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)