Friday, January 21, 2011

For Hieronymous Anonymous: my most loyal monster critic


Hieronymous Anonymous is a personified figure who is all too real: the nasty critic whose comments, though appearing in my inbox every so often, never make it past the moderation screen. Of course, he appears always as "Anonymous", afraid to affix a name to the monster. So I'll give it one. The name "Hieronymous" (not to be confused with "Hieronymus") is suitable because of the way it shakes deep in the jawbone, when pronounced.

Anonymous, you've just been invented.


Then just now, more fluxed
  than I'd ever been,
  more appalled,
I wrote, dropped it, wrote
(as if there were some smug space left,
                                  still)
  and suffered:
why do we do it, then?

A whole semi-blank word may absolutely
  pain me as it falls,
  constricting the heart,
  wringing the flesh

Why pausing here between the glyph
  and the page,
  sitting here ready
  in my cage,
  do I go on?

                    No!
Beside you who wouldn't look good!

And beside everything else—
  my chair,
  mounted keyboard,
  detestable guts lying at
                                  my feet!—
who wouldn't want to write write write

As I stoop to read you, in the space left
  gripping the keys,
                          again,
  and now
  feeling glad-hearted,
                          again,
  I hear you stiffen

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