#pandora
You are on a very long list
of those who can’t though
they persist.
Learn the lesson of Achilles
heel: there's something that doesn't want you here.
You hold tightly the images
of misguided faith, role
models and illusory joy.
But graven images topple
as slow as dry rot and
Pandora quietly fills your
box of toys.
Your house is projected
and frozen in time.
Twenty layers of
wallpaper are peeling
your mind.
Rooms untouched like
100-year-old Mason
jar preserves. You can't
eat fruit kept for so many
years.
Your choice of worlds
kept the patterns; no
new beginnings mean
the same old ends.
You may not break all
the rules, but you sure
make them bend.
Grace seemed to touch
you as you walked a
mile or two seemingly
content. But no matter
how amazing the grace
was, you can't be where
you never went.
As long as scapegoats
hang on crosses all along
this highway like rows of
pigs hanging bloodless at
the slaughterhouse, and
as long as Western
religious pop culture icons
and other social images
replace what is real, the roadblocks and washouts
will continue to keep you
there. Achilles protected everything but his heel.
Jun 26, 2025
Jun 26, 2025 at 8:57 PM UTC
Tell me, my dear
Do you really hate me?
Or are you just mad that
I opened the Pandora's
Box inside your head?
Jan 25, 2025
Jan 25, 2025 at 1:23 PM UTC
onslaughts of parasitic butterflies devour her liver each eve
sparing just enough to grow back the next day
her night clothes are torn under razor beaks
then mended each morning by the nimble-fingered Narcissi
who do not lament her predicament,
but sing mellow little tunes in C minor,
a statement: there is no latent compassion for Pandora
nor for her descendants in Greece or in Rome.
Sep 5, 2023
Sep 5, 2023 at 3:49 PM UTC
I stared once at this box
With a golden pink sign
"Femininity" it said
And yet the box was black
A sealed and hidden front
Pry it open? T'was quite hard
I know that this Pandororos' box
Holds some treasure at the top
I dread however, all the rot below
I think often of this box
All the treasure near its top
Creativity, care and justice
Pandororos - all the gifts at the top
And I still dread, what hides just below that top
Blood and tears, bits of flesh
All the rot below the top
Mar 19, 2023
Mar 19, 2023 at 7:37 AM UTC
i have inherited pandora's careless melancholy, her tiny box of regrets, her white-washed, quiet horrors and terrible decisions — staining like a memory passed down from her reckless hands to my old, ***** claws, digging for something raw, something parasitic, something miserable, something always goes wrong beneath my ribs. it wants out, like a beast, a misplace fragment, an aphid. and these days turn their heads away — blur themselves blind before my many blunders.
before the wrath of a false god, will my bones ever learn the art of being unapologetic?
Jan 15, 2022
Jan 15, 2022 at 8:30 AM UTC
All the More Human, for Eve Pandora
by Michael R. Burch
a lullaby for the first human Clone
God provide the soul, and let her sleep
be natural as ours, unplagued by dreams
of being someone else, lost in the deep
wild swells of losing all that "human" means ...
and do not let her come to doubt herself—
that she is as we are, so much alike
in frailty, in the books that line the shelf
that tell us who we are—a rickety ****
against the flood of doubt—that we are more
than cells and chance, that love, perhaps, exists
because of someone else who would endure
such pain because some part of her persists
in us, and calls us blesséd by her bed,
become a saint at last, in whose frail arms
we see ourselves—the gray won out of red,
the ash of blonde—till love is safe from harm
and all that "human" means is that we live
in doubt, and die in doubt, and only love
the more because we only know to strive
against an end we loathe and fear. What of?—
we cannot say, imagining the Night
as some weird darkened structure caving in
to cold enormous pressure. Lacking sight,
we lie unbreathing, thinking breath a sin ...
and that is to be human. You are us—
true mortal, child of doubt, hopeful and curious.
