When Angels Collide

And Bang Their Heads

(for Laura S.)

The sand is winter grit between her toes,

Red as disgorged rock, red as gut lining,

The red of inner Hebridean granite sun

Red and fading out into limpid pink,

But in this landscape of stormy blues

And suppurating greys, the faintest

Of base notes reverberates

With fiery, sexual subversion.

Dull as valium, each grain courses

Its bruised passage into filaments

Of dead skin,

Through eczema miasma,

Into the raw centre

Of sense, sensitivity, sensibility:

Crushing the embers

Of burned out dreams

With an eviscerated fatal finality.

The blade, lazy in her hand,

Silver as the winking moon

Is colder than the East wind,

Colder than the white waves

Which rear up

And shake their ugly heads,

Colder than the dead

Who parade their bones

In a vacuous funeral cortege.

She is saturated by the cold:

It seeps into the finest fibres

Of her bones, into the dark nature

Of the stones pressing

Into her soft blue flesh.

She is fascinated

By its metal disinterest

And, magnetised,

Drawn towards

The subliminal image

Of abject nothingness.

If the knife could cut

It would cut away the sediment,

The stultifying sleep,

The torpor of stupefaction:

It would flash

Its bloody satisfaction

In the face of every

Unwary guardian angel;

And rail against

Those loveless gods

Who dreamt her into being.

But the knife

Is marshmallow soft,

A circus clown, jailed

In a bright ring of fire,

Dazzled into impotence

By its own lacklustre desire.

This knife, for all its proud grinning

Slices only nothing to nothing:

Robbed of its wits,

It cannot articulate

The ragged intricacies

Of her sullen rage.

Way beyond, where the clouds

Are filaments of high flying cirrus

The sun is setting, red and gold,

Spilling its basket of pigment

Into the warm distended sea.

There are lovers scattered over

Volcanic outcrops, entwined

In the eternal dance of love,

In soft grass, amongst blazing flowers,

Along rolling beaches: they sing, drunk

With passion, in a myriad lilting tongues

To the music of cicadas and nightbirds,

The soft grumbling of sleeping beasts,

The muttering half silence of camp fires.

They are sultry and hot

As the ringing strings

Of the messiah’s guitar:

Each note, perfect in itself,

Each note, a quavering

Quivering celebration of life,

A carbon dot

On the flickering ticker tape

Which warps and weaves

An endless symphonic tapestry.

Whisper sweet sleep to overcome:

She drowns in meadowflower wine,

The sugared insulin

And the track marks of time.

She is pierced,

Her blue, cold, dead flesh

Giving up its red veins

To the hot metal syringe,

To the death defying doses

Of her saviour

Who wraps her up

In his large hands

Like so much heroin,

Like the syrup tongue

That lulls her to the deep

Annihilating waters

Of frozen, empty Scotland.

I am a small island, she thinks,

And these dense clouds

Have enveloped me

Like so many sodden blankets,

With their pragmatic promises

Of nothing much;

And so to death I go,

A small girl in pigtails,

With an uncertain smile.

My glasses are misted over

And I can see nothing now

But the grey haar

And the infinitely gentle,

Utterly sad

Cold blue hands

Of my mother.

The Sylkies call her to join them,

To retrieve her skin and return

To the swaddling depths

Of colourless void:

Their voices mournful

As the wind through the glens.

Come to us, they say,

Come, be with the sorrowing:

Soothe your burning flesh

In these icy, peaceful waters;

Wash away the cries for love,

The cries for help

In this all-absorbing ocean,

This God for godless souls,

This home for the derelict.

Come, let us wrap you up

In fronds of sea-grass,

In rich russets

And healing greens,

And put you to sleep

In an earthenware crib

Upon the ocean floor.

Let us sing you lullabies

And spin you

A calming cocoon;

And when you wake,

Let us take you,

Swimming and free,

The cold distances

Of this eternal sea.

Read more of Dee Rimbaud's poetry

Check out Dee Rimbaud's books

Return to Main Menu