Cadmeian dream where do you hide,
  dream of founding conquerors?
Novel ideas glinting beside
  innovative conjurers;

Narrative man, marionette,
  dance a jig we haven't seen.
Reveal things we'll never forget
  when their forms in shadows lean.

Discovery bright magnetize
  kindred soldiers to a fate
Inspired, driven to strategize
  campaigns toward something great.

Where's the ancient magic now,
  once from caves of numinous
Mystique? What are we to allow
  prophecies so ruinous?

Almost everything is given,
  leading us, fascinated
To the hollow shells we live in:
  blank slates, deracinated.

Almost everything we're burning,
  and we know the fuel won't last.
We're capable of discerning 
  danger but speeding too fast.

What have we left now that we've thrown 
  it all in for knowledge? We
Toil to relearn what we've disowned 
  pursuing technology.

Technology is not what matures
  insights, compassion, or trust;
Rather it's a pipeline for tours 
  of infrastructural rust.

Culture is gone America,
  schizophrenia and ads:
Our tradition generica 
  of attention-seeking fads.

Recognition at any price;
  everything exists to sell
Cult-of-personality heists,
  hallmark of our living hell.

What's authentic and what is not,
  and more importantly—who?
This pre-apocalyptic spot:
  nothing revealed, all on view.

Systems and secrets, sabotage 
  lurking at the rainbow's end
Sculpt from the mists a drab mirage,
  and the powers play pretend.

Or are we the real pretenders,
  gaming life to build a sense
Of importance? We upenders
  who'd shake up our portents' fence?

Flattened, diluted, left to run
  aimlessly, as in a dream 
Whose conditions are cunningly spun 
  for a big business's scheme.

So what are we, and who am I,
  what makes of me a Cadmus?
Why should people rally to my
  ideas of joy and sadness?

Yet Cadmus did know who he was,
  let his nation come from fate;
Clearing my own self-concept's fuzz
  is enough to contemplate.