ELEMENTS FROM MY HIDDEN LIFE

Nearly two years ago, I started investigating (for lack of a better word) a different world, and have sort of been living in it as if it were a parallel universe to my usual (for lack of a better word) life-style. This isn't a metaphor or some imaginative mode. This world I speak of exists and exists on its own terms and the fact that it's a parallel universe attests to how it can also be a horror show and I've resisted it even as I've had to ghostly-swim through it. My few attempts to do something about certain of its horrors have been met with, to date, a RESOUNDING SLAP. When I've managed to cope with its horrific-nesses, it's been to rely (to lapse back to) the distance of observer, even as -- getting to how I'm in its trajectory in the first place -- at some point the point of intersection inevitably will become the one world in which I will exist.

As I write this, how fitting that suddenly a pack of coyotes start yipping and baying seemingly right outside my window, attesting to how they must have just caught some prey. As I write this, I believe they're ripping apart that prey.

And I'm also pressed to write this while fresh in the middle of reading a new anthology of letters between 14 pairs of poets. The book reminds me, though I'm not just referring to the book here, that we poets are often so precious when we write about poetry -- even when we're not trying to be, when we're hoping we're not going to be, precious, we come off a bit oily. But there's aptness in how a poet discussing poetics infuses even the I Don't Know with some simmering arrogance, if only because we get so insistent.... (I could explicate further but ...)

And I was compelled, just now, to re-read these...

Everything I've done to date now seems to have been preparation for a pause. I write a book in order to prepare. I write bookS in order to prepare. Which is all to say, the book is not the point, yah? I write books in order to prepare myself to arrive here, A Pause where I take a deep breath and exhale, Okay, now I'm ready to begin attempting poems.

Except I've been speechless. Doesn't seem like it, e.g. got two more books scheduled out. But I'm just hiding behind the time-lag between writing and publication. I haven't written new poems in a long, long while.

I'm ready to stop, frankly. But I can't. At the same time, I'm dry. I get it, really: I'm supposed to just be in this pause. It's incredibly irritating, but I suppose that's part of the point.

I've been irritated ... for a long time. I am ready to speak, but my lips form a line, not a circle.