TFE's Monday Challenge: You Cannot Be Serious

After assuring us that there would be a 2-week stopover, TFE pulled a last-minute one out of the bag. Which I managed, just.

And I still haven't got my copy of The Garage, so next week could be very challenging indeed.

I went with the balloons.

Love For Sale

In any crowd there will always be
an upside-down dalmatian;
the one with spots who no one wants
at the wrong, ill-favoured angle.
Your gaze scarcely rests on the like of me,
drawn by subliminal string to familiars’ faces
mirrors of those you see in magazines,
an airbrush away from similitude.
If your eyes flick my way
you involuntary pucker
a little distaste, or worse:
sympathy.

I did not choose disfigurement;
it is not sin that marks me so.
Yet judgement is visited upon me
and leper-like I must shade to fringes -
you may as well hand me the bell
that rings Unclean should I dare to break
your charmed and hallowed circle.

I ought ring it, shout “I think, I speak, I could love!”
I could love,
if someone would choose me.
I would sell myself,
if someone would touch me.
Sometimes, when it is late
and the crowd’s bays become roar
I have done.
It is late now, I am not inviolate,
Buy me.