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Angel/ina/cita or Angel Saga One by Peter Cole

written first and second weeks of May 1990

published in Secrets from the Orange Couch 4(2), 22-28, 1991

to be read aloud

On Tuesday I was rehearsing Mozart’s Requiem
caressing my bass viol
stroke strum pluck bow
stroke strum pluck bow
trying to forget
about my infinitely boring life
its tedium
its lacklustre humdrumness
its etceteraness
when an angel with pizzicatto eyebrows
came to the door
daubed bobbed and looking like Marlene Dietrich
cross-faded over a 1934 Greta Garbo
Ring ting rat a ta tat
rangle tee tangle boom tlrt
went the viol
my heart
and the Michel Foucault anti-doorbell
I lay the bass down
and absently ran the bow across my lips
the catgut tickled
the rosin was moist and pungent
warm lubricious
and the mahogany/pernambuco
was wonderfully smooth
I was worried about this encounter
worried about worrying about about
plucking up my courage
I went to the door
to engage the angel in dialogue
She asked for directions I think
she was gesticulating gesturing declaiming
I’ve always had trouble with gerunds
and progressive activity
triplicates trinities tri-ing everything

We talked
I’m not sure if I was listening to the words
I’m not sure what she was saying
only that it sounded French
her lips were French her eyes her cheeks
her control
but her movements were peninsular Italian dialectic
with punic overtones phoenician directness
ad portas
Eurydice walks into the mirror
I thought about black horses and triremes
about Greek fire about things burning in general
about kindling
how you have to get it just right
position everything so the wind won’t blow out
the flame
She had a lot of angles
oblique obtuse ob-some-other-root
she was like a sphere
of which I was a circle
infinitely removed but there
right on my own doorstep unremoved
looking for a youth hostel
american express or 7-11
I don’t know maybe a church
I couldn’t control my imagination
she drew me in to the iron bars
of her gaze
the trap of her beauty
I had to possess her
before I became the direct object
of whatever verb she chose
to predicate me with
there’s a big difference between the genitive case
and a personal possessive adjective
I had to choose
She stayed for tea
and the water started to boil
even before I got the kettle plugged in
while it was still coming out of the tap
distilled demineralized reverse-osmosis perfect
like her
That was quick she said
as I absently fondled the tea cosy
tugging at it twisting it squeezing it

letting the tea steep into coldness
forgetting about insulation r-values heat conduction
Our conversation faltered teetered
fell over a virtual precipice
into a massive fluid body
into the metaphorical sea
that everything falls into eventually
and was taken away by the tide
in pieces to wherever the tide
takes things away to
I watched her pour the tea
she sipped it as if nothing else existed
it was cold but she didn’t seem to notice
and I didn’t care much
about the temperature of things
latent heats of vapourization kinetic energy random collisions
whether molecules moved or not
I just wanted something to do
while time passed the minutes
Pinter/ludes/esque stops of conversation
She seemed to enjoy the silence
its un/in/ob/trusiveness
it bothered me the space between words
the void that made a mockery of thought
We both knew that outside the bounds of our discourse
was the truth we were looking for
truth unabated untrammelled
by meaning consensus accord
unassaulted by questions answers codes
whose only reason for existing
for being conceived
was to be found without being looked for
I longed to run the tips of my fingers
across her thighs
across the loose folds of her jelabiah
smell the soft skin of her neck
where the hair was pulled tight in order
to accommodate a complicated Mediterranean plait
which hung down between her wings
three finger-breadths
from where her hips began to swell
somewhere beneath her layers of layers
I could feel the multi-strand coaxial billows
of her hair on my lips

with the growing-tip of my imagination
and the as-yet unfaded remnants
of my long-term memory
The excitement was abrupt and unrestrained
I wasn’t sure I was up for it
the excitement that is
in favour of it lingering around loitering
threatening to bring out of latency
the hidden the unmanifest
the hermetic unawareness
I felt compelled to make a move
even if that move were a rejection
of making a move
What I wanted
what I dared to want to want
was to touch her touch her
feel the mounds of flesh from which her wings grew
stroke her serenity into something more emotional
more ecstatic more relenting
If only I could become the locus solus of her longing
an adored statue kissed into life
with brutal tenderness
forced into mortality
from the deathless beauty of stone
Alas we were paradigms apart
red-shifting galaxies separating
separating separate ing
escaping theories
and other forms of capture
I reached out to her with words with language
I lied to her just to get it over with
just to dispense with another variable
I lied with my body
I had to
it was all I knew how to do with it
I tried to think of how to maneuvre
how to get her to desire me
if only with her mind if only
to at least think about it
or think about thinking about it
I thought of drowning lovers
pulling one another down

rapt raptus rapere
in eternal embrace
sliding into the abyss of requited love
we sipped our tea and carried on
our parallel monologues
Anticipating my question
the irrelevancy of my point of view
she spoke I don’t have wings I’m human
I’ve evolved along with everyone
and everything else
I’m just like you
it’s you who makes me different
with your mind
you see wings that aren’t there
I was confused about my feelings for her
I felt guilty about the/my desire
which had become a need
then a heightened desire
which propelled me dangerously near
to losing control of control
I couldn’t categorize compartmentalize the situation
the perspective was too disturbing
it drove me mad to think that she had needs desires
it’s so much easier to deal with an adored object
a desired thing
than a fellow creature
possessed of feelings of needs
My mind was clogged with metaphors
from the physical sciences
from economics and law
extraterritorial infarction
border raid mentality
jurisdictional overlap
intimate invasion the Queen’s pleasure
expropriation epicentre plate tectonics
overthrusts mantle plumes
It was easier to analogize depersonalize
I couldn’t face the idea of intimacy
of sharing of losing myself
having to find new markers
distinguishing subject from not subject
with sharing the limits of control and meaning
if there is meaning
if there are limits
if control matters

