I, Helen -Parts 1 and 2

I, Helen – Part 1

 

I grew up on the edge of the Olympic Estate,

half-way up the hill on Albion Terrace,

our house looking down towards the marina

and beyond to the new power station balanced

on the grand old river’s farther edge,

a graceful silhouette of chimneyed towers,

to which every morning my father crossed.

 

I dreamt of wanting to be fully me,

but when pushed I’d say “a fashion designer,”

clothing the likes of Aphro the influencer and her ilk,

until one day a beauty pageant rep came by,

said I had a singular face, should appear on his prime time show,

the Spartan hit, “Can You Launch A Thousand Ships?”

 

Menelaus was sat among the judges, a man of power,

behind I saw the raw faces of the rank and rancorous,

their greed for fresh flesh exposed unquenched,

and knew I would need a shield against the world;

I selected him as my first,

signing a deal with his agency, “The Brand”.

 

He set me up in a penthouse flat on Finchley Road,

hooked me up with contracts across the globe,

showcase collections from designers who were in vogue,

flew me in First to New York, Rio, Milan, Hong Kong,

but Paris, he said, was out of bounds,

the city a cess pit, dissolute and degenerate,

no place for an innocent waif like me,

but forbidden it called, in my dreams it rooted,

rampant every day breaking my thoughts,

building luxuriant, fecund with the new

creations seemingly sprung from celestial hands,

until I fell, tantalised,

completely consumed by its promised splendour,

the compass pointing to the realms of the elite.

 

 

I, Helen – Part 2

 

Am neither goddess, nor a queen, nor whore;

Do not bury me beneath your sinful stones; I am much more,

A woman, mother, daughter, my poetry makes me,

I AM ME.

 

The world, though, unsettled by my form,

has remoulded me, and I, now, stand torn,

bearing the scars of its apartheid lusts,

the multi-cubed insecurities of its cliques,

their unscrupulous desires to see me stripped

of all that marks me as me unique.

 

I was sexless in my mother’s womb,

without hue until that beauty judgement ended

and I appeared prized on every billboard -

“The FACE that could launch a thousand ships” -

across the shores of the Aegean Sea,

re-dressed by men, their marks, as a kalon kakon,

and in that instant transformed into a blight,

never to be an equal, to be

compared with their own peerless kalokagathia.

 

Let me tell you, I am my own;

the men who cast themselves at my feet,

their extravagant xenia, their threats of love,

those that paint me with the strokes of their own dark core,

Those that sermonise while masturbating,

They do not know me,

never will.

Let them be, let them cast their flies;

I am Helen,

Who has been,

Is

And always will be herself.