the INLAID EAR

Words Thing: Sesquipedalophobia

2018-01-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

Sesquipedalophobia,

the fear of long words,

terrifies its sufferers

with the very naming of its diagnosis.

For their sake, in a consciousness-raised

behavioral healthcare environment,

let’s propose a new name for the malady;

e.g., plep.

Words Thing: Fangle

2017-10-31T17:15:00.001-07:00

Another word that, if it were a word, would have given me a handsome score in Words With Friends. Also one of those words which should be a word. As George Carlin said, the concept of chalance exists.

fangle

To fashion something,

but not in a pioneering, innovative or iconoclastic way.

A product engineer might fangle a kitchen mixer

with slightly better blades

or a razor that stays sharper a little longer.

The thing may be said to be fangled,
but certainly not newfangled.

The Words Thing: Ramotions

2017-10-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

for David Brehemer

If our feelings were rational

then coming through fire

with a suspicion we faked it

as though chemistries

beyond our reasoning

weren’t working unseen

to protect us,

would never happen;
and we’d rest injured

but assured that

what we feel is intelligent,

more than doubt is real.

The deeply sensitive poet David Brehemer was saying that emotions aren't rational, but that maybe there is a psychological phenomenon of emotions that are rational. He suggest the name "ramotions" as a portmanteau.

The Words Thing: Conifer

2017-10-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

When a young man,
I planted a stand
of cedar, Canadian yew,
redwood and fir.
Now I conifer
the job of their upkeep to you.

The Words Thing: Spontannuity

2017-10-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

A playful series of short poems titled with the single words the poems are about.

Spontannuity

An Elvis impersonator

I once interviewed

used this localism

more than twice.

You can understand

it to mean a specified
income payable at stated intervals

for a fixed or a contingent period,
such as a lifetime,
in consideration of
a gargantuan pompadoured banana

skating across frozen bacon grease.

The Words Thing: Detail

2017-10-17T14:11:00.001-07:00

This was the first, or one of the first, in this playful series of short poems titled with the single words the poems are about.

Detail

As I played with a tiny toy horse,

my mom noticed and commented

on the way its crafting included “every little detail.”

I said, “No, it's an h-tail.”

The Words Thing: Hairdid

2017-10-16T11:43:00.002-07:00

This series of short poems is emerging. They're titled with the single words the poems are about. Some of these words come from playing the app Words with Friends, essentially Scrabble. When I get letters that should rearrange into a word, but don't quite make it, I start inventing words like:

hairdid

I love your hair! You

must have hairdone.

Once, you hairdid often;

but these days, one
only hairdoes

what one can hairdo.

The Words Thing: Rote

2017-10-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Question: is blogging still a thing? Effective for purposes of what? And then?
But anyhow, here is this project I'm thinking on, and maybe if I start to post the pieces here,
they will appear to coalesce (I love the word coalesce) into something besides coal in lumps.

The Words Thing: short poems titled with the single words the poems are about. Favorites. Least favorites. Fascinations. Miscellaneous. Embouchure. Heliofranticulating.

Ah, the spell check doesn't like old coins. All the better.

So:

Rote

This, written, is set

unchanging in place. Still this,

literally this, set.

I may change my mind

but these words,

these this-es,

repeated,

are rote.

My last full repository

2017-03-22T10:10:00.001-07:00

The fortune cookie fortune says
"YOU ARE AN ARTISTIC PERSON.
LET YOUR COLORS SHOW."

Saving bits from a completed notebook

2017-03-21T13:25:00.001-07:00

Oh, I should take a picture of the hardbound book that's served me since around October. It's been a good one. Some one-offs that I want to save:

Sesquipedalophobia, the fear of long words, makes sufferers distressed when they find out the name of what they have.

Would I trade the fantasy of world peace for the illusion of personal peace?

What gets me is not knowing that i could die at any moment so much as knowing that I am at every one.

A poet's progress

2017-02-24T08:50:00.001-08:00

Found out my book One Way to Ask is on the new releases shelf at the Richmond Public Library. I must go visit it. My mind also says: bring copies to El Cerrito, Albany, Berkeley, etc., etc.

