Pandora's Pithos

   Pandora's Pithos

Childlike curiosity unleashes an urn of curses prepared 

For a world inept, deliberately kept, unsuspecting, unaware,

Enslaved by shame and strain of immorality and sin

That rages to plague the mere minds of mortal men.

As unknowingly, innocent fair-maiden fingertips

In twist of wrist, dared unloose the pithos lid

From whence an eerie echo of a fearful shadow

Leapt streaming freed to four corners, fled and hid.

Then spewed out of the mouth of lack's blackness,

Piercing all flesh with conviction's crucifixions,

A vile horror, screaming its deafening dread,

Fiercely devouring as its minions mercilessly fed

The dead still cold while night's predatory beasts,

Swarming, seeking the fleeing mindless feasts,

To prey upon egos of a dust, born to die as dust,

Upon the agents of unrighteousness, and thus upon the just.

Like looming locusts descending upon a dark winter moor,

Gluttony screamed its insatiable appetite for unfulfilled more

Of thorns that pierce, and nettles that wrestle skin punctured and sore

With cries of criticism as famine wakes to hunger of war,

To trumpet all that covet deep into their waste of wantonness,

Unwilling servants of a cruel and restless savage selfishness,

Pestilent craving only what can never be simply bought,  

Destined bravely to forever live as pity's "have nots".

Like hellish hornets, soldiers sting their hard-hearted hatred 

Across smoke-ash war-torn weary, ravished lands, raped,

Leaving cinders for the cockroach shrewd and spindly hands 

That crawl their cruelty alongside comrades in cowardly bands.

Slaves of prejudice chained denied in shackles of fear,

Bow now while vile wagging tongues entreat to endear

To an invisible "they" from an unknown throne afar.

Whipped until lash wounds, unhealed, turn to timeless scars.

Like ferocious flies, born of maggots, in desperation descending,

Draped in the stench of a putrid mildewy dread fast ascending

From the spider-eyed demi-gods who pompously prey

Upon the ruins of a musty-molded humanity's decay,

Where deceptive webs are woven to capture, spin, and play

The blind illiterate minds and miserably mislead them away

Into unrealities where wizards wave beggar rags to riches,

And dragon fire breathes an ire of incendiary wishes.

Like hissing snakes, armless and slithering inescapable insanity, 

Wantonness writhes in wiles of a withering jealousy's vanity,

Lurking lust for envy, views through ignominious mirror glass,

Strangles reverence with hateful utterance of profanity unabashed.

Demons dance to debacle delusions and delight in demented perceptions,

Enamored by the pride of glory from their own contrived reflections.

Deeply depraved by loneliness, vultures of their own self-defiled carrion,

They rot in anathema, crying agony in a world that dares hear no one.

Until God's storms stream barren terrains, a swell and bellow-blustering,

Drowning mortal vengeance vain, and all mundane and merciless mustering, 

Until wild winds of love's rain shower down corroding destruction's erosion

From all foul evils born of mankind's scorn-worn, torn explosion,

Until haphazard hurricanes flood rumble their cleansing truth torrents,

Upon the wailing washed woes of their Sodom city's pitiful abhorrence

Swept away gnashing, crashing loud by tsunamis drowning floating proud,

And swirling whirlwinds lightening flash hope on Heavenly host-filled clouds.

~P.S. Colley

March 1, 2025

Lamentations of Eve