Keywords/Tags: Eve, Pandora, human, clone, humanity, human being, human condition, evolution, birth, death, life and death, soul, soulmate, saint, youth
Jan 5, 2022
Jan 5, 2022 at 7:51 AM UTC
She raised you, and gave you all she had
You did not listen
She was not overbearing
But she needed your bareness
The awareness
You lost long ago
She let you go into the wild, to make your own choices
Even if those choices mean her death
Knife in your hand with garlic breath
Joyous in the ****
Veiled violent negligence
Oblivious malevolence
Your innocent eyes
Red tinted, devilish yet despondent
Pontificate of poison
A laughing fat hedon
Crying now for pardon
But you will never **** her. She is bigger than you
Mother doesn't care
She will break you without blinking
She is Pandora and soon you will know
How hot the soil scorches, and how hard the wind may blow
Nov 21, 2021
Nov 21, 2021 at 8:03 PM UTC
The eerie calmness in the air
Called me foreward towards you,
The distinct voice of my scruples,
Holding me back.
I should have stopped,
I wished to stop,
I didn't stop.
Bringing the evil in the world
In contrition I was left alone,
The only thing I had,
Was what I trapped,
The sense of hope lying in the box.
May 27, 2021
May 27, 2021 at 7:38 AM UTC
So I’ll show what we had was better,
Yes, our fire has turned into ashes
plus the warmth is long gone,
I’ll try to rekindle the flames
that we once owned.
Yet I don’t know how
to reignite our love
With waterfalls of tears
from my eyes.
Feb 13, 2021
Feb 13, 2021 at 5:25 PM UTC
Up on top of the valley
Is the hometown girl
Under the scorching sun
Plays the guitar
Between the D Majors
Inwards came invisible crowns flying
Positioned in unpredictable times
Within or withheld in the belly of the beast
Behind a mask and up on an imagery valley
The girl’s guitar frolics freely.
Feb 10, 2021
Feb 10, 2021 at 10:54 PM UTC
You broke up with me
Because I’m emotionally not stable
Question
Who was that emotional stable person
You were dating for the last five months
Feb 10, 2021
Feb 10, 2021 at 10:56 PM UTC
*
*She of molded clay
Fingers trace the wooden ***
Poison whispers sweet*
*
Jul 25, 2020
Jul 25, 2020 at 1:16 PM UTC
~
<>
*nearby distant,
the soft thrash of warm waves
lapping interlocking,
happily wet tongue kissing,
sun-oven precision-crisping
the Long Island striped bass
and porgies, at a surreal cooling
77 degrees
Pandora synced to his eyes,
shuffling freely,
by saying
we too see!!
playing for him,
Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
poor, poor poet,
strains to brain drain one more time,
conducting an ogling googling word search
for those combinatory storied ones that
sailboat glide
all the while
wildly bursting with Pellegrino effervescence
compromising sounds sights,
to present
properly the balance,
to preserve
properly this moment,
peaceful alive for all times,
as poet has tried,
and failed so many times before...
the caw caw caw of the crow mocks the illiterate human,
for the bird calls it, in single sound perfect and
the human a laughingstock,
for not in his possess,
to capture this perfect moment
of human sabbath.
a Roman Saturn day of rest,
on this day that itself,
is perfection,
perfect for celebrating our common creation,
on a day that our
almost-all-agreed-upon calendar
is marked for us to
forte rest,
from an existence of just laborious
the chubby checkered cheeked squirrels
laughingly pauses,
watching, enjoying a poet's struggle,
mind boggle,
the poet's chubby cheeks
stuffed with discarded words,
all insufficient to capture
the absolution of
absolute beauty
bathing in the noisiest of nature's sounds,
all that contravene the silence of living things,
breathing prayerful thoughts that all
summary end,
with a common gesture of
forefinger upon the lips
a human acknowledgment of
utter obeisance to the forces
calling out by example
listen, see!
silently presenting,
this,
this!!*
a day that demanded perfection
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 5:27 PM UTC
Pandora gave us many gifts
Disease, poverty, misery, sadness, death and all the evils of the world
All which gave humanity balance and morality
Without disease, poverty and death
We wouldn't know compassion, humility or cherishment
Without sadness and detestment
We wouldn't know happiness, excitement, longing or love
Without the evils in the world
We wouldn't know anything outside of ourselves
We would be selfish, lonely, sinful, greedy and gluttonous
Most important of Pandora's gifts, she gave us hope
Hope that touched the shadows of evil and healed the wounds of hate
Jan 13, 2020
Jan 13, 2020 at 7:06 PM UTC
It's a small world
for some girls. They live
in shadow
of the Himalayas,
and other assorted mountainous
peaks. They daydream
of being followed
by the camera eye,
adored for the top heavy
weight they carry with
a grinning bounce. They want
to be a cruise ship,
stacked to the deck.
