IF REAL TRUTH HAS A CYNIC’S RING (weekly poem)

IF REAL TRUTH HAS A CYNIC’S RING 

Oscar Wilde said “A cynic is someone who knows

the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

-- but what if cynics see the world as it really is..?

If real truth has a cynic’s ring,

I’m guilty of the charge;

There’s strings attached to everything,

In the real world at large.                             

We know false values have a price,

Where everything is  sold;

We throw the dice for a large slice,

Of pyrite or fool’s gold.

We know true value’s snuffed at birth,

In this flawed world we’ve made;

But on this Earth, things of real worth,

Should need no money paid.

If cynicism is the truth,

It says how real things are;

And all the truth sold us since youth,

Is fiction gone too far.

© Richard Layton