“Praise Other Me” by Ray Bradbury: Acknowledges and Gives Credit to His Alternate Personality

I do not write—

The other me

Demands emergence constantly.

But if I turn to face him much too swiftly

Then

He sidles back to where and when

He was before

I unknowingly cracked the door

And let him out.

Sometimes a fire-shout beckons him,

He reckons that I need him,

So I do. His task

To tell me who I am behind this mask.

He Phantom is, and I facade

That hides the opera he writes with God,

While I, all blind,

Wait raptureless until his mind

Steals down my arm to wrist, to hand, to

fingertips

And, stealing, find

Such truths as fall from tongues

And burn with sound,

And all of it from secret blood and secret soul on

secret ground

With glee

He sidles forth to write, then run and hide

All week until another try at hide-and-seek

In which I do pretend

That teasing him is not my end.

Yet tease I do and feign to look away,

Or else that secret self will hide all day.

I run and play some simple game,

A mindless leap

Which from sleep summons forth

The bright beast, lurking, whose preserves

And gaming ground? My breath,

My blood, my nerves.

But where in all that stuff does he abide?

In all my rampant seekings, where’s he hide?

Behind this ear like gum,

That ear like fat?

Where does this mischief boy

Hatrack his hat?

No use. A hermit he was born

And lives, recluse.

There’s nothing for it but I join his ruse, his game,

And let him run at will and make my fame.

On which I put my name and steal his stuff,

And all because I sneezed him forth

With sweet creation’s snuff.

Did R.B. write that poem, that line, that speech?

No, inner-ape, invisible, did teach.

His reach, clothed in my flesh, stays mystery;

Say not my name.

Praise other me.

https://arsene.quora.com/Praise-Other-Me

Ray Bradbury. “The Other Me.” In Zen in the Art of Writing. Santa Barbara, Joshua Odell Editions, 1994, pp. 162-164.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury