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The sickness of society
Itself
The impropriety
The clock
Tik-tok’ng
Virally
The world reacting
Violently
Too long repressed
This side of me
Pretenses
Prone
To primacy
Eventually
Become the norm
Undo the instinct
To conform
That comes from this
Excessive culture
Dog eat dog
Consumer vulture
Law and order’s
Infrastructure
Ruptured like
A housing bubble
Hospitals
Reduced to rubble
And beneath
The tons of toxins
Still our self-destruction
Blossoms
Love and hate’s
Unnatural state
Of unions we cannot
Equate
Michael Marchese Dec 2023
I’ll always be
The quiet kid
Internal wild
Riot kid
So long within
The shadows hid
Unto my fallen graces
Bid
A long farewell
To adolescence
Yet preserved
Its youth
Quintessence
Fully formed,
Matured
And grown
Up in a world
I can’t condone
And so condemned
To walk alone
Along across
Its vast unknown
I’ve shown beneath the surface
Seldom
More than what is
Most unwelcome
This
Needless to say
In writing
What I’d rather
Be inciting
Michael Marchese Dec 2023
****** expressions
And micro-aggressions
Connections,
Perceptions
And lasting impressions
Still can’t comprehensively
Summarize
Talk
Just communicate
What we
So seemingly
Sought
Michael Marchese Dec 2023
Edge of the world again
Jumping back into
A despondent sea
For eventually
Everything ends
With my misery
Close to sustaining
In totality
What just years ago
Seemed
Inconceivably
Distant
Attained,
Reified,
Redefined
Self-sufficient
To then see
Dependency
Forming
Between
I can’t live without you
Can’t make love
To a screen
Michael Marchese Dec 2023
Free screechin’
My speech
From on high
Out of reach
And I keep droppin’ bombs
Like the gods you beseech
To surcease the truth-bleaching
How many we reap
To keep eye-sis on prizes
And dreams ever suite
Like the president’s penthouse
My skyrocket rents out
The tenements
Residents
Turned into terrorists
Level it all
For a nest egg
Resettlement
Watch the rest beg
As I hatch
Propaganda
My liberty spectacle
Extravaganza  
Commanding
Demand
In my talons’
Vice-grip
Watch me crush the life out of
Refuse to submit
And perpetuate conflict
Unscathed and unfettered
Without even ruffling
One single feather
Michael Marchese Dec 2023
The issues that plague
The day
No one will want to say
Just let it go
Far astray
Like a stowaway
Soon reenact
The detachment
Scenario
Learning each time
That it isn’t
So scary though
To remain bound
Inextricably linked
With a future in which you
Suppress the instinct
To abandon what
Brings the most
Comfort and joy
When you feel
What you seek
Soon enough
You destroy
Michael Marchese Dec 2023
What is this warped
Standard beauty
Obsession
This skewed
Self-esteem
That distorts
Your reflection
Is it
A pretentious
Consumer-based
Model
To blame for
The single-use
Plastic-faced
Squabble
Or simply just vanities
Staring inherently
Fairest of all
On the wall
We apparently
Cannot see clear
Merely peering in glass
But somehow
We make shards
Of the one looking back
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