Pages Cafe ’05

I’ve discovered that AustLit have a full bibliographic listing of my publications, including this chapbook published in 2006 to say thanks to the poets who performed at my Poets Corner  events between 2005 and 2008.

http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C820752?mainTabTemplate=workTableOfContents&embId=Z1857424&from=40&count=20&sortWorksBy=byPageAsc

Each poem is now registered and available to read, including a poem by Jack Thompson’s (the actor) father from an out of print book which I later gave Jack, re-published with his kind permission:

The Sunbather  “I shield my face. My eyes are closed. I spin“  John Thompson , 1935 poetry (p. 41)

AustLit requires certain hurdles to jump if you want to read the poems, so I’ve copied one of my poems from the book “Pages ’05”:

Suits and Ties                                                        

Your corporate wardrobe titillates.

Challenges me to abandon –

invites you to swim with me –

in a sea wet with desire.

Throw off your hard shell,

your calm, controlled exterior

and reveal the let-go you.

The knot of your tie,

like seaweed trapping

the unaware swimmer,

restricting your neck –

choking.  Stopping words

that reveal your heart.

Speech splinters jab at me

– stabbing me with purpose

pricking my memory of

a shipwrecked love

laid low in my sub-marine.

I want you to loosen your tie

with purpose, invite intimacy,

soul revelations as you

breast-stroke in deep water –

prove the want – the known need

to be swamped by passion.

The three-piece suit necessary

clothing – layers hiding…

Providing warmth, weighing

where sun shafts can’t penetrate

or offer paths of lighted guidance.

Relinquish your quintessence!

Allow this sensual drowning

– while arms cleave in swells

of touch, taste and heat –

liquid languishing laid naked

to my reciprocal need.

Dismiss the discipline

of habitual analysis?

Take off those polished shoes –

shake off the weight and surrender

to feelings incomprehensible

to the clever business brain.

Allow unknown, unrehearsed,

unrestrained actions –

releases of reason, to win.

I watch you purposely dive

our murky, bottomless depths.

Hands locked together, arms

pointed straight above your head

protecting – patiently proving

your commitment, your leap

with one compulsive breath

into our eventual eternity.

Frances Macaulay Forde © 2003

(First appeared in “Hidden Capacity ~ a poet’s journey” published in Ireland, 2003.)

@FrancesMForde   #FrancesMacForde  #Father’sDay  #PoetsCorner   #BOOK:Pages’05  #StateLibraryWA   #AustLit  #POEM:Suits&Ties  #Poetry  #ExploringPossibilities  #BOOK:HiddenCapacity   #CorporatePoem  #LovePoems   #ACTOR:JackThompson

Read Full Post »