Yawn

I am tired.

Tired I am.

Thirst For Verse (Slight Return)

When I went to the library the other day, I noticed they were holding their quarterly book sale this weekend.

So after my shower and some coffee, I head off to the sale.
Run into a few book-loving freaks like myself that I know.

Say hello.

Good luck.

Happy hunting.

I'm only sort of half with it from the sleepless night and I don't have the time to do any real serious browsing.

I hit up the basics: poetry, biographies, fiction.

The poetry section is weak and blurred together with drama and classics. I don't see any City Lights Pocket Poetry Series chapbooks (easily identifiable by their size) so I head off to biographies hoping to find a good one by Nick Tosches (on Sonny Liston or Dean Martin specifically) but find no such luck. Browse the fiction. See a Jim Harrision book - Dalva - which I'm convinced I already have in hardback, this one here is soft cover.
So I pass on it.

Oftentimes, I'm so fixated on trying to land a certain score that I end up buying it twice. I've done this with records many times.

I go back to biographies one last time before I leave. Along the way I spot Kem Nunn's THE DOGS OF WINTER which I recently read and it was one of the best books I consumed in quite some time.
I pick it up because it is hardcover and vow to send/give my soft cover copy to someone in the near future.

Back I biographies, I spot one on Kenneth Rexroth - who is one of the grandaddies of San Francisco's epic Beat lit scene - and pick it up.

I had just gotten an email from a friend of mine about how I was a great American poet after he discovered a long lost stash of poems I'd sent him years ago.

He is an archivalist.

He keeps everything.

Ironically, this was on the same day that I felt compelled to go to the library and read poetry. I felt it was my duty to keep the synergy going and take the Nunn and Rexroth books to the checkout.

It cost me $2.

Turns out I don't have DALVA

Sleepless In Carolina

The House Of G was kept awake last night by sickness.

4-yr.old Spencer's coughing and stuffy nose kept him awake.
Beckoning mommy or daddy to his room to blow his nose, get him a drink or give him yum-yums (Simply Stuffy - a children's decongestant).

Roughly 2:45am I awoke to a heartburn induced dry cough attack.

Must have been the nachos consumed while watching that shitty "scary" movie called the VILLAGE. At least it's not scary 45 minutes into and that's when I pulled the plug on it because I kept finding myself looking at the inside of my eyelids.

I've had a scratchy throat since I butchered my voice during Wednesday night's band practice. The makeshift P.A. just isn't cutting it. I'm finding it harder and harder to hear my vocals so I end up yelling more, making me sound like some Baldwin brother for a few days.

So I'm up coughing, drinking juice, sucking on a Ricola and doing just about anything to right the situation.

Drinking dry pilsner beers and toking on a one hitter doing the movie surely did not help.

I retreat to the back room as to not wake those who are trying to get some sleep and snuggle under a blanket with the TV on, volume real low. Finally sleep comes.

Then Spencer waltzes in a says it's time to get up. I drag myself
and the blanket to the family room, turn on the TV for him and lay down. I never looke at the clock. Several shows later I look:
it's only 6:15am.

I deduct I have easily been up since 5am.

It's at this time the wife stirs, feeling edgey and awake from whiskey consumption and allows me to return to bed for sleep.

It seems to take forever to get back to sleep and I even dream about already being asleep and having to wake up.

8:30 am. I'm torn awake by the most amazing leg cramp I've ever had. Not since my days as a bicycle messenger in Los Angeles have I woken up in writhing pain, twisting and turning, rubbing the cramp.

I get up and shower.