Genuine, he is!
Ah! The "madman" – there he goes!
With a gait as wild as the tempestuous winds themselves!
He dashes past the timeworn cherry oak, whose gnarled branches stretch like the arms of forgotten souls.
His smile, a grotesque mask of forced cheer, betrays his frantic, darting eyes that seek
—oh, how they seek—
some semblance of comfort, of a friendly face amidst the unforgiving throng.
But alas!
What he knows not, nor any of his fellow creatures, is this:
The true madness, the cruelest lunacy,
lies not in his flight,
but in the very heart of the one who stands here, in plain view,
cloaked beneath the illusion of reason and sanity!
(Inspired by @BastionKnight and Charles Dickens XD)
@twerp
Firstly, I am truly honoured to have been part of the inspiration for this interesting poem. I found the exploration of madness and perception. The imagery paints a vivid gothic picture with the first four lines. I feel this grants it a heavy, unsettling atmosphere which blends perfectly with the themes of alienation and the divorcing of the outsider from the comfort of the rational. The uneven lines add to this feeling of crazed movement, like a demented waltz, cementing the idea of the madman flailing erratically. But then you flip things on their head, shaking our perception with the revelation from the narrator that the supposed rational being harbours a turmoil equal if not greater that is only "cloaked beneath the illusion of reason and sanity!", brining in to doubt all of our expectations. For if the supposed rational world cannot see what lurks inside one of their own, how can we trust anything. It almost feels as if the madman, though lonely, is somehow the luckier of the two.
I really enjoyed it.