for sale: full potential, never realized

yesterday i was at the ren faire wearing a cowboy hat. today i'm here, and i'm not doing that.

the hat still hangs, shed vest on my breast, a barrette for a bolo to cover my chest.

(tie the rose in a cycle, eat the cookie for glycal. the hat a-spangle with roses and leaves has very well and chivalrously long been received.)

no one hailed the gaucho, you see; they couldn't tell what kind of a cow it happened to be.

but they screamed and bowed for the queen, of course. maybe they'd have liked it if the gaucho came with a horse.

flower crowns. fairy queens. honey mead. raspberry steens.

sparkling wishing wands, which looked like bleach-brushing mops. mushrooms and spirit gum ears covering all order of curly tops.

prizes. foolish games, ghoulish prizes. corsets and capons in all shapes and sizes.

spy a fidget ring replacement, a spiky piece of ill-sized rubber that never would fall off, for it grips so well. a lost pop-it, two by two, green like grass and pocked like focaccia bread. foundrel, lostrel, wastrel, smack. jump thrice, huzzah! eat a fry, fall back.

soaring. flying. ossifying. standing poised on a ledge, convinced that pain is the only sigil of worthiness. or two push-ups, if you like, demonstrated on the dot, on the spot.

i've got to give myself away, now, because i'm not really here (and i never was, ever buzzing at the cracks in the corners for a mothball to appear).

i lost the ring that i used to wear on the right of my hands, the match of a pair in enlightment lands. perhaps it's my wedding left that continues to be cursed - but i knew that, you know, as i yielded the purse.

a manipointed star shape, costume cop-bronze. it's been done gracing my finger with patinae residue for years perhaps two. but loose it was, and loose i played. i swung and i hollered. i slapped my own face.

not trash, not treasure; not gray sweatshirts of heather.

the pumpkin patch, cross-legged on the ground, saw to it that i sold my jewellry off by the pound. and every other option was precious or specious, darling or starling, quaint or rhine-ain't.

the lost and found they said, indeed, as if anyone else would be taking stare at the asphalt, having the need.

it's lost, is the point. it's gone, is the end. i must get myself to unholy grips with it, and crusade to my own foul completion.

i do not know what now to do. i don't know what or who i am, without you.

the queen, the queen. all to hail and deify the queen.

glorify you. satisfy you. gentrify you. pacify you.

listen to us sing - begone, forsooth! in these farmamental lands. your pale bare hands, ungloved and uncouth, lost for the want of a ring.