Thinking the unthinkable.

Insomnia.

I have literally been awake all night. I try to sleep and I can’t.

Been working on the Chinatown poem all night, staring at it, thinking about it.

If it’s true that every poem written, every poem performed, should be treated as though it was your last work, should be treated as though it was the last thing you could point at and say, “that was me” — well, I should have died years ago; because I write the same poem over and over, and have for the last five years, and I can’t seem to stop.

I’ve written some marginally better stuff lately, but I can tell when a phase is ending, and it is; and I no longer believe in my own capacity for self-renewal.

Too many male poets lose their edge in middle age, and become masochistic whiners or esoteric fops, chasing arcane visions. I swore long ago to become neither.

But I need to recuperate and rebuild to get past it. And I’m so tired and I can’t sleep, and I don’t know what to do next.

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