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(“Pandora’s Box”, 2014, original pen and ink and oil)

Pandora’s Box

I don’t know who she was,
What she did or how she did it,
And maybe it was something sublime
Or maybe she was just another woman 
With the kind of perfect snatch 
To launch a thousand ships
In a sea of broken hearts,
But Pandora certainly left her mark
Even today, a stain across the whole
Of Western syphilization 
All of us now born infected with the miasm
Of her STD at our culture’s core.

And so it flows, 
A not so subtle ooze of infection
Tainting hearts and minds
Of old and young alike,
Making the age of innocence 
An ever more fleeting thing
Making daydreams into nightmares
Corrupting youth on the backs
Of sagging decrepit elders.

Ah, there was a time
When the light shone bright and clear
And children laughed
Without a care
And then Father Time had his way
With Mother Earth
And the world turned 
Into one long tawdry soap opera,
With coked up stars
Too self-obsessed to even know
Let alone care
To what degree the schlock they sold
Was even worth the dime they’d just inhaled.

Lost like this, removed from their roots
The players played
At the same old game
With the same old lines
Recalling Pandora only in their deepest dreams
When within the stench
The faint fresh breath of morning dew
Touched their roses fair
And in that moment glimpsed,
The pure soft light
Before the dawn did shine
On Pandora, demure and sweet,
Before her box
Was ever known
To any but her own.

And so it goes
The mind enthralled by all that can 
And could ever be,
Returned to the source
To sit and smile
With Pandora before she knew the name
Let alone even what she possessed
And all that it would unfold,
Back before she was a she
When simply Pan was all we had
To love and live, in dance and play
And only knew what it was being free.

(7/18/25)
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