Hey, so

does anyone read these solipsistic musings? I should admit, they're more journal entries than notices, updates, or shout-outs. Technically they are 'logs' but I wouldn't want to read the logs of say, pilots, so it's understandable that most people aren't all that interested in my thoughts on the process and motivations peculiar to writing poems. I suppose I could talk about something else. Well, I do talk about other things, but indirectly; poem-writing is the lens. So I suppose I could use another lens.

But this prose mood has come to dominate. I hesitate to say -- yikes -- this is the real me, because there are at least a couple other real mes. The me of my poems, for instance, takes more risks, is more concise (there's an understatement), and has different concerns. His are words for lost dogs. And for the newly faithless: He works in glowing remnants of lost certainties. His message isn't buck up! but rather bear down! and adjust your eyes to a glow dimmer than you wanted but brighter than you might have imagined. In pretty stark contrast (no?), this prose me has words for insomniacs and addicts of the discursive sentence and thought. These posts are perhaps the quixotic equivalents of late-night infomercials, all sell and sizzle, talking around and around and around the product. What do you mean this isn't sizzle? Why you ungrateful little--. Try reading the essays of Wallace Stevens. They could put a typewriter to sleep. (That said, they're loaded with insights, or near-insights, since in my view he never broke through the sugar ceiling of almost saying the unsayable. He came heart-arrestingly close, though. That's my take but I don't think I could argue for it because it's a feeling his writing instills in me. Some would disagree, I'm sure, and call me naive and claim that going any further than he did would be to write the clever kitsch of reified understanding. There, I've given a future critic a label for my poems.)

I'm in a sort of trance these days. Is that true? It feels true. In social situations I break from it. When I eat or spend time with Arman, I break from it. I percolate back up to my senses, which are perhaps stronger from any meditative muscle my tranciness has toned.

Feel free to post some comments. I welcome any and all. I mean, you're right, talking at walls and responding to imaginary voices is something I'm skilled in (see), but feedback from the living is nice, too.