They will host a reading of the Richmond Anthology of Poetry in April and One Way to Ask in May!

Through Natasha Dennerstein I have met Maw Shein Win, the poet laureate of El Cerrito. We talked about co-hosting at some point.

Busy day ahead, but hope to submit The Trip in its new revision today.

Poetry progress

2017-02-22T17:14:00.001-08:00

I forgot to mention yesterday that I am working on a series of haiku that, although uncredited, will be the best read poems I've ever written. I am writing a series of haiku that will appear throughout the worldwide facilities of a very large tech company, okay Google, to gently remind employees to behave in polite and respectful ways. When launched, I will try to post photos.

Today's poetry progress:

2017-02-21T22:57:00.003-08:00

Wrote a new poem draft, probably to about 80% "done," following a listing for poems about donuts. Mine is about the slang "jelly donut," that my old comedy group used to use for jokes that lacked an idea and a punchline, an unformed joke or bit.

Made a significant change to "The Trip," a sequence of 37 poems about my family's summer trip. I took out the largely unneeded epigrams on each poem.

That change followed feedback from rehearsing my reading of selected poems from The Trip at Tell It On Tuesday. The show is next Tuesday, February 28, and it will be better than it would have been thanks to the rehearsal and this change. Also made improvements to two poems in the sequence.

Sent a copy of Richmond Anthology of Poetry to the SF Poetry Center at SF State University following introduction to one of the curators through my friend, poet Lauren Schiffman.

Sifted through poetry listings for possible future submissions for The Trip.

Received poems from KD Rose for our seventh poetry consultation session.

Plus small things.

Book Spine Poetry

2016-04-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

Resparking the habit of frequent poem-writing this National Poetry Month, I've been putting the poetry prompts from both Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo.net into my hopper.Today's NaPoWriMo offering was too good to resist: Book spine poems! Lauren and Mirabai did some, too. The family that poems together, shows 'em together.

I like the use of refrain. I'm pretty pleased with this one:

Lauren had similar thoughts, using two books I was planning to use. We tend to think alike and arrive at the same places at the same time. It's uncanny.

Mirabai's sweet poem:

An Acceptable Time

Teach Yourself to Dream
KEEP OUR SECRETS

HUG

All the World

What will you come up with?

March 15: Historic

2016-03-31T10:33:00.002-07:00

Reading poems with Tiny Violins

Signing

Lauren rocked the food. Every morsel was eaten. And thanks to Stacey Danielson, too.

Charles Cunningham, publisher

David Fleischmann gets his contributor's copies.

This book is my Led Zeppelin I

2016-03-09T13:42:00.001-08:00

2016-03-03T15:39:00.001-08:00

STOKED!
Book releases March 15 at Norfolk Press.
Please come - and Respondez S'il Vous Plait

Globe of Matter places in Decima contest

2015-10-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

This ran up in the poetic forms challenge for Decima at good ol' Writer's Digest. I'm glad - I am pleased with it:

Globe of matter

If ants weren’t so hungry, or if

the queen disbanded the army,

idle ants would do as we do:

play poker, write memoir, sniff wines

and pass their time in earth adrift

in the disinterest of matter.

We sleep through the pitter-patter

of their gustatory footsteps

and get up, upset to accept

they have found a glob of batter.

Norfolk Press Says Yes

2015-10-28T09:32:00.001-07:00

LIFE = FULL

In all this, I have been 8 weeks between publishers, falling away from Zoetic and into Norfolk. The deal feels totally right.

More to come, meanwhile, the fullness of life calls: telling for the biggest audience I've faced since my stand-up comedy days — and this one was much kinder, pitching a mini-grant to the Richmond Arts & Culture Council, and very much professional work.

Two months

2015-10-20T23:05:00.000-07:00

I was two months without a publisher
while I asked and asked this game universe
to come to this earnest, hopeful boy
with a new smear of butter.

And I said, I see I won't be famous;
still I'd like to have the volume,
somehow to have my book complete,
though the destiny of poems is humble.

