Incipient Beauty

The poem, please,

but not the story. 

Please, no -- 

not the story! 

The poem: 

literature's ballet,

form controlled,

area finite,

at times elegant, 

exquisite . . .

but the story: 

more crude, even wanton, in form,

delving into the sordid,

the rampantly uncontrolled,

the backstabbed hearts

and the beastly flaws. 

Still,

without the raw and bleeding story,

seedbed of beauty and glory,

we would have nothing from which

to rise 

with the ravishingly triumphant 

poem.

                                                                                            Written December 31, 2011