It seems she’d been speaking English the whole time
I’d been trying to translate her body
interpret it outside of linguistic control
away from the knowingness of words
apart from the symbols
that separate us from the world
from one another
from the aboutness of things
I wanted to infuse infiltrate inhume myself
in her into her
I wondered about interspecific hybrids
species that jump the fence of normalcy
break the rules of how evolution is supposed to work
like mules beefalo catrabbits tigons
tomato-potatoes nectarines and lemon-limes
And angels lay with the daughters of men
but what about the sons of women
what about their heaven leaningness
their getting and begetting?
what about gender overlap
mixing desire and repulsion?
what about the laws of thermodynamics
and the axioms that separate them from reality?
what kind of gene pool are we dealing with here anyway
what kind of controls?
Was (she) I disturbing (me) you? she asked
no I was just waiting for you
to make time stand still
I wanted to call her Laura
but she insisted on Angela
with whatever infixes I cared
to add -in- -ic- -itafter
her messenger status was confirmed intimated
Intimated I repeated
her French eyes transfixed me
the muscles about her mouth
and the prospect of seeing her tongue
drew me into the event horizon
the inevitable gravity of her embrace
Would (conditional) you like a cookie
with (preposition) your tea?
what kind do you have?
peak freen they’re a bit stale
like most things like life

Is it all right if I dip?
pause
the biscuit the cookie I mean
into the tea?
we usually say dunk
it doesn’t matter to me
Most of her soggy cookie fell into her tea
and lay there at the bottom
so she had to slurp it up in noisy clumps
She walked to the kitchen window
I followed her shoulder blades her wings
as her body swayed harmonically
lyrically anatomically
she seemed to be separated from the world
by an aura
the critical distancing
that desire perimeters a body with
She said I reminded her of Harry Lime
distant and mysterious
enigmatic abnormal
thanks I needed that
film noir hero wonderful great
she’s just fictionalized me
made me meta-real paranormal
what next?
Seduction how do you seduce an angel
who can’t possibly be an angel
who must be one
because what else could she be
with those wings?
I wonder is she impressionable?
is she a she first of all?
or even an it?
do they reproduce?
or just make announcements and give warnings?
do their wings flap?
Maybe she likes talk
word sounds mouth noises
inane chatter banal philosophizing
or silence
I could just shut up for a minute
or forever
How about deeds? I could do something

or be something
like good or just or merciful
or pious
it might make a better impression
if I acted like someone else
like Mahatma Gandhi or Chuang Tzu
somebody dead somebody holy
how would I act or be pious?
is it human to be pious?
to act pious?
or would it just make her suspicious
about my intentions?
maybe I should ask
Patterns funneled in from every direction
even directions which didn’t exist
or have any meaning
status quo über alles
an avalanche
critical mass critical angle critical distance
predictability took over
swallowed up everything
possibilities maybes what ifs howevers
the seams of similitude br o ke
and my cookie-cutter thoughts rolled out
snake-eyes boxcars lucky sevens
domino mania
Socially acceptable feelings clunked out
of their moulds
pre-formed pre-fabricated
what I had assumed to be
my own thoughts desires needs
now showed their true cast and colour
My role was to be fitted formed immured
within the boundaries of the common weal
to be no more than a functionless assembly of flesh
a generic font to hold and channel further compromise
no different from a cube of ice fallen from its tray
no different from the tray
She turned around slowly
silhouetted by back-lighting
like Grace Kelly in Rear Window
before the prince got her
or Ingrid Bergman in a dozen movies
when the civilized world lay at her feet
civilized sure
She didn’t frown or speak maliciously

but her tone was hard
your talk isn’t any good
you’re too automatic
even what you think to be spontaneous
is just mumbo jumbo filler academese jargon
you might as well be dead as cloned
a replication of a replication
unchanging unwilling to change
safe careful afraid
don’t you have or want or need
thoughts or feelings
that are your own?
Her soliloquy went on
salted with appropriate pauses then
it would disgust me to touch you
to be touched by you touch me
We had a quick shower together
we shared a towel the same towel
the same soap the same water
the same nakedness
she was something to look at
somebody that is to look at
no longer an it
but not quite a she
Let’s go out do something she said
okay
so went to a generic sporting event
I explained what I thought the rules were patriarchically
she listened patiently
ignoring most of what I said
intent on the war going on around us
The spectators were more violent
than the spectacle on the field
I thought about her body as she dried it with the towel
about about
about how much electrical potential is stored within us
angels people other creatures
other empassioned beasts celled things
I wonder if they have cells
if there’s more to them
than connective tissue and anatomical presence
I thought about magnetism
and waves of light and darkness
about hybrid vigour and genetic mosaics
about lairs and dens

about hutches and warrens
burrows and nests and beds and fields
about hives and hills stables and barns
trees and meadows
I concluded that the essence of human being
of species continuity and thriving
is stored between the electrodes of sexual tension
and the crowd roared.
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