And I asked and asked the harvest field
for a maze of sudan grass stalks trodden—
the moment you say, I haven't really been lost,
as you step out of the obstacle, beyond

the game you play with yourself:
and there's the book come down off the shelf.

***

Mid-August I found out the publisher who was going to release my book didn't want to release it the way I wanted it. I suggested half a dozen ways to make the agreement work, but none suited the publisher; and anyway, their digital infrastructure--the pillar of their fledgling press--was not yet ready.

We parted ways. As disappointed as I might be while still having food on the table, a loving family, a secure home, a steady job, and so on, I was, because September was supposed to be release month, and instead I was back to the beginning.

So I asked, which is what this whole project has been about. And allies told me who they knew. My friend Natasha had published her book with Norfolk Press in San Francisco, a 30-year old press with a stunning catalog of art books and beautiful editions. I pursued them and on October 20, met with publisher Charles Cunningham in person. He wants to do my book and is working up the contract.

As Buddhists say, this may be good, maybe. And if it's not, then something else. I am learning the beauty, not to say the power, of asking. How to ask. How to accept, surrender, hold no expectation; and at the same time do, in Ann Randolph's words, whatever the fuck it takes.

So much for last night

2015-10-07T16:36:00.002-07:00

—after *J*

Blue light and piano—

a tickling brook of notes—

and the damn mosquito

that browbeat us all night.

Blue light from the window,

notes by David Benoit,

and our blood endowing

us with life—and that nit

now paused on the window

digesting as I go

to get Ceramics Now,

an old, bloodstained issue,

folded. Good morning. Pow.

Here’s a wad of tissue

stained with our blood that’s naught

but toilet food. I kiss you

in the day we’re into.

Throw Back Thursday - Sonnet #2 circa 1985

2015-09-14T15:15:00.002-07:00

Rockin' the dot matrix!

"Ony Ody" Throw Back Thursday circa 1986

2015-09-10T11:11:00.003-07:00

[I revised/improved this one somewhat from the 30-year old original]

Ony Ody

Firstly heard the one called Melo

Speaks to Harmo clear as a bell-o:

“Harmo, I need you. You can tell-o.

I’m the tasted without the smell-o.

Yes, the water, but no well-o.

I’m the goods that will not sell-o.

You must talk so I can yell, so

Separate, we are doomed to hello.”

Answering the one called Harmo

Speaks to Melo smooth and warm-o:

“I, the fury, but no storm-o;

Aye, the bones—without the arm-o.

Animals without the farm-o.

Without you I have no form! Oh,

You’re the bees, but I’m the swarm, so

Conjoining states must be our norm, yo.”

Melo sings sharp and Harmo hums hollow.

Melo speaks bright and Harmo thrums mellow.

Harmo flows blue while Melo shows yellow.

Melo’s the peaches in Harmo’s Jello.

Melo is famed more than Mel’s fellow.

But Harmo leads for Melo to follow.

Throw Back Thursday - Sonnet circa 1986

2015-09-02T14:41:00.003-07:00

I am pitching Mortified, a live show where, if I am accepted and choose to go forward with this, I will be reading pages from my late high school diary that clearly illustrate my sexual confusion and why I was such a late bloomer.

It was interesting to have this reflected back to me by Kevin, one of the event organizers, based on my first submission: "I'm especially intrigued by the idea of fancy poetry about adolescent sexual frustration, though I have to say the samples you've attached seem almost too sophisticated to be mortifying."

I had been embarrassed by my old writings, but now I see there is some sophistication there. Take this sample sonnet where I am rigid in my iambic pentameter. I think this one isn't bad:

Sonnet

From what you’ve seen of me, I am a fool

Today back to the time you saw me first.

Before your eyes, I’ve stumbled from the rule.

Yet I do swear you’ve only seen my worst

The words I speak to you come from an ass

For accidental insults flow from me

Because I stand before a goddess-lass

My mind and lips slip when I talk to thee.

But you must know—I am much more than that.

The side you’ve seen is only seen by few

And I must have you realize that fact

Because I hold such deep respect for you.

Bestow your grace on me with smile kind

So I may see the softness in your mind.

No rubber, no road.

2015-08-28T10:14:00.002-07:00