coats
carrying four planks of wood
from condemned houses
down dark jitty’s
slipping on dog shit
into back yard
to make warm fires
early evening
dad cooking neck end stew
thick with potato dumplings and herbs
on top of bread soaked in gravy
i saw the hole in the ceiling
holding the foot that jumped off bunk beds
but dad didn’t mind
he had just sawed the knob

off the banister
to get an old wardrobe upstairs
and made us a longbow and cricket bat
it was fun being poor
like other families
after dark
all sat down reading and talking
in candle light
with parents
silent to each other
our sudden laughter like sparks
glowing and fading
dancing in flames and wood smoke
unlike the children who died in a fire next door
then we played cards
and i called my dad a cunt
for trumping my king
but he let me keep the word

Copyright Strider Marcus Jones

Published by strider marcus jones

Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and ex civil servant from Salford/Hinckley, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry are modern, traditional, mythical, sometimes erotic, surreal and metaphysical http//www.lulu.com/spotlight/stridermarcusjones1. He is a maverick, moving between forests, mountains and cities, playing his saxophone and clarinet in warm solitude. His poetry has been published in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Wales, France, Spain and Switzerland in numerous publications including mgv2 Publishing Anthology:And Agamemnon Dead; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster/Anu; Outburst Poetry Magazine; The Galway Review; The Honest Ulsterman Magazine; The Lonely Crowd Magazine; Section8Magazine; Danse Macabre Literary Magazine; The Lampeter Review; Ygdrasil, A Journal of the Poetic Arts; Don't Be Afraid: Anthology To Seamus Heaney. http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/stridermarcusjones1 . http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Strider%20Marcus%20Jones&search-alias=books-uk My poetry blogs are: https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ http://poetrybystridermarcusjones.blogspot.co.uk/ Location: Paris, France For his published poetry books: Aspects Of Love; Inside Out; Mavericks; Wooded Windows and Pomegranate Flesh see: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/strider... http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_s... http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_... Read poems from his books with reviews and comments on http://www.wattpad.com/user/striderma. ..Join him on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/stridermarcu... His poetry blogs are: http://http://poetrybystridermarcusjo... http://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordp... Join him on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/stridermarcu... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/strider... Read this brilliant review of one of the poems from WOOODED WINDOWS http://dagdapublishing.co.uk/2014/09/... And so you sit and stay since you’ve been com­ing to the run­ning of my day, the in between of real and dream is drawn in what we say now i lie sun­ning in the sum­mer of your way. it shapes the shade around me, foun­da­tions where you found me, emp­ty­ing that grey obelisk of thought stood in the room no more scar­ring the bloom– and so, you sit and stay motions mend­ing me, feet turn­ing wheel, hands shap­ing clay. © Strider Mar­cus Jones **** Today’s fea­tured poem comes from Strider Mar­cus Jones. A piece wrought with intri­cate sym­bol­ism, “And So You Sit And Stay” deals with an ambigu­ous love and the capac­ity under­stand­ing and com­pan­ion­ship have for heal­ing, both men­tally and phys­i­cally. The sea­sons and their cor­re­spond­ing wildlife are utilised in a con­tin­u­ous metaphor through­out the poem, to the extent that much like the dis­solved bar­rier “in between [the] real and dream” the repaired flower that is “no more scar­ring the bloom-​​” can be inter­preted as the narrator’s inter­nal soul and mended emo­tions, a view­point that is given fur­ther depth by the narrator’s “sun­ning in the sum­mer of your way” an abstract, though beatific grat­i­tude to the unnamed subject’s kind­ness. Much of the imagery in this piece is organic and wild, except that which deals with the narrator’s sit­u­a­tion before the unnamed sub­ject came upon them: “emp­ty­ing that grey obelisk of thought stood in the room” Again there is a wil­ful com­bi­na­tion of the phys­i­cal and men­tal planes, though here it is used to demon­strate the bleak­ness of the narrator’s lonely plight — an imper­sonal, tow­er­ing civic con­struct that f (less)

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