As wind passes through a screen door (Sutra #8)

1.
The hyperprolific, long-winded mystic is a man
I no longer recognize. I can hear him whisper
sometimes in the youngest hours of morning, a
dry choked cackle when I dream.
He was once me but he was mad, enrapt
and so far beyond any help or medication,
save for time and its passage.
It takes, often, a death
to trigger such a split, a distinction
between what was and what is - but
it need not be sudden. It is slow twists,
subtle at first,
and jagged edges in soul's flesh
that work best to rend
one part from another.