I got myself a bit too run down and wound up with pneumonia that landed me in the hospital for three days. It was a set-back, and I left the hospital weak, and ten pounds lighter than I’d been seven days before. I immediately set about regaining my strength, but was frustrated by a bad reaction my guts had with the antibiotic I was taking, and also I just needed rest, though I felt impatient and didn’t want to rest. But that is how I became run down in the first place.

Kind people brought me soups and stacked my firewood, but my initial response was to be crabby. I didn’t want to recuperate, I wanted to be recuperated. I wanted to be better, but wasn’t. So I basically went mildly insane for a while. Fortunately part of recuperating involved resting against my will. I’d drink a strong coffee, and rather than rolling up my sleeves and getting to work I’d feel cozy and warm and fall asleep. For a while I was sleeping nine hours a night and six hours a day, which left me less time to be demented, which was nice for people who had to put up with me.

I’ll skip over most of the details, except to say I’m feeling better and more like my old self now, and that I did a lot of scribbling while I was demented. And, while being demented is not helpful in terms of worldly responsibilities, and achieving good relations with your spouse, it can produce some interesting poetry.

Going through the scribbles, here are some things some might be interested by:

How swiftly it can end. All the fret
And all the trouble popping like a bubble.
How swiftly we could blend, and all forget
To insist that we all must be double
When Oneness is so much more loving.

I never wanted to join the throngs
In the school yard, all pushing and shoving.
Little Peter and I sung our own songs
Over at the side, but had to attend
To the lurking gangs. And so it began.
I've now attended a lifetime. The end
Now hoves in view. How many miles I ran
To avoid ever leaving Your beautiful face.
To outrun the world's wiles is a very strange race.

It is not a chirper morning.
Everyone's a brat.
I'm stomping off to church
With my fist inside my hat.
Forgive me, Lord of Love,
I have made your script absurd.
(I would have hit a home-run
But got tripped-up rounding third.)

Forgive me, Lord of kindness.
I'm not happy being ill.
The sun's a saltless omlet's
Yellow yoke upon a hill;
A bad joke, and all my will
Seems to see with certain blindness;
My mind has  become mindless
Without bliss's laughing thrill.

You are joy eternal.
Without You, all is frost
Cutting down the greenery.
Without You, we are lost.
Save our dirtied scenery.
Uplift us from our woes.
You have borne the cost and know
How thorns can grow a rose.

But me?  I do not know that
And my hat now holds my warning.
I am stomping to my Lord
And it's not a chirper morning.

I should love You, Lord, most,
For You are everlasting,
But sometimes I just like toast
Preferring it to fasting.

If life is what you get out of it
Why does no one want to get out? Men cling
To their hours like misers; they submit
To God only because their clattering 
Clogs can't outrun Him. Down the long valley 
I have come through the torment of my years
Never thinking it was a blind alley
Dead-ended, and with brave beers scoffed at fears
That at the end no welcome would await.
Ahead lies a gold that's far more golden
Than worldly coins, and through that bright gate
No shadow can follow. Long beholden
To Caesar's rules, I have nodded at fools,
Awaiting vacation far longer than school's.

On the eve of Armageddon my Lord
Has made me a weakling. When my people
Need a champion, where I once roared
Now I squeak. Like a church with no steeple
I am humbled. Not what I expected.
I thought I'd be trained and be disciplined
To be strong at the end, but find instead
I merely got old.  I'm bleak and thin-skinned
And my deep voice has grown a silly quaver.
I worry that I should have been a miser.
When my wife needs a strong man, I can't save her,
So I turn to You, Lord; please surprise her.
You never get old. You always are strong.
When we've given our all to You we belong.

All things outside my art seem tedium
I must deal with, and in dealing with it
I must uplift: The bright face midst the glum;
Among the sad, a flash of merry wit;
In the darkness, a lone human candle.

But the tedium remains tedium.
I'm tired of being the one to handle
The tedium. Give me singers to strum
Me a song.  I tire of entertaining
And want to be tickled; to just guffaw
Within my art, outside all complaining.
Where are my unmet friends? Is there some law
Demanding an artist must live in a groan
For walking with beauty means walking alone?

Where from thorns I once arose
Now I choose to sit and doze.
Sneaky time chose to retire me.
Yippie! Now no one can fire me!