The time has come and gone
for my evolution
into humanity
through transfusion or osmosis.
Having shopped while hungry
I am shamed by the homeless
as I pass them blindly by
praying for invisibility.
I am a squeamish killer,
timid amateur
coming to this act
I’ve practiced only on myself.
I taste fresh blood
in my mouth each morning
with no memory of being wounded,
and nowhere any wound.
I imagine other symptoms,
but do not look them up
or write them down
except upon the air with index finger.
The writer sharpens, sharpens pencils,
dull or not,
because he’s afraid to write
what he merely thinks he thinks.
.
Last night we gift-wrapped
Pandora's Box
sealing it again at last
with a flourish and a bow.
Regifting may be impolite,
but only if discovered
by those
who first belittled you.
Those batlike things,
we keep imprisoned
after we’ve released
the hope within.
I dressed her wounds,
then blessed her wounds
when hope
turned upon and bit her.
Nothing stays put,
except what's on the floor
where, gripped by gravity,
it stays right where it is.
I am the king
of a tribe of princes
stalled along the road to hell
strewing good intentions.
I am a wreckage person,
I have torn myself apart
by one hand in abstention,
the other by disrespect.
If I could lay me down to sleep
and submit to slumber
I might dream armistice
then wake and start another war.
Opening Of Pandora's Box-- Frederick Stuart Church
According to Hesiodos, when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took vengeance by presenting Pandora ("all-gifted, all-giving"), the first woman, to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. She had been created from water and earth by Hephaestus, and the gods endowed her with gifts: Athena clothed her, Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo gave her musical ability, and Hermes gave her speech. She was also given a pithos (a clay jar, sometimes as large as a small person, used to store wine, oil, grain, other provisions, or, ritually, as a container for a human body for burying; in the case of Pandora, it may have been made of a metal, such as bronze, as an unbreakable prison) which contained death and all the evils of the world. Pandora opened the pithos and released all the evils. Though she hurried to close the container, all the contents had escaped except elpis ("Hope" or "Expectation"). The daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora was Pyrrha, who married Deucalion, a descendant of Prometheus; they were the only two humans who survived the deluge. When the 16th century humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (Erasmus of Rotterdam) translated Hesiodos into Latin he mistook pithos for the Greek "pyxis" (box).
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