Let's paint with broad brush strokes
from centuries of blood,
ye fair permeable maidens:
Once upon a summer's eve,
menotoxins killed crops and wilted spring flowers.
Pandora's box, opening to such bad reviews,
closed down and fled to a monastery,
where she wrote scarlet letters to family back home.

Vallopes of black holland cloth, intrusive
but necessary little bedfellows fit for a queen.
Don't keep us in suspense,
your fancy royal harness,
guards are posted at either side, hooked & girdled.
Take Communion some other day,
Elizabethan petticoat.

History tells of the strangest restraining order:
Hippocrates threw his two cents into the fountain,
banning bleeders from nearing the wishing well.
Hey, Father of Medicine,
our hallowed moon lures the currents,
driving us all a little mad on some enchanted evening,
not just the lassies.

The foil of every fable
rests in the absurdity of its fate,
so often presumed upon the faint of heart:
A damsel in distress,
who must be saved from herself.
The nonsense of which then seeps into the pores
of reality, rousing fear in certain unmentionables
that just might one day incite anarchy,
tipping our planet over on its side
and away we fly.

Ignorance wears rose-colored glasses.
It's high time he got his eyes checked.