As I've moved along - not only my life, but my career and things like that - you look at yourself and start going, 'Oh, man, are you still doing what you set out to do? Are the ideals you had still the same?' Sometimes you measure up and sometimes you don't.
The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight.