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36m · 19
Time Consumed
Trapped in this
Continuum
The time it takes
To come undone
To disassemble
Incremental
Steps
To make it all connect
Trajectory
Made linear
More easily
To redirect
The wayward
Stream of conscious
Wanders
From
What it
So blithely squanders
1d · 28
The Nerve Agent
Now converge
On the source
Free us all  
Of remorse
And enforce
Only laws
You alone
Can contort
While expecting compliance
From client states
Bending
The knee
To the tyrant state
Poorly pretending
To be on some mission
To share its good fortune
And all that it asks
In return
Your endorsement
Look past the extortion
Exploitative
Expletives
Seeking instead
Its commodified sedatives
2d · 27
The Failed State
No more than words
On a page
Is the government
Yet we are
All
Disobeying it
Some of it
Some more than others
Like angry big brothers
Big boxes of documents
Never recover
What’s lost
Are the funds
You entrust
Will secure you
Empower
Sustain
In your outrage
Endure you
So long as your faith
Remains blind in devotion
To weathering storms
Of off-shoring erosion
To bettering forms
Of corruption
Construction
To meeting their quotas
Upscaling production
Like any adventures
And exploits
Abroad
Can’t admit
Execution
Was critically flawed
As domestically
Status quo silents  
Attest
To disquieting riots
And civil unrest
Woe upon knowing
It goes without saying
The solace one feels
As if piously praying
Must sway us from
Wasting away
In our disarray
Wallowing
Following
Death to its
Darkest day
At its doorstep
Bereft
Nothing is left
What a mess
Have I kept
Unexpressed
For too long
Have repressed its inherent
Outspokenness song
And so this is my thing
My belongings
All packed
And unpacked
For the world to see
Living for
High by night
Writing
Serenity
The soul
Problem, child
Is central to me
For the only known
Undertone
Anxiety
In its ominous
Overblown
Clinically ill
Pharmaceutical
Profits
Don’t stop
Pop a pill
Just sit still
And sit back
With your head up straight
Automate
Autocrat
Technopath
Endlessly innovate
Paths to destruction
The masses
Production
Outweighing
The take home pay
Painstaking
Day by day
Gruelingly
Grinding
Their bodies
And minds
Away
Jan 11 · 32
Dawning
Forevermore
Together
Mine
Without you here
The sun don’t shine
And I am left to ponder
In some far beyond
Despondent state
What looks to be
The world I know
But remnants,
Traces
Out of place
Who talks to me
Frivolity
Who hears my heart’s
Discography
Replaying dedications
Longing
Ne’er to see
A new day
Dawning
Jan 10 · 145
Sundowning
Distant
As dusk
Seems to darken the mood
When so much these days
Recollection
Still eludes
And the longer
I sit
And I stare
Contemplating
Dumbfounded
It scares me
And leads to berating
These strangers
So oddly
Familiar
Yet I
Can’t recall who it was
Earlier
I made cry
It’s as if
I’m aware
I don’t want to be rotten
But all reasons why
Are becoming
Forgotten
Jan 9 · 44
The Moviemakers
Reinventing the wheel
Like we do ourselves
Yearly
Envision distorted
Reality
Clearly
Sincerely
Deep fake
It to make it
A state
Isolating
App date’s
Life expectancy rate
That of late
Seems to sate its great
Counter-production
With more black and white
Field of dreams
Reconstruction
Jan 8 · 42
The Diet of Worms
Always sneaking away
In his little
Man cave
The man-made
Powerless
By transcending the grave
When it dawns on him
Fled from his
Failed escapade
From corrupt repercussions
Too hushed to be saved
From the mortal sins
None but the rich
Can attain  
Through religions sustaining
Indulgence’s gain
There is no more escape
No facade-costumed rave
No more corridors,
Fortresses,
Fortunes
And fame
Just the people
Protesting
Too long in his nesting
Atop where they toil
Too much of their blood
Has he spilled in the soil
And watered his verdant
Palatial complexes
With greed at the heart
Of his god
Of excesses
Jan 7 · 67
The Overthrown
No more the prince
On the hill
Over paradise
Peering out
Peerless
But vision
Was imprecise
Short-sighted somewhat
Naive perhaps even
Believing no influence
Waned in the region
No reason to think
Nor the proof to suspect
Usurpation awaited
And I would be left
But a pauper
A peasant
Cast out
From my castle
My kingdom
Comes under
Some treacherous vassal
No peace without life
No life without conflict
No conflict without
An incentive to profit
No profit without a free market
To posit
That whether or not
You enact
Its transactions
You still are inherently bound
To its taxes
Jan 3 · 36
The Adjudicator
Almost had me there
Pit of despair
In succumbing
To what degradations
Would see me becoming
Your most faithless servant
Though loyal to fault
Go to war against joy
In an all out assault
On good tidings
And pleasantries
Kindly dispense
With impediments
Left
On my path to contempt
And I’d hold them all
Equally
Most firmly
In it
A judge
And not one
Crack of smile
Forgiven
Jan 1 · 40
The Robot Class
The high society
Hive variety
Narrow
Mindlessly
Anxiety
Actively striving
To overprescribing
To first do no harm
Just alarmingly
Medicate
Future doomsdays
To preemptively
Automate
On our behalf
Now it’s teaching the class
Some in front
Some in back
And the ones in the lead
Still don’t know how to act
Just be taught to succeed
To monopolize need
With a pedigree
Meriting
Ivy League greed
And proceed to convince us  
Its capital gains
From the poisons it pumps
Through our varicose veins
And the garbage it dumps
In our wishy wash brains
All the same
In the ways it uplifts
And enriches
The rest of us
Broke in
Its system-wide glitches
Dec 2024 · 50
The Long-Term
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Memories sanctified
Can’t lose connection
When reveries tranquilized
Since its inception
Before it was only
Alone in the night
Though enlightened
But frightened
The words I would write
Illustrated
All manner of ways
I had dated
But never this stage
Or this phase
