Wow…Just wow.

You have stcuk to a rigid meter, and that is not easy to do. To keep lines uniform and adhere to rhymes is great discipline. Is bipolar disorder disciplined and rigid? Does it have neat endings?

Here’s a suggestion. William Burroughs pioneered it and David Bowie used it occasionally. It’s called cut-up. The idea is to cut lines up into varying lengths – from one words to phrases of three or four words – and then randomly rearrange them.

Print the poem out, in large print. Use scissors to cut up the lines, don’t make too many large sections, then rearrange, without regard for scansion or meter or even sense. You will probably end up with something which resembles the bipolar condition far more closely than the original poem.

Another tip is to use more concrete imagery. Concrete rather than abstract – “But in your eyes I see the fear” -> “Your wings flutter, prepared for flight,” (this is for example purposes only). By comparing the person you address to a bird, you give the image of a timid, fragile being who doesn’t understand and who has the power to escape (”flight” has a literal and a figurative meaning), quickly – unlike the sufferer.

“Where everything is all amiss” – “The world’s in a shattered mirror” or “Crowds hiss like snakes and cats know all.” Even if it seems ridiculous at first, the concrete image you choose will tell us far more than any plain old description.

Good luck.