There are two characters in this poem, essentially. There is "You," the poet, and there is another more subtle "you" in the poem itself. The voice of the poet allows for a double analysis of the problem of artistic poverty. The old archetype is the struggling artist, of course, but in this humiliating verse, the speaker threatens the poet, and not only that, the speaker implies that the poet is the real threat against themselves.
The accusation is that the poet sabotaged their own lives, perhaps to the strengthen their poetry by playing the victim. The idea of victimhood is clearly a dilemma throughout the poem, and the when the threat is leveled (the speaker wants to expose the poverty of the poet to others), there is a kind of masochistic shame—especially if the reader considers that in real life, the poet and the speaker are both the same person.
The accusation of self-sabotage is ironic, because of course she is sabotaging herself. If the poem is a depiction of her own internal thought life, than clearly the same voice that blames her artistic self for sabotaging her—that voice is the real saboteur. By questioning her self worth, and by feeling embarrassed about the circumstances of her life, she weakens her resolve to fix her own problems, beating herself up with shame until a future day, when maybe she will fight back against those voices of self-defeat.
