All of Helga's poetry is inspired by her love for Arnold. She had at least fourteen books filled up with her poems about him.
"The savage, well-observed pain of a tormented artist." - Helga
Season One[]
From "Downtown as Fruits"[]
I'll soothe his fevered brow.
Oh my poor lost sweetheart,
How I love you.
And yet I hate you!
And yet I love you!
And yet I hate you!
And yet I love you!
From "The Little Pink Book"[]
Your eyes, like two green jellybeans,
Are pools I want to bathe in.
My head doth swoon, and yet
I want to beat your face in.
H is for the head I'd like to punt.
E is for every time I see the little runt.
L is longing for our firstest kiss.
G is for how good that longing is.
A is for Arnold. Doi!!
To Arnold with the
red-hot lips,
Your football head
Your awesome face,
Your grungy chic,
Your cat-like grace
Whose red-hot lips do
I want to taste?
Three guesses stupid:
Arnold, Arnold, Arnold!!
The little twerp,
Who sets my soul aflame.
Put them all together,
They spell Arnold.
From "Arnold's Hat"[]
Oh, oh my beloved.
What havoc have I wrought
Tampering with the laws of nature.
I must right this terrible and grievous wrong,
And restore to you,
That which makes you the Arnold I worship and adore.
I must receive your precious hat,
And restore it to your most hallowed brow.
From "Roughin' It"[]
Oh fate, oh fortuna
What a strange hand you've dealt me
Arnold, in my own campsite!
Arnold!
That name itself opens hidden doors to my heart.
And yet, he can never know
From "Wheezin' Ed"[]
But soft, its him!
Oh, it is my love!
Spending a lust Saturday on the river's edge.
How I long to share your reverie
And yet
And yet, I can't get dang-blasted minute alone with him!
Ahh, so suave and so clever.
Lead and I will follow,
My liege
Why?
Why can't I speak the truth to the one I love?
Why must I constantly push away that to which I would cleave?
This is it!
Its now or never, Helga!
Go!
Confess your love to him.
From "24 Hours to Live"[]
Arnold, that moron.
How I hate him.
And yet, I love him.
So mysterious, so suave, such a distinctively-shaped little head.
You ignore me, but deep down, you know how I really feel.
Its love, love, love!
From "Mighty Pete"[]
Arnold.
What a naive dweeb.
And yet, I adore him.
His commitment to right when wrong is clearly more powerful.
Who would crush the very symbol of my body's youth?
Season Two[]
From "Helga's Love Potion"[]
Good morning, Arnold.
My muse, my inspiration.
Way this day be the day,
That you see me with love's eyes.
As I seest you.
Oh, flaxen-haired angel.
Each morn I see you bend to drink,
From love's own crystal pool.
I tremble near you, try to think.
Will I forever say, you stink?
Am I bound by this tragic rule?
Morning.
I put on a pink dress.
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
The news is on.
Mom isn't listening.
My dad reads the paper.
I go to school.
Arnold.
So normal.
So average.
And yet,
what a regular guy.
From "Monkey Business"[]
Oh Arnold, my love.
Though I shun you in public,
Berating and insulting you.
'Tis only to hide my true feelings of love and adoration.
Oh when will I find the strength to express my strange but nearly uncontrollable affections for you?
Hopefully not today or tomorrow because it would be embarrassing and humiliating.
But perhaps some day in the distant future.
Yes, some day.
Oh, Arnold, my love.
Now that I'm practically expired,
Nothing holds me from expressing my deepest, darkest secret.
The secret of which I've so long harbored.
From "Phoebe Cheats"[]
Cowlicks, like fields of yellow corn,
All the days of my week,
I write the name I dare not speak.
The boy with the cornflour hair,
My beloved, and my despair.
From "Mud Bowl"[]
Oh my love,
Such bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.
Such pluck, such complicated, impossible, loopy ideas!
From "Helga's Boyfriend"[]
One day, my sweet,
You'll notice me behind you.
And from that moment on,
You'll never want us to be apart.
I'll be the center of your every thought
Your every action!
From "What's Opera, Arnold?"[]
Oh, Arnold!
Flamenco Dancer,
Stomping on the stage of my heart.
Conquistador of my soul.
Would that, at this moment,
I could know your heart's desire, my love.
From "Runaway Float"[]
Oh, cruel fortune.
I'm torn between my poor love.
His hopes dashed, his dreams slashed.
And on the other side, the ogre.
Unthinking and uncaring as he squashes Arnold's artistic vision.
Season Three[]
From "Helga Blabs It All"[]
Oh, Arnold!
Arnold, it's me, Helga.
Yes, Helga G. Pataki
The one who worships you.
Yes, wakes each day full of passionate thoughts of you.
Oh, my angel, sweet love.
