What might your thoughts be on this poem?

The 'forced pen' is the one that feels compelled to write even when it lacks inspiration to guide and energize it. That made the oxymoronic 'illustrious wasteland' of your first line a perfect phrase, because it captures the self-mocking and self-despairing artist, or more particularly poet, whose intellectual universe has run dry and is as blank as the paper he yearns to fill with something... anything... meaningful. His is the 'desert bliss' of engaging in otherwise nirvanic pursuits that have mysteriously turned arid before his eyes, eyes that look longingly towards the refreshing 'sea' of the last line. Instead, his mind wanders across the barren and unacclaimed expanse of unfilled paper, mechanically counting its steps, trudging onward. The poet prayerfully asks to be removed from the 'barren fields' of his thought, his unblemished paper, the very slate of his inspiration, and to be carried aloft to more fecund climes. All that being said, I thought this write was the most natural and musical you have offered here in some time; you are beginning to find a comfortable distance -- neither too far nor too near -- between yourself and the lushly-ornamented, neo-Romantic diction of your earlier poems. I suspect this trend will be an ongoing one as you establish your own voice more completely, but may I say it is a pleasure to see, and hear, your progress.