# My God! You Lunatic!

By Peter Howitt, 28 March 2025.
Web page: https://compossible.blog/2025/03/28/my-god-you-lunatic/
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Another morning 

I awake and shake 

My tired head

Warm the old 

Cold coffee

That's when the panic hits me

* * *

'_My God!, you lunatic!_

_What have you done?_

_Look what you wrote!_

_Do you remember what you said_?

_You imagined it all! '_

A dreadful waking fever dream

Curse these amygdalan frenzies

* * *

…Then it starts again

A sinking seeping sadness 

Creeping in

That feeling of this world 

Breaking

Like waves of the sea 

Crashing on us, on me

* * *

Suffering swelling

Hate virus spreading

Until empathy is madness

And if you're not insane 

In this way, in this world

You too must be crazy

(And again the words

Or my skills fail me)

* * *

Some days I fall out of bed

(Stupefied by senseless times)

Then stand to attention

Ready again to wrestle <sup class="fnref"><a href="#fn-1" id="fnref-1">1</a></sup>

That dark angel<sup class="fnref"><a href="#fn-2" id="fnref-2">2</a></sup>

A never-ending war 

At best, to draw

Unspeakable sounds 

From out of thin air

* * *

Isn’t so much pain-earned art

Just a richer description 

Of the ‘self’ in fall?

The craft keeps alive

A feeling of complete control

Yet, it is only mastery 

Of the strokes used to trace

The destruction of that place 

We thought our home

* * *

The song of a soul 

That must suffer to grow

Crying out, in a kind of praise

For God's most awful

Gifts of grace<sup class="fnref"><a href="#fn-3" id="fnref-3">3</a></sup>

The unwanted loved lament

Resonating in

Each reverberating

Breaking heart

* * *

And though we poets know

Our universe ensures

All fools who sing

The Truth must fail

Yet, still we vow

To speak that truth

(The part we are blessed to hear)

Until

The end

* * *

## AI Audio Version

[Bandlabs](<https://www.bandlab.com/track/5fd9f5025efe438b95f679f67eb8df57_218e8fde0789f011b4806045bd35f0e2?revId=208e8fde-0789-f011-b480-6045bd35f0e2>)

## Footnotes

<div class="notes-start" id="notes" aria-hidden="true"></div>

  1. <span id="fn-1" class="fn-anchor"></span>[Translation of Rilke's 'The Watcher'](<https://paragraph.xyz/@compossible/the-watcher>) [↩](#fnref-1 "Back to text")
  2.  <span id="fn-2" class="fn-anchor"></span>_“_ … _Because you do not wrestle with your angel._  
_Because you dare to live without God._  
_Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp._ “  
(Leonard Cohen, ‘[Book of Mercy](<https://paragraph.xyz/@compossible/you-dare-to-live-without-god>)’) [↩](#fnref-2 "Back to text")
  3. <span id="fn-3" class="fn-anchor"></span>"_He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God_ "  
  
(Aeschylus c.525–456 bc, from 'Agamemnon') [↩](#fnref-3 "Back to text")