THE PACIFYING MILTON Chapter 1

THE PACIFYING MILTON by Greg Bauder
Chapter 1
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
-John Milton "PARADISE LOST" ( Book I )
I was this morning. Long ago in a dopey Eliot wasteland,
the snowy sun cruel as a blot of ghost. I rolled Joyce-like
into my self stream of a pissed hangover on my joint falling
floor. I rose and forgot the next silenced hour. Coming undone
on my clock, I forgot tomorrow while my kettle whistled at the
legs of the piano, as my radio sounds boiled by cup of horny
tongue, so I drink my drowning table under steam. My lonely
collar has been lost as me, eaten by love and pacing with
substitute tears on my window eyes, glassy as the face
on my clock.
Orange peeking in my spaced dead tea tripped the sun's
wiry rays through blind curtains. My radio wets my appetite
as my walls picture her moaning, and I eye and turn to fondle
tea, spreading it across the music ceiling, as I make my
breakfast of les champignones. But my kitchen sinks in the
floor, as I note our seat. Outside, the tree of death sings
and I am timeless. I raised my pain at the rubbery trees, the
blurring blue heaven and its electric spots sun I vacated.
Fuzzier, the sun baked eating my last testament. I walked
willfully from room to door going nowhere, then hurried
outside. I was born to run like Springsteen but was borne
elsewhere, looking for Young's Heart Of Gold sun.
An explosion of day hit the picture of backyard. I
guarded the sky and shocked the flipping grass. I was stoned
in my shoes. It was my second coming to unlucky White Rock.
Waves of wind roughed my seagulls up, as they screamed like
Daltrey's feedback from Townshend. The beach rose lower than
the mountains I didn't climb, frightened as Birney's Bobbie.
I reached out for the sea, and held it in my mortal coil mind,
behind my blue eyes, glazed as doughnuts. Through the mirror
of imagining the sea I saw Diana Ross' reflection. My mind
felt her supreme sun voice, a throat of golden sixties allure,
pacifying the Pacific in me.
I sat and turned into an afternoon on the beach, shooting
my life like a film, as I ate a half sandwich of something that
would return like MacArthur. My dreams died until Stevie Nicks
sang sexy somewhere. But, I wasn't a player; I existed as the
day, as I balled the sand with rocks. I skipped the sea, like
Ahab, obsessed with futility. I stoned myself when I thought
of rain and Dylan - but I doubt Thomas toked the green fuse.
Then, my sea had a Messiah and Goddess walking like bored
surfers puffing on it. I was awed by these poetic beings. My
feet ripped up small sand storms and my sun stopped crying
behind clouds. My other happier sun screamed delight like
Hendrix as I was swallowed by the rocky reef sea. The sea shone
as I gulped my vision into my eyes. The gods were my parents,
John Milton and Margaret Atwood! And I was freaking out and
dying beneath my two sun eyes! But they dragged me back to
Earth, the place where Father's intellectual mastery of epic
poetry, mythology and astrology and Mother's feminist , modern
Survivor tales, united - pacifying my baby mind.
mourning. I was staring mouth open full of magic mushrooms,