I blame it on the box -

Beautifully decorated by Zeus.

Advertised you might say

as holding undreamed of possibilities

of information, of entertainment, 

even infotainment, if she was lucky.

Something to chat to Epimetheus about

In the long winter evenings.

 

And she was smart was Pandora,

Athena gave her brains and Aphrodite, beauty.

Named by Hermes “all-gifted”

Stuck in an Eden (and who was to know that’s what it was?)

with just one very good and very happy man.

Who could blame her for being bored?

 

So lets see – she had a right to see –

to know what was really what

(and why should Epimetheus get to hide the key?)

And who’s to say that knowing all that horrible stuff,

the despair, the cruelty, the poverty and disease

did not, in the end, make her a better person,

someone Epimetheus could admire for her fortitude,

keeping the home fire burning as he went off to war,

keeping their kids on the straight and narrow.

 

As long as she had hopelessness still firmly trapped

in that box, she had to believe (well you do, don’t you) 

That it would all work out in the end.

 

I blame it on the box –

Beautifully designed by Sony

Two hundred channels exploring

the charnel houses of the imagination, 

searching every hell-hole of human habitation

competing to delineate the depths of depravity 

(because we all know sensation sells).

 

So Andy, who is a modern, independent woman

(and has grown up fighting for her turn of the remote)

needs to be across the latest

soap, song, sickness, strategy, sin,

so Theo can savour her sagacity,

but mainly value the double income incoming.

 

And she is forced to watch (because that’s real life isn’t it?)

to unemotionally aspire to another new sexploit,

to appreciate all aspects of the atrocities of war

to applaud the shallow depths of celebrity

 

Though lately she wonders if hopelessness has finally broken out

and whether, even with Prozac protection 

(though it’s only for the chemical imbalance)

we, she, can rescue the human psyche from exponential ennui

Well, Zeus did save Psyche from her box of Stygian sleep

(but these dayshappy ever afteris explicit content)