the INLAID EAR

This gifpoem takes words from Janice Sandeen, and the artists noted herein. This month of small stones, I set out with the intention of writing one per day, but the flu laid me low around the 20th, and I fell off the wagon—and onto this idea of gifpoetry that's completely fascinating to me now. What possibilities are there? What can one do with this format? I feel like I'm just beginning to think about it and find out. In this one, for instance, there are three (at least) simultaneous poems unfolding between Janice's text, the words from the language artists, and the little credit line I put in at the bottom. I'm taking a Ze Frank approach to this too, which is not to mull over the creative too much, but to kick the ideas out into the world even if not fully formed.

Smacked by illness, I spent most of the day in Middle-earth.

Today was so crazy and full between creative work, creative play and enjoying life with the wife, that I had no time to write and now it's an hour to bedtime, and I'm in no mood. But I found this passage from a recent but "closed" notebook which will be my stone for the day because I love the style of it. It's wild on purpose, cosmic, large scale, surreal and full of play. We're 2 Swiss Army Knife, Kali-armed     space ship tornado sparks meeting in the fiddle-head fern tendril    trajectory of a po lka on Mars . We hook together by our Sousaphone necks      and whip cut-time parabolic arcs, trad ing trans-oceani c stun rays——and all this    before lunching o n dinosaurs .

Halle Berry ; Abra ham Lincoln; the guy giving me the finger from behind his steering wheel, face a sudden twist of rage; and I all have this in common: as infan ts, we sat in our own ex crement. We've all done that.     

Starstruck. Ze Frank greets me like an old friend, though. Embrace. The way I guffaw sounds coarse in my own ears.

Daniel Craig as James Bond, done in a darkened theater:

Hey, by the way, what is this "small stone" thing? http://www.writingourwayhome.com/ Mindful writing: finding a moment of clarity and present awareness each day, and commemorating it with a small piece of writing. Nearly a week in, I'm quite taken by this quite beautiful process/project. D

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