People always call a
Madhouse: “Someplace.”²
When a Madman appears thoroughly Sane,
It is high time to put him in a Straight Jacket!³
Looks like what drives us Crazy
Don’t have no effect on you—
But we’re gonna keep on at it,
Till it drives you Crazy too—⁴
The Celestial balance
Weighs our madness with our sanity.⁵
There’s no point in Driving yourself Mad
Trying to Stop yourself going Mad—⁶
Unwilling to yield: we go into
Madness gracefully—or alone.⁷
A Leader is someone
Who Refuses to be Crazy
In the way everybody else is crazy
But is Crazy in their own way.⁸
In our Madness there is still Wizardry,
Indeed our Madness is our Wizardry!⁹
Much Madness is Divinest sense,
To a discerning eye!¹⁰
¹ Walt Whitman, Respondez!
² Joseph Stefano, Psycho
³ Edgar Allan Poe, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
⁴ Langston Hughes, Evil
⁵ Sylvia Plath, Perseus: The Triumph of Wit over Suffering
⁶ Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything
⁷ Audre Lorde, Death Dance for a Poet
⁸ Peter Maurin, Five Definitions
⁹ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
¹⁰ Emily Dickinson, Much Madness