Delirium Sings a Song for Me

This is a wonderful work, and one of the more interesting poems I've read recently. On one hand, the vivid and distinct images with references from various cultures; on the other hand, the rhythm and rhyme (or absence thereof) changing throughout the text, create a brilliant palette of different states of mind and of madness. As some of the commenters remarked, it is similar to a complex piece of music - such as progressive rock - involving intricate patterns and arrangements. It builds up from the beginning, all the stanzas leading up as an introduction to the actual "song" of delirium; and after the song ends, a short outro to dissolve the tension.

I wonder... is it exclusively about delirium? Or it has a more universal meaning, about things all of us experience? I guess there are times in everyone's life when we feel that we are simply mad, or vengeful, or that our body is just a shell from which we are estranged and distanced, trying to find out who we are and who we want to be.

Even from the first stanza, I could see that I'll experience something brilliant. You managed to paint a more evocative image of childhood in a single line that other artists cannot even in a page of text. Here, my only suggestion would be to put "Yesterday" in a separate line, and make the beginning of the second stanza similar in structure, i.e.:

Yesterday -
I was a little girl
with blueberry stains on my fingers.

But today -
I am simply mad,

Of course, this is more of a personal preference; I'm not saying that there is any kind of problem with the present structure.

On to the second stanza... I cannot come round with the "I am simply mad, a Baba Yaga in the woods" metaphor. Many things can be told about Baba Yaga, but not that she was mad. Evil and vengeful - yes, but actually a very wise woman, and sought out by many for her wisdom (not in all stories is she an antagonist). She is actually a spirit of the woods, who protects the forest and its creatures from the evil that humans do, and in time, she started hating men due to the devastation they brought. Also, I wouldn't name her a "magic-weaver", even if she has power over the elements and Nature's forces; maybe a different word would work better in the last line (plus omitting the "the").

I love the third stanza - feminine beauty mixed with danger and implacability. There's much more to this stanza as one would notice at first read - I'll return to this later. At this time, my only suggestion would be to replace "but" with "and" in the first line (or to omit it).

In the next parts, the detachment of mind and body, and not knowing who you are, is depicted masterfully, comparing it to elements, forces, and phenomena of Nature, both whimsy and ancient. Many writers cannot put this into words well and either overdo or underdo the topic, but you do neither, and I congratulate you with dealing so well with it. The "the green-purple gray of the nights before stars" is one of my favourite parts of the poem. Here, perhaps I'd place "I have no identity" right after the "Strip me down" line (or perhaps before it) - in its current location, it is quite redundant; what's more, it also breaks the flow of comparisons to different elements of Nature. Also, I'd change "That drumming" to "The drumming".

And so we get to the "song". First off, I would change the lines in the seventh stanza, i.e.:

Already old, already old,
My heart grows cold, my heart grows cold.

This will not only "embrace" the song in symmetry with the 9th stanza, but also is more effective and poignant in my opinion.

The "song" itself is the central part of the poem, and in reply to your question, yes, the transition between the rhyming and non-rhyming part works well. The rhythm trips me a bit though; the first line is in iambic metre, so I somewhat expected the rest to be in it too, but your rhythm varies (though the iambic foot returns in the last two lines). It would be interesting to have all six lines in the same metre; though the jumbled rhythm can also be identified as a sign of "madness".

In contrast with the third stanza, when the narrator had "flowers in her hair", a sign of feminine beauty, now she has "fishes", which might be a sign of madness? It is to be noted that sirens are essentially "terrestrial" creatures, even if they are connected to the sea (as I've seen, most people confuse them with mermaids - just do a search on "siren" and you'll get a bunch of mermaid images - you know the difference between them though), and I love how you created the contrast between the "terrestrial" images from the beginning, and the "marine" ones which they slowly change into.

I would change "says" to "said", to create a perfect rhyme.

The ending is calm but strong, the juxtaposition of a universal meditation on life with madness, and the final line connecting the two. I find "born" a bit strange, since the poem essentially deals with a living person's current identities - maybe it could be "turn into"?

Thank you if you are still reading this, hope it was not too overwhelming. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)"/> These are only my opinions of course, and I must point out that I have only a basic knowledge of both literature and English language. Overall, a fantastic work that was a pleasure to discover.