Oh, how I love
From "The Aptitude Test"[]
Arnold, you idiot,
I've always sworn it
I've always loved you
My darling, my darling.
Kiss me, my darling,
Oh, orzo shaped Prometheus,
Wandering the dismal deserts of my tormented soul.
From "Arnold & Lila"[]
Oh, Arnold
So discriminating.
So patient and thoughtful.
Spurning the golden girl and saving his affections
For one less likely,
Yet perhaps ultimately more deserving.
Who may not be the prettiest or the wittiest,
But who's primitive beauty, grace and charms
Lie tragically unobserved and unawakened.
Someone like me, Helga G. Pataki.
Oh, Arnold, bane of my existence
Blight upon my tortured heart.
If only you knew my true feelings for you.
And if you only you felt the same true feelings untowards me.
Dare I imagine, if only for one brief, mad moment it were true.
Call me mad, but I dare.
I dare.
With this chalk and no witnesses in sight,
I will write the words upon this wall which bare my soul,
Expressing all.
I hope, I dream, I pine and I pray was true,
Forever and a day.
From "Arnold's Thanksgiving"[]
Oh, Arnold.
If I have anything at all the be thankful for,
It's that you exist in my miserable little sphere.
Oh, Arnold.
Arnold!
From "Girl Trouble"[]
Oh, Arnold.
Sweet prince.
How I love you.
And though I may hide my true feelings,
I pray that one day you will know them, my love.
Yes, laugh, Helga, laugh.
Yet it is a hollow sound.
Oh, Arnold.
What is wrong with me?
I scheme for weeks for the chance to be beside you,
And this is how I show my joy,
By gluing feathers to your butt?
Oh, Arnold.
Would that you could see through this vain disguise
And realize that my cruelties,
Are merely a lost and lonely soul's cry for attention!
Yes, and love.
Alas.
Oh my love.
Another day.
A clean slate.
Another chance to get along with you.
Today I will try to be kind.
This is my solemn vow.
Oh, Arnold.
What havoc have I wrought.
Forcing you to behave so badly?
Where is my kind and thoughtful, generous Arnold?
The boy who always turned the other cheek?
Gone forever.
Alas.
Oh, Arnold!
So kind.
So just.
So moral.
You couldn't help but return to the ways I know and love.
From "Helga's Show"[]
What can I say about my friends
Who are pleasant and loyal to the end
There's Harold, Rhonda, Stinky, and Nate
And Sid and Nadine, and gosh, they're all great
Take Rhonda, she's a stylish girl
One of the nicest in the world
And Arnold is a thoughtful fellow
As smart and as kind as his hair is yellow
Stinky is a likable sort
He's certainly tall and his hair is short
Harold is a friend to all
He's a kid who's really on the ball
And Chocolate Boy, hey, what about him?
He must love chocolate as much as we love him
From "School Play"[]
Arnold, what a boob.
What an annoying little smartypants know-it-all.
How I despise him.
And yet,
I love him.
His noble curiosity.
His cool, keen powers of observation.
His unfaltering sense of right and wrong.
Oh, if only I could find the strength to tell him how much I adore him.
If only there was some way I could let him know.
Some way I could whisper my secret adoring thoughts,
Sooth his fevered brow,
And, dare I even think it?
Kiss the lips that haunt my girlish dreams.
Oh, if only.
If only.
What could be more perfect than this,
To confess the love that dare not pass see lips,
Than seal them to my love's in one soupy, tender kiss?
All my dates have come to this.
My secret heart,
Spent in one kiss.
And though it come from a pretender,
Not me, but Juliet the sender.
Nay, Arnold, take my kiss for tender.
Season Four[]
From "Helga's Parrot"[]
Arnold my love,
My sultry preteen,
Why must I hold you
only whilst I dream?
Will I be forever enslaved by your spell?
Why must I worship you and never ever tell?
Arnold, you make my girlhood tremble,
My senses all go wacky.
Someday, I'll tell the world, my love...
Or my name's not Helga G. Pataki!
From "Love and Cheese"[]
Arnold, what a dope, what a dimwit.
What a deluded, little do-goody dreamer.
How I despise him.
And yet, I love him.
The way he's always thinking of others before himself.
The way he feels and cares so deeply.
The way those adorably unruly yellow tufts of hair
Stick out all willy-niily from that wise and wonderfully weird football head of his.
Oh!
He was probably rushing off to help some poor, unfortunate soul in need.
Someone in pain,
Someone in distress.
From "Egg Story"[]
Oh, Arnold!
At last my twisted girlhood fantasies have become reality.
An entire weekend alone with you in mock marital bliss,
Raising our love child,
All the while nurturing our own delicate relationship.
Oh, my darling!
My pretend husband.
I won't waste another moment of this most glorious opportunity on petty mockings and sarcastic tongue-lashing.
