ugly in poetry

Writing is not the Dionysian endeavour so many desire it to be. Okay?
Drunken. Instant. Born of epiphany, spontaneously, parthenogenically.
Dionysus of wine and rebirth and revels may be fine for the starting ideas
but when it comes down to the work of turning some crazy inspirado
into something that can spell your heart out into the stars, man
that is not the work of lithe mad gods of spring.
Writing is work in the mold more like Hephaestus if you need a god's example.
Writing is the work of great and terrible deformed things
sweating and bleeding for years in obsidian caves
pounding and pounding away
chiseling molding what-have-you
until it might be the armor on gray-eyed Pallas' chest
until it might be a bauble on the arm of Venus
am I mixing up the Greek and Roman pantheons?
I never know, I always mix them up
I never know because they're the same things with different names
in two different languages I do not know.
Writing is not young and pretty.
Writing is gnarled and gashed into volcano walls
the fire in your heart is a wonderful spark
and needed to get the shit started
but there's a forge up in your head
where the fire must be funneled
and that's when the sculpting
the hammering
the breaking of backs and fingers begins.
Writing is not beautiful.
It is something far more than beauty.
Whatever it is, anyway
when done right
it is slightly more powerful
and infinitely more real
than the angry gods themselves.