Your perfume lingered in my living room
After you where gone.
The memory of skin against skin
Lives on.
Some would call it sin.
Perhaps, when all is said and done
One man’s fun
Is another’s sin.
The sky did not fall in
On me or you.
I am generally comfortable alone.
But I have the phone
Should I need you.
Your perfume will linger again
And I will recall
What some call the fall.
Perhaps pleasure and pain
Are somewhat the same.
But, if I am only dust
Why does Paradise Lost matter
You and I
Said goodbye
For a little time.
I walk through
Fallen leaves
And compose a rhyme
To Eve
And Paradise Lost.
Roses smell sweeter in childhood
Their scent
Being natural and good.
I repent
Of scentless flowers
And myriad hours
Spent trying to grow
What ought not
To grow,
And would,
If I could
Spurn these flowers, purchased on a whim
And return
To a time ere Adam did sin
With Eve.
But I can only grieve
And count the cost
Of Paradise lost.
—
(The reference to paradise lost pertains to Milton’s fine poem of the same title).
You are unknown to me.
True we made free
But who
Can see
Into the human heart?
Not I.
Fireworks die
And I
Am left alone with my art.
I have known many of your kind
And find
It strange how birds of diverse feather
Flock together.
Yet it is not so peculiar after all.
For in many a girl’s pretty face
We trace
Man’s fall
From grace
And Milton following,not far behind.
The Satan we meet in Kevin Cooper’s “The Devils Apology” is very different from the being portrayed in Milton’s Paradise Lost, or is he? Cooper’s Devil describes a vengeful god who, not content with ruling his own realm forceably encroaches on Lucifer’s kingdom. The devil is forced to defend his kingdom and it is only through bad luck that god (rather than Satan) is victorious. In an amusing passage Lucifer describes how he punched God in the face rendering him ugly. This is, he informs us why God will never show himself to humanity.
Throughout Satan is persuasive and the reader, as with the Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil, begins to warm to him. However we ought to remember that it is the devil with whom we are dealing. The silver tongued serpent, described by Milton, who will say or do anything to obtain his ends. Can we believe a word he says? Alternatively is it God who has been hood winking us into believing his version of events and is the devil a much maligned creature? You decide. For “The Devils Apology” please visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Devils-Apology-Kevin-Cooper-ebook/dp/B00ELN2EK6
K Morris - Poet 