Ugly

I stand on tabletops, in front of mirrors, "as naked as the day," and weep.
The great and stinking canyons of my body
tied to me like grooves in an arid plane,
a dirty, lonely desert named, in the local creoles, after Pain.

I sometimes dream that I am even more disgusting than I am,
my torso dotted with powdery white rashes
speckled with a red-raw core seeping through,
a seeping, speckling, disgusting flan, a battalion of Sore.

Somewhere in the mind there is a place
where the demands of biology give way to Romance,
and I am but a symbol of an atmosphere,
golden-crowned, green-robed, on a sheer hillside.