The road was long and rough
It was a passageway of words
A parade of letters and prose
The touch of invisible pleasure
I moulted like a snake in season
I dreamt on a cruiser of reign as we
opened my pandora box in the cave

The road was smooth and right
It was a third eye paradise of seers
A mire of misery and blowing wind
The tears flew like fireflies on heat
I met the shrinks of souls in salt bed
I waved the rain as it washed my sins
On that sight of the pandora box

The road of wrongness and rightness
It was an unfolded augury of life
An awakened sleeper roared in dreams
The days when I touched the skies
I took the broken house and mended
I saw the clouds as bright as crimson
Inside the box when I met my twin

The road of love, lust, love, longness
It was when the ember coal was wild
A blaze of soul collision and resonance
The days when doubt taunted in mazes
I wrested my mind and the heart knew
I tested the precipice and intuition led
Inside the unconditional pandora box  

The road where I hid and felt alive
It was a paradise of shining trees
A place where our loneliness merged
The safest heaven on barren lands
I saw my warrior and he shielded
I sat as he ran away with fear and pride
On that very opened pandora box

The road of unforgotten forever
It was a triangulation of continents
An immersion of difference and indifference
The open table of a scarce connective mess
I shed my naive bed and hardened
I shut the wild untwisted world
On that very inevitable pandora

Pandora lifted the lid from her box
And boy! ALL hell broke loose.
You want to put the "evils" back?
You can try, but it's no use.

(It wasn't a box but really a jar,
Many translators maintain.
Box, jar…call it whatever.
The story's key points remain.)

Hephaestus had followed Zeus' orders
And made Pandora from the earth.
The first of the race of women was she,
The story goes--for what it's worth.

Sickness, strife, toil, killing…
In short the ills of humankind
Escaped and now we're stuck with them.
For any evil that comes to mind--

Countless ways to destroy the earth,
Ways to ****, ways to maim,
Terrorist bombs, torture, and plunder--
Dear Pandora takes the blame.

(She shares similarities
With Eve of Biblical fame, but whether
There were connections, that would be
Another story altogether.)

If someone said, "See this box?
Don't open it, whatever you do."
Or gave the command, "Don't eat this fruit!"
Wouldn't you be curious, too?

In letting out the world's evils
Pandora was pushing the envelope.
The one thing that she left in the box
Was a little glimmer of hope.

Maybe that hope stays in the box--
Out of our touch. That's a suggestion.
Or if it were released, could it
Conquer evil? That's a good question.

Couldn't Pandora see that this
Was JUST a setup? Well, she should have.
But if SHE hadn't lifted the lid,
Somebody else certainly would have.

- by Bob B (6-6-17)

On flat bank’s where
grass runt reeds grow
waiting for rising tide,
A lone Heron stealths silently
while Gulls cry warning, and dive effortlessly in to a cold sea air.
Pheonix  Peanut and Pandora
stranded on wet mud bank,
wait for their chance to escape
but it’s bonds that need to be severed in their quest for freedom.
Estuary lights dim and flicker in the distance while closer to shore Mermaids sing on the breath of a storm.
Beckoning sailors "come ride the waves"
Siren songs of lost souls and shadows
“Come with us” on this bursting sea.
And they sing with a drowning charm
as fishermen launch vessels under a shawl covered wife's watchful eye.
And yesterdays widows weep, face rained bright from navigational lights.
Ships bell ring in time with a rollicking sea,
Pheonix  Peanut and Pandora
still await their escape but not this night.
While the Heron has long fled this great swell.
No cries now from gulls nor mothers hurrying their little ones to the safety of their coal fired warm homes.
Just the rage of wave riding mermaids that will have their bounty
the heart and souls from a fisherman life.