Geo-Sift: The Refined Derive by Michael Dean Benton

Debord’s spectacle is no longer a fantasy
but a reality that surrounds the confines
of our fake plastic world.
We are all just fish swimming mindlessly
through the cultural aquariums
of our mediatized landscapes.
Are you unhappy with your appearance?
Do you have a desire to confess on national TV?
What scandals shall occupy our minds,
diverting us from the truth and leading us astray?

We are dominated by a priesthood
of instrumental reasoning and sanctioned experts.
The omniscient media uses sex and death
to decorate their myths of material satisfaction.
The cultural regulators in their ivory towers
despise the masses from the safety of their fortresses.
Feeling safe in their illusions
they continue to lose touch with reality.
Our political leaders are Waiting for Godot
They are as lost as we are, but unwilling to admit it.

We are no longer a product of nature.
Our technological wonders fuse with our psyches.
Flesh to machine, this is the age of the post-human.
Fused to the non-living, this is the new religion.
Urban megacities dominate our global reality
Centers of power---they control information and finances.
Earlier theorists realized the importance
of mapping out these concrete jungles.
To map the psyche
of our communal constructions.

This is the new pataphysics.

Jarry’s Ubu married to geology.
Collective memories mined
like the substrata of the earth.
Sifting the fallowed voices of our cities,
perceiving the core truths that are the foundations,
and disregarding the detrital productions
artfully designed to distract us.
Who will step forward to seek a new way?
When will we learn to see and listen?