I'll prove to you once and for all,
How much I truly love you by forcing myself to be nice.
And I'll treat our baby, or tiny unhatched egg, as it were,
With the utmost tenderness and care.
Oh, this is your chance, Helga.
Don't blow it.
From "Deconstructing Arnold"[]
Oh, my disconsolate beloved,
Prompted by my reckless words to turn your beautiful back on those in need,
Forced by my loose tongue to look the other way when do-goody duty calls,
Encouraged by my careless challenge to flagrantly violate the Good Samaritan laws of our country.
Oh, Arnold, I've single-handedly snuffed out the candle of your caring little soul.
And incited chaos among our hopeless, hapless peers.
Oh, my darling, I won't waste another moment.
I'll stop the madness and right those to whom I have so wronged!
From "Grudge Match"[]
Oh, Arnold, fate has brought our vehicles crashing together today by reckless chance.
Alas, if only our hearts, our souls, our very beings could so finitely entangle.
Oh, what a wretched dilemma is this.
To whom should I forswear my allegiance?
To Bob, the blustery ogre,
Or Arnold, he who alone can sink a hole-in-one in my heart.
From "Weird Cousin"[]
Huh, Arnold spurned once again by Lila,
The undeserving object of his most stupid boyhood affections.
And yet, here I stand pathetically lurking in the shadows,
Busting with desire for my beloved,
Only too timid and shy to tell him how I feel.
Oh, Arnold.
What is this thing called love?
What is this crazy little emotion that makes our stomachs churn all topsy-turvy,
Our knees buckle.
What is this wacky feeling that makes us feel attraction for one person,
And total repulsion for another?
From "Helga Sleepwalks"[]
Arnold, my little bookworm.
How keen you are,
How studious.
How diligently you take notes in your little schoolboy's notebook.
If only I could find the nerve to tell you how much I worship that giant oblong brain of yours.
Oh, but alack, I can never tell.
Oh, Arnold, my daydreaming dream weaver.
How contemplative you are.
How curious, how romantically you gaze out your bedroom window reflecting and musing.
If only I could find the strength to march up to your door and tell you how much I admire your freewheeling lack of focus.
If only, if only.
From "Helga on the Couch"[]
Huh, Arnold.
What a nerd.
What a goof.
What a tiny-hatted little creep.
How I hate him.
And yet, I love him.
Oh, Arnold, bastion of sanity in this crazy, mixed-up world in which we live.
How tender I feel when you brush past me.
How I forgot my cares.
How the essence of you lingers, sweeping the air.
And I feel peace.
True peace at last.
Oh, Arnold, I call on the power of thy sacred shrine.
Give me the strength and animal cunning to outwit the school shrink!
Oh my football-headed love God.
I'm okay, you're okay, we're all okay.
I love you, love you, love you!
Season Five[]
From "Helga's Masquerade"[]
How I wish I was born a little miss perfect.
How I long to be funny and kind and feminine.
How I dream that I could somehow be more like Lila,
So that you, my love,
Might blindly worship me instead.
From "Helga's Locket"[]
Arnold,
Oh, dear, sweet Arnold.
Fortuna has blessed me with this chance to hold your likeness in my hand.
While I spy at your actual, beautiful face.
You're so close,
And yet so far.
From "Summer Love"[]
Oh, Arnold.
How cruel I am each and every time I see you.
How savage,
How brutally I lash out,
And now, my love.
Now I must live with the consequences.
I must spend an entire week apart from you,
Doomed to recount my most regretful of behaviors
From "Beaned"[]
Oh, Arnold,
What have I done?
What selfish, ill-conceived plot have I dumped into your most innocent of laps?
Oh, my darling, if only I'd left well-enough alone,
Instead of forcing you to hand out with me.
If only I'd accepted the way things were,
Instead of conniving you into showering me with undeserved attentions.
Alas, my love,
If I can't have you of your own free will,
Then I shan't have you at all.
And so, I must do the one thing that can right to him whom I have so wronged.
Arnold, I must set your free.
From "Arnold Visits Arnie"[]
Oh, Arnold,
My most lovesome beloved.
Whatever will I do without seeing your yummy oblong face for two whole days?
From "Married"[]
Arnold, what a nincompoop.
What a dopey little dumb-headed dingbat.
How I despise him.
And yet, I love him.
His naive yet admirable innocence.
His willingness to embrace the best qualities in a poor, lonely farm girl.
Even if deep down she's probably just simple and shallow,
And only looks brilliant because she has a watch.
If only he could see past my mean, blustery veneer,
Into my soft, mushy interior, wherein,
I adore him.
Sub-Poems within Episodes
(8)[]
Farewell for now, Heroic Prince.
Our yellow love chariot has arrived.
Gladly I go now to see to your delicious face.
Sadly, I stash my passion deep in this secret pink place.