Japanese Poetry For Bloated Tonsils

I was/am sick. The kind of sick where I haven't the gumption to reach for a tissue or three. The kind of sick where clothing becomes a nuisance and all food tastes like salted dirt.

So here I slump, warmed only by the motor thingy in my laptop, looking for whatever silver lining might be lurking 'round my viral self. Gee willikers . . . those Advil gel-caps slid surprisingly easily past my bloated tonsils doesn't sound cheery enough to line this grey cloud of sickdom.

So I think I'm going to have compose for you a few lively haikus. Because haikus are about nature. And, despite my supreme disapproval of the timing and disposition of this illness, the filthy microbes that have hunkered down in my face are part of nature. The sordid, sullied part of nature--but nature just the same:

Chicken soup tastes like
a gulpful of sea water
with some chunks in it.

Hot then cold then hot
then cold then hot then cold then
hot then cold then hot.

The latin word for
the influenza must be
germus stupidus.

Play me a sad song
on your violin because
I am languishing.

After sleeping late,
my hair looks like modern art--
minus modern/art.

Hand me a tissue
before I must resort to
using my own shirt.

The English romantic poet William Blake had the right idea about writing sickness poetry, too. He wrote a little ditty called "The Sick Rose" about (you guessed it) a rose that is sick. I guess this makes Illness Verse a legitimate genre. It also makes me a literary non-innovator. Figures.