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DEE
RIMBAUD
Dee
Rimbaud was born in 1962 in Glasgow, Scotland, and studied to
post-graduate level at Edinburgh College of Art from 1986-1991. He edited Dada
Dance magazine from 1984-1989 and Acid Angel magazine from
1998-2000; and is currently editor of AA Independent Press Guide
and The Book Of Hopes And Dreams. His poetry collections include The
Bad Seed (Stride 1998) and Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels (Bluechrome
2004). This last was short listed for numerous awards and won joint first
place with George Wallace (Long Island Poet Laureate) in The Poetry Kit's
Favourite Poetry Book Award. His novel, Stealing Heaven From The Lips
Of God was published by Bluechrome in 2004.
FLOUNDERING
BY THE PREACHING OF THE WORD
(Radio
Edit)
I. The Bird That Never Flew
Nothing
as sophisticated as a copper clip,
nothing
that could be reversed, poor bird:
it
was plucked at birth.
Wee
bald hatchling, what chance?
What
chance did it ever have?
Even
the fattest, most languid cat
could’ve
trapped it under cruel claw.
What
chance? Its caged-bird song
plaintive
as foghorns
strained
from the Clyde’s forgotten dawn,
melancholy
with dull dreams
of
washing days and tenement greens.
Oh
dearie me. Oh me, oh my!
Puir
wee chookie bird couldnae fly.
II.
The Bell That Never Rang
Cracked
and choked with city soot
this
bell is mute,
witless
in senile silence:
a
belly full of bitter bile.
What
use a voice as clear as cymbals
if
the heart’s too dark to love?
What
use calling up the faithless
to
hear the preaching of the word?
III. The Tree That Never Grew
This
is no dear green place
but
a wasteland
of
broken concrete blocks,
with
barbed wire strands
blowing
like streamers
in
the wind.
And
this tree is no tree
but
a petrified, withered stump,
without
branches, without leaves,
its
bark, frost-bled,
scored
with a cross-hatch
of
angry slogans.
The
pope
and
also, inevitably,
the
queen,
and
so the acronyms
of
these warring tribes
grow,
like fungus.
No
wonder
this
tree never grew.
How
could anything flourish
under
such leaden skies?
IV.
The Fish That Never Swam
Bloody
river,
bloody
river of this city’s undoing
with
your bloody history
of
shipbuilding and conquest,
of
slavery and theft,
all
dressed up
in
the tarnished gilt
of
imperial majesty:
your
dereliction is a plague
visited
by the gods
upon
all your daughters and sons.
Syphilitic
river, no wonder
no
fish ever swam
in
your poisonous waters.
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