Reading Milton on the Go

Me O my, the scene shifts from Paradise
to Pandemonium, just a flicker
away from extinction, oblivion
pending. The sun will shine before we go
into nuclear winter. Country boy
walks inside the heart of your dark forest
with his cell phone. If you call, I will come.
I have to go. I want to die that way,
not that it’s something I look forward to,
nothing more than how to confront the ice
no fire melts. Only our four arms warm us
where bliss ends and the agony begins.
If Paradise is here, in these dense woods,
why is the city Pandemonium?
Love thrives, money gone, revolution where
I wonder how our bodies laced would feel
when fused with ecstasy into one stem
suspending the fruit hanging from a wire-
less tree where what’s left of civilized life
is this: Can you take my call or call me?
Why is God home if Lucifer’s at large . . .

(12 June 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander