If beauty is the test to which we’re held,
The scars that make me look like I’m a weld
Are guaranteed to turn your eyes astray,
For how can anybody look this way?
If Helen’s face could launch a thousand ships,
Then mine would sink the fleet with all its dips
And pits of pox and cracks from years of use.
My form indeed deserves your best abuse.
But it all bounces off my hideous shell.
My looks are not the thoughts on which I dwell.
Were that the case my eyes would ever tear
And that is why my house now lacks a mirror.
So take your beauty bound for finer things –
To you my visage howls, to me it sings!