How to maintain in a world where sanity 
                  Has been illegal so long no one alive 
                  Knows anything different, and most people do maintain 
                  Coherence and composure by keeping themselves 
                  So distracted they can’t concentrate? 
                  Where sex is decreed sinful and 
                  Thinking is decreed rebellion against proper authority, 
                  And people therefore believe they have been informed 
                  Not to have genitals, and they therefore 
                  Either pretend that they don’t, 
                  Or believe that in admitting that they do, 
                  They are damned anyhow so they may as well 
                  Follow any mindless whim they desire? 
                  Where those properly designated to determine 
                  What to do with nearly all land, 
                  By ownership or by government office, 
                  Mostly couldn’t grow a turnip if their 
                  Lives depended on it, and the space aliens 
                  Have stolen the image of cows from their eyeballs? 
                  Where you gonna get your cheese and your burger 
                  When you can’t see cows? 
                  You do not know what I’m talking about? 
                  Think I’m being arty or cute? 
                  You think a metaphor is either fact or fraud 
                  And reality is a subject of control, 
                  Desire, oppression, or a bore. 
                  I do not know how to live in a world 
                  Where, never mind nice and nasty people of which 
                  There are both, or even competent leaders, of which 
                  There are some, but madness prevails. 
                  This is what causes cancer, insanity, despair. 
                  The madness of the only world any of us have 
                  To live by is too painful to see. 
                  Yet life goes on, some of it even pleasant, 
                  With some real love and some real achievement. 
                  Reality does not cease to be for being outlawed. 
                  Real world, you say.  True...so far as it goes, 
. 
                  But if you believe the big apple is real 
                  And the big apple tree is a frivolous fantasy, 
                  I think you’re in for a rude awakening, 
                  And I don’t know anyplace to get out of the way, 
                  And now am growing old in a world where 

                  Any sane competence I might have learned 
                  Has never been tested because only those who 
                  Ate the mad lie in childhood are permitted 
                  Adult say in a world where sanity has been illegal 
                  So long no one alive remembers anything else. 
 

                  - Uncle River