Saturday Poem

Sure There Is Food

There is eating one’s self

There is even truth now and then—
Of course a lie can be made to go
Farther that way

The trick is to get truth and lies
To sound just the same

That way you’ve got it made
Everybody is mad after a while

Then you can come up with a world
where madness is the normal thing

Of course those who rig it that way
End up mad themselves

But—who’s to know the difference?
This world’s the best example I know

by Kenneth Patchen
from
Collected Poems, 1968