Poem 133

Imperfection, the crucial flaw that completes beauty … and also I was thinking about the locus of beauty as internal and perceptual – within us and and indestructibly so – a fantastically sophisticated instrument, keen and cutting to an impossible degree …

( included in Smalls … thinking of how to present it I screwed up the page it was on and smoothed it out again so the wrinkles in the paper provided a visual and tactile example of what the poem was saying … )

Sleeping In The Scar

Beauty in remission
backs off this world
step by clubfoot step
it is the unhealed cut
sleeping within the scar
it lets itself down in lines of water
is released inside the eye

beauty
        the one infection
love cannot debilitate
the serum
the body can't remove

it is the finest point
a quality of sharpness