First off–I am so sorry this is late…Billy didn’t have a printout of his poem, and I didn’t realize he emailed it to me.
Billy chose to write a pantoum, and I think it worked very well with the content of his poem. The speaker seems very lost, and looking for help, although not taking the initiative to get help himself. This circular type of form accurately depicts the almost dizzying thought process when one is so deeply troubled and looking for ways out. The speaker keeps referencing “the path in between,” and I’m a bit confused about this. Although it is mentioned multiple times (due to the nature of the pantoum), it is never expanded upon. I understand it’s difficult in this form to elaborate on anything, but I’d be interested to see how you could play with that. There’s a sort of codependency on the “you” in this poem, that adds some dissonance to the statements about helping oneself, as well. It really defines the speaker’s unwillingness/inability to help himself without somebody else to push him.
I’m not sure if the capitalization and contemporary language were on purpose or just because the poem was emailed and written in the message. “Cuz” seems to take me out of the poem a bit, and concentrate more on that language. It may fall into accordance with the speaker’s attitude, but I think maybe “’cause” would work better…it’s just an opinion, though.
The fourth stanza uses “help” very heavily, which I understand has to do with the form of the poem, but it starts to get a bit overwhelming for the reader, especially since it is the title of the poem, as well. I would suggest maybe choosing a different title or eliminating/revising some of the helps in that stanza/throughout the poem. You don’t want the content of the poem to take away from the power of the title.