James Moore Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

Pandora’s Box

(“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 as the first it was sublime
Or maybe she was just another woman 
With the kind of perfect snatch 
To launch a thousand ships
On a sea of broken hearts,
But Pandora certainly left her mark, even today, 
A stain across the whole of the Western world
The syphilization we’re all now born into and with
The miasm of her primordial STD 
At our culture’s core.

And so it flows, 
A not so mythic etheric ooze 
Tainting hearts and minds
Of old and young alike,
Making the age of innocence 
An ever more fleeting thing
Turning daydreams into nightmares
Corrupting youth upon their backs
In sagging decrepit elder’s sacks.

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

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 dream
When from within the stench
The faint fresh breath of morning dew
Touched their petals fair
And in that moment glimpsed,
The soft perspicuous light
Before the dawn did shine
On Pandora at our core, demure and sweet,
Before her box
Was ever known
To any but her own.

And so it goes
In cycles great and small
The mind enthralled by all that can 
And could ever be,
Returns unto the source
To sit and smile and rest awhile
With Pandora before she even knew the name 
Let alone the power she possessed 
And all it would unfold
Back before she was a she
When Pan was all we knew 
Of love and life, in dance and play
Just simply being free.

(7/19/25)

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