Poetry of Lorin Ford




Psyche’s Lie  

 

She holds

(steady now) the cool flame

 

The room sways,

pulses with light

 

Flight, a rush of wings

then darkness dropping molten

 

She slakes her scalded skin

bathes her cauterized sight

 

‘He always was’ she says,

‘volatile’, and smiles,

 

sorting socks from jocks by feel

Her love-long labour –

 

laundering.

 

 (c) Lorin Ford, 2002

 

 





Telling Tarot

 The bride smiles in white

 fool-footed at the edge

 stepping out to walk on air

 

The witness stares straight

into the flash into the

barrel of the blown away future

 

His girlfriend in black

wriggles and laughs, she’s

the snakebite to the ankle

 

The god-struck tower’s inevitable –

word can be prick stick weapon

pain to an ingrown ear

                                              

Necessity requires betrayal

it’s an old thing, Greek –

here’s Orpheus with wet feet   

 

The heart cave’s dark and brittle

strewn with bones you can’t remember

but this is where you might

                                              

come in, begin

pick up the thread 

ravel the red

 

raw Achilles’ tendon whence

the hanged ones dangle in the world

topsy-turvey

snared like  rabbits

(c) Lorin Ford, 2001

 

 



Living Muse  

 

Your eyes are all-forgiving mirrors.

For you these men are innocent and holy,

versed in chivalry, capable of honour.

 

Sylph emerged, amazing, psyche’s bride

from merely woman. Your words

are silk they finger like merchants.

 

Treasure, they pose you on pedestals.

Hushed from their lips your name, their praise

tonguing the taste of you: wafer, sacred wine.

 

Soon, the woven cage for your protection.

No-one shall touch you. They’ve invested.

They worship and guard you like gold.

 

(c) Lorin Ford, 2003

 

 

                             

 

 

 

 

 

             

 

 

   


 

 

                                          Blue Notes

 

1.

blue heaven malteds

and

                        the jukebox pulses

                        outside a white-walled

                        Ford pumps heartbeats

                        our small town’s shrunk

                   like

                        last year’s school clothes

                   we’re

                        splitting seams

                   we’re

                        bursting through

 

                   in the next booth

                   smooth-faced

                   incendiary boys  

                       

                    2.

                    love’s

                                    summer :  

                    the high

                                    blue sky

                                    ’s a veil

                    shot

                                    with gold

                    in the        

                                    orchard

                                    leafshadows

                                    are

                    (quickly)    lightfish

                                    falling

                                    as I fall

                                    as I

                    (lightly)      fall

                                    as I

                                    shed my

                                    sharp and armoured heroines

                                    as I hear my name

                                    as you call me home

                                    as I fall

                                    as all must

                   (ever)        fall

                                    into your ocean

                                    eyes

 

                    

 

 

                         3.

                        Picasso’s

                        solitary

                        blue woman  

                        the thin backbone  

                        the sharp curve of

                        shoulders

                        submitting now to

                        absence   

                        (an ice-blue accretion)

                        it all abstracts to

                        crushed astringent light

                        distance thickening  

                       

                         4.

                        oxygen:

                        the blue tides

                                    breathing

                        the sea’s lungs

                                    filling

                         the blue peace                                                                              washing


                         (c) Lorin Ford, 2001

 

 

 

Like Bees in the Lamplight

 

 

Too beautiful to put away in the wardrobe,

the Chinese silk dress on the wooden hanger

caresses the mind as water soothes the skin.

Gold butterflies swarm like bees in the lamplight.

 

The Chinese silk dress on the wooden hanger …

It’s way past midnight and I’m not asleep,

gold butterflies swarm like bees in the lamplight,

our hands touch like kisses and we’re laughing.

 

It’s way past midnight and I’m not asleep.

How skin, how blood, how breath respond to memory.

Our hands touch like kisses and we’re laughing.

The heart leaps expectant, mistaken.

 

How skin, how blood, how breath respond to memory

as if there were no absences, no Time.

The heart leaps expectant, mistaken.

Though Mystery compels me, I falter.

 

As if there were no absences, no Time

the sun streams through us, we’re enfolded.

Though Mystery compels me, I falter

forever, at beginnings as at endings.

 

The sun streams through us, we’re enfolded.

You feed me sweet marshmallows before dawn.

Forever, at beginnings as at endings,

I blink and lose you to abstraction.

 

You feed me sweet marshmallows before dawn.

Your voice melts the frost behind my eyelids.

I blink and lose you to abstraction.

Gold butterflies swarm like bees in the lamplight.

 

Your voice melts the frost behind my eyelids,

caresses the mind as water soothes the skin.

Gold butterflies swarm like bees in the lamplight

– too beautiful to put away in the wardrobe.

 

                                                                            (c) Lorin Ford, 2002


Lorin Ford has always lived somewhere or other in Victoria, Australia – mostly in Melbourne. She left school and home early but went to university after the birth of her son, then, armed (rather inadequately) with degree and diploma, she entered the war zone of inner city high school English teaching. Now she’s back at school again, as a student in RMIT’s ‘Professional Writing and Editing’ course. Some of her poems have been recently published in the Melbourne based print magazines ‘Going Down Swinging’, ‘Pelt’ and ‘mod_piece’ and another has been accepted for the forthcoming ‘Saltlick Quarterly’. Lorin thinks she’s at last on the track of what she was probably meant to be doing all along – writing. She’s enjoying the contact with other writers that dipping her toes into the e-world is bringing. The water is so much warmer than expected!

Art: Psyche Opening The Golden Box by Waterhouse

 

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