They want to be
fashioned with torpedoes,
a bombshell to
reckon with. And so they lie
on a table
to become a sculpture in plastic
for a renowned
architect. A mad scientist
in his own right,
experimenting with his creations
on fragile psyches, banking
on insecurities,
giving them a deflated hope
that what God didn't
bless them with,
his derangement will.
It's a mind game.
A mantra to "she who sends up gifts":
if you feel as good as you look,
all is well.
There's no harm in that, right?
Let's ask Pandora...
May 13, 2020
May 13, 2020 at 9:56 AM UTC
This is the story of a box
and a girl.
And this box –
and this box
was like no other box – No,
like no other box that owned its existence.
Eons of history lived on its walls – I mean, moved on its walls,
I mean, carvings of history played out on the walls
Waves smashed their own heads onto ocean floor dunes,
The lightning swung fierce on the clouds into squalls,
The engravings – the caves shook with war, the volcanoes,
They spat and they hissed, and the nymphs in their watery mists
Danced with haloes on graves of the fallen.
The lifeblood, it pulsed through the veins of this box,
Through the veins of my palm as I held it, the carvings,
They danced with their raw, starving ardors, their bloods and their stardust
And lifeblood, it seeped, lotus droplets, it leaped onto grooves of my skin
Splashed as sparks on my skin and spilled into my palms,
Till my body was filled with the life of this box, with the thrums of this box, with the force of this box
Till the sweet little voice called my name through this box
Whispered, “Open the lid and release me. This box
Is my prison. I’ve risen through hellfire and sunlight and war-blood,
And isn’t it time for the earth to revere me? I am Hope,
I am weary; I am tired of Death and Despair huddled near me
I yearn for the taste of the earth and the Furies
Release me, my vassal, unchain me, release me.”
This is the story of a box
and a girl,
and a thrum, and a voice, and a palm, and a life -
and a war, and a choice, and a hope, and a price,
and a voice that implored me to open the lid
through the trembling, quivering walls,
and I did.
Mar 13, 2020
Mar 13, 2020 at 12:33 PM UTC
Very few deserve to live long enough in peace
Aren't we all bandits in this god-forsaken place?
Under our feet, dormant evil sleep like a baby
Leaving is salvation, but we chose to **** ourselves
To know that we deserve reward is to gamble with death
How did we end up in this god-forsaken place?
Under the impression that this is an ordinary stroll
Now, we are stranded, lost, but still alive
To know and to move forward is to invite death
Even in the face of flora and fauna and trauma
Ready we are, guns blazing, we'll move forward
Feb 17, 2020
Feb 17, 2020 at 1:53 PM UTC
No one ever asked how I felt
When the box was open
And all the demons flooded out
No one ever asks how that felt
I’ll answer anyway
Crushing
I felt stupid
I had allowed my curiosity to get the better of me
Remember, though, that I was created for this
The gods made me
My curiosity engineered
So they could release evil into the world through me
And condemn me for the very act they orchestrated
Sure, my hand pulled the lid off the box
But the God's created the box and my hand
My will and the evil inside that box
All beyond my control
I was created as a weapon
And so I will be one
I force against the very gods
Who
Tricked me
Betrayed me
Created me
Who I am now is my own and I scream to the Gods
“I am nobody's creation.”
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019 at 4:57 PM UTC
I don't always say much
It's like a slight touch
People go silent when I speak
They listen to me like I'm a freak
Saying whatever I say
That makes everything okay
Giving them peace of mind
Getting me out of any bind
Dec 7, 2019
Dec 7, 2019 at 6:09 AM UTC
I'm a little
-
scared
To open up that
box
That desire
A never dulling -
fire
How to keep it-
at bay
The desire to excel exceed
Ambition
A calm,
avoidance
denial
SO
Much
easier
But,
Should I
Open this
Pandora's
box?
Nov 16, 2018
Nov 16, 2018 at 2:16 PM UTC