WALKING ON THIN ICE

were i a suspicious man, i might think the republican party slipped south dakota senator tim johnson something to make him have a heart attack or a brain aneurism to get him out of the senate so republican governor mike rounds could appoint a republican to take his place to allow cheney and rove and their little booger boy bush could wipe out the 51-49 democratic majority in the senate.  i mean, cheney and bush admit to murdering 45,000 iraqi civilians, and they’ve already sent 3,000 young americans to their deaths, so what would one more measly senator matter, especially when it would counter america’s vote - and we all know cheney and bush have a lot of practical experience in countering american votes.  i believe cheney and bush would do anything to stay in power to please their corporate masters.

speaking of blood and guts, i tried some blood sausage in samobar (outside zagreb).  first few bites made me queasy just thinking about sausage cooked in blood.  but i’m a poet, and i’m a why not knot person, and i usually go the extra step.  they actually tasted quite good - would taste even better had i not known what i was putting in my mouth.  they were soft, gooey.  the blood sausage repeatedly visited my mind through the night - i kept tossing on an uncomfortable futon and thinking i don’t want this stuff in my body.  it was my 1st and last blood sausage. kathy had wild boar - that was delicious.

we went through 13 tunnels between rijeka and zagreb totalling 10,300 meters - that’s 6.4 miles underground through mountains.  came out of one tunnel to find another starting 50 feet away. went in one tunnel under sunny skies, came out the other side in the valley of the clouds… didn’t see the sun for two days.

easy pickings in the past, the future just a book. 

while sitting in a teacher’s house in zagreb, i noticed the novel “the time traveler’s wife” by audrey niffenegger… opened it up to the thank you page and there was our chicago friend MELISSA J CRAIG listed.

poems - a sonnet = 14 lines of a-b-a-b c-d-c-d e-f-e-f g-g rhyme scheme in iambic pentameter… a tanka = 5 lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables … riding hundreds of miles in the back seat of a car piloted by 2 teacher poets, you pick up stuff to try.  never written a sonnet, never heard of a tonka. will try both. do a tonka toy.

2 of our friends have new books out.  cleveland’s sara holbrook & michael salinger have “outspoken! (how to improve writing and speaking skills through poetry performance)” which teaches teachers how to teach poetry in schools  (published by heinemann) - and london beat poet john clarke has “ghost on the road (new & selected poems)” published by tall-lighthouse. kathy & i are getting 3 manuscripts together to shop around in 2007 - her poetry, my poetry, my true stories.