you're nearly alive but we're here to deprive
your senses and starve your soul
you'll join the unborn entertained and ill-formed
and all remains under total control

resisting submersion will over coercion
hand over hand you climbed
your consciousness climbing you could have been shining
how lucky for you that we caught you in time

you'll like what we feed you through all of our media
you'll feed it in turn to your peers
through mutual assurance of cultural compliance
our system's been thriving for hundreds of years

it's all been planned out hold your hands out
here to receive your way
of life and choose well or it could be hell
we'll want you to give over 12000 days

your options are many you're free to choose any
we offer or have nowhere to go
nobleman, clergy, the ocean of serfs
or be carried wherever the river will flow

held in a vice of rejected advice
his stubbornness was his undoing
he'd been sure he'd have found his exit by now
but could only sit grinding his teeth and ruing

life was a trial ye wise men may smile
though fools will know what i mean
but then he awoke and what a fine joke!
he'd merely been having a terrible dream

he fell on his head off the wrong side of bed
which was strange since he slept on the ground
slowly a dose of bitter truth rose
as he sat angrily rubbing his crown

straining to grumble over his rumbling
belly he stumbled to town
he counted his pennies he never had many
and seldom occasion to look after pounds

he cursed whichever god or devil
had cursed him in turn with this fate
no indoor bed to rest his head
and rarely anything on his plate

he could now see with ease what had made ken queasy
there's no way out of the maze
except madness, the grave, regress to a cave
or under a constant narcotic haze

he'd briefly tried madness but alas no more glad was
to suffer the tedium of being
drugs were too dear, the only way was clear
annihilated he'd finally be free

having tried all that living could possibly give him
and impressed with none he decided
the river would provide the relief he required
but the river with other ideas only guided

him gently to see what a fool he would be
giving up all that was his
his was a treasure worth holding forever
she woke him with softly lapping kisses

once more he found his head on the ground
and his feet in an alien element
he rights himself clumsily grasping air, fumbling,
and finally sees it, his lifelong impediment

wise to the hoax he giggles and pokes
his head through a gloriole
two inches over the ground he hovers
and everything's under complete control-e

with nothing but to take it, all desires slaked
by god then he'll bloody well take it
easy, he has nothing to lose, having nothing,
as on the day he'll die he's naked

the simian mind to which he'd confined
himself was clearly not working
it only wound him up, he'll drown it
and see what else he might find there lurking

in murkier reaches where unseen creatures
are hidden from public eyes
he kicks open the door and with hisses and roars
they tear all to pieces his monkey disguise

he collects his inheritance, sauring intelligence
and knowledge obscure and obscene
with his dick like a dinosaur he leaves every vagina sore
he penetrates to worlds unseen

a god among mortals quark kent chortling
supraman alchemist
rising empowered to his view from the towering
height of a third floor balcony

he prays for grace and churning raw space
he produces a handful of flies
he delights in his talent while, redressing the balance,
somewhere else somebody's baby dies

with consummate skill and flourish and thrill
he conjures a culture of mould
with its million invisible guts blooming risible
and somebody's mother will never grow old

the river flows through him the flowing becomes him
with each new moment washed as new
a series of lives and deaths pass by him
with each new moment washed as new

his mind once twisted, in wisdom persisting,
his life passed by while he waited
disorientated drifting faitful
now to wherever folly will take him