Helen

A poem dedicated to an exgirlfriend who went mad, and dispite her education was utterly manic after I encountered her in layer years. Imagery of astrophysics is used express experience of psychosis.

Helen

In she walked, stick thin and mind spinning,
Off axis like a planet gone astray.
Many orbiting people wondered
What had made her this way.

There she sat, all movement and no rest
Like a sun imploding.
Words and education spluttering off,
Sanity by seconds eroding.

Here she lies sleeping fitfully
Diamond rains her hushed goodnight.
For once a little settled
What nightmares for such waking fright?

And up again, to a repeat performance,
Mind asunder and never a moments peace.
How to help a fractured personality?
What solace, what possible release?

How did this woman come about?
We will never know the wealth of experience
Which constituted my friend
Into this mire of restlessness.

And though we are all sometimes rattled
By the stream of fright
What she wouldn't give
To be still one night.

In she walked, all wails and shrikes
Like a meteor shooting through the mind.
What carriers her on I could not say
What she takes with her and what she leaves behind.

Judge not, you sane people
When she calls you out in the street
For the vile and boring alignment that is yours,
A more interesting reaction you never will meet.

Be careful when you approach her
Because like a child she will tell you the truth,
Forgotten how to politely lie
And let subliminal sunbursts loose.

Never you mind what made her this way
Crazed as the nocturnal in the light of day.
Someone must be sensitive to struggle
Not to shrink and therefore fade away.

All the wards in the worlds
Label her though they might
Can not encapsulate in any way
What bitter lows, what incredible heights.

And I know a little of this state,
Though I have somehow come to mend,
And want the universe itself
To come to try to help my friend.

Spitting expletives, you scary woman,
Frightening the people who know not
The minds own on struggle against itself
Or the mad woman's lot.