Hygiene Of An Assassin Poem by Consuelo Roland

Ma chère Amélie

How brave you are!
I could not be that brave,
Nor put on such a scholarly show
And carry it off
With such panache.

A writer more famous than you -
Wild Jack Kerouac - drew
A hard line between talent
And originality.

Your talent is formidable,
Your originality is gigantesque,
Of course you're absolutely right
We should write to
Change the way others think
Not merely as a doorstop
To immortality.

Your unsympathetic character,
The torturer, the murderer, the misogynist,
Confesses he can never again
Look at a young woman
In a raincoat
In the same way
After reading a certain
Beautiful Book.

Similarly I will never again look
At an obese man without recall to
Your fine spirit and its offshoots,
All those journalists
Hygienically assassinated by
A cynical interrogator and
Master of ambiguity.

So I ask you
Is it true
that every character
holds something
of the writer's
self?

Is it you
who wins
the duel
in the skin
of
misanthropist?