Could seem fated
And still when the seemingly
Meant to be
Blinds me
Its years in the making
Relationships
Guide me
To doesn’t seem
Forced
Or rehearsed,
Inorganic
Just being with one
The without
Starts to panic
Dec 2024 · 29
The Panopticon
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Everything’s a factory
An industry
Aligning me
With fall in line
Assembly lining
Genocide
Is fine with me
It’s fuel to feed the fire
It’s the viewer
It’s the buyer
It’s the rule to heed
The necessary
Evil
The empire
Dec 2024 · 44
The Roadrunner
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Darts around
A winged missile
Through the thickets
Bramble
Bristle
Probing tents
To find its breakfast
No sign if its
Nearby nested
Just a welcome
Bird intruder
Desert-dwelling
Bug consumer
Flightless seemingly
But races
To and fro
With barely traces
Of its tiny feet
In tracks
Across the sand
Hope it comes back
Dec 2024 · 33
The Herpetologist
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Slither and writhe
Selflessness
Just contrived
From a selfish
Revolves around me
Sort of mind
Dec 2024 · 35
Museums
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Hard to appreciate
Simple past
Present
When with or without it
Our role is quiescent
But here we are actively
Forming foundations
Preserved by philanthropy
Grants and donations
Not just in these pages
Its learning potential
Relies not on stages  
To be consequential
But somewhat contingent
On how much we care
To preserve it
Impart it
Impartially share
To the best
Recollection
What most likely happened
When tribes
Congregations
And kingdoms
Imagined
Whatever their future
Could presage
Must be
Reified
First and foremost
In their
History
Dec 2024 · 36
The Priced in Christmas
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Values of poverty,
Piety
Heaven-sent
Somehow becoming
Traditions
More decadent
What other uses
For ages of plunder
Abuses of power's
Insatiable hunger
Foregoing,
Forgetting,
Forgiving excesses
With presents
Presented as
What he professes
But was it so prescient
Foreseeing
His birth
Rematerializing
Its tangible worth
In a splendorous
Spending-spree
Dollar tree
Industry
Gifting,
Regifting,
Now shipping
Religiously
Dec 2024 · 46
The Sapling of Progress
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Not intent
But intonation
Saw what my people
Had built for me
Waiting
Safeguarding
Regarding
Me
Of the mandating
It can’t be forever
Prosperity yields
It will not be eternal
How awful it feels
For there will come a time
We must choose
Who we are
And through proof
Or in truth
See the solely sworn servitude
Back to the youth
Dec 2024 · 46
Try
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Try
Try talking of climate
They’d sooner
Deny it
Try talking of politics
Seek to divide it
Try sharing your feelings
Divulging your secrets
They’d make them taboo
While exploiting your weakness
Try lead by example
Just see where it gets you
Try seizing the moment
As futures forget to
Contain you
Sustain you
Preserve your remembrance
So why try to make the world
In your resemblance?
Dec 2024 · 48
The Mariner
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Reliving
The campus life
Now an adult
Not a student
Maturing
From youth in revolt
Thought I knew it
Community
Primed and prepared
Was imbued with
Immunity
To feeling scared
Could adapt
Integrate
And cohabitate
Seamless
Aspired
To overcome
Mountains of needless
And heedless of warnings
To opt for realistic
I shot for the stars
Like a missile
Ballistic
But missed it
The mark
Overshot
The world peace
And crash landed instead
On an uncharted beach
Dec 2024 · 41
The Crypto Keeper
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Until suns rising over
Eternity
Beckon
Inclined will I be
To advise
Its progression
To oversee yield
Without chain gangs afield
Without hangman’s
Majority
Whiplash to wield
And devoid of its
Noblest hypocrisy
Gaining
At others’ expense
Do their coffers containing
Your brains
Keep expunging and plunging
Them
Clogging your drains
From domain names
Of new world
Disorder
In veins
As it even now profits
More off
Your remains
Dec 2024 · 51
The New York Nyx
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Something flash past
Clad in black
In the night
Did you happen
To see it
Or vividly write
It more clearly
More practicably
As a specter
A silhouette hummingbird
Seeking its nectar
Like feathers
Can catch
And adrift
In the breeze
Like society hides
What the rest of it sees
Dec 2024 · 49
The Inventor
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Seed of innovation
Discontentment with my station
With my place
My lot in life
Dissatisfied
A wrong to right
Or opportunity comes knocking
Flickering
Gives way to light
Dec 2024 · 54
Cyber Insecurity
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Words on a page
Not arranged
Just estrange
Another enemy to crush
Another war to be waged
Another battlefield
Looming
Of late
To lay waste in
Encased in
A constant news cycle
That’s making
Us constantly
Taking
For granted
The known world around us
Tall tales
Calumny
And conjecture’s
What grounds us
Confounding to no end
Save clicks, views and likes
The attention economy
Surgically strikes
At the psyches and rights
Like an unnerving agent
The advertise spies
Accept all forms of payment
So long as your eyes
Remain fixed on their message,
Their product,
Their service
Their mild depression
Dec 2024 · 61
Liver Spots
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
Older now
Commonplace pain
Doesn’t go away
See no way out
Of reality
Colored gray
Every day
Just a redo
Of the last
Except now
It just costs more
Repeating the past
While insisting
I work
For a future
Precarious
Wary this rigmarole
More multifarious
Than its vicariously
Living god
Has implanted
More various paths
Than the time we’ve been granted
Could possibly tread
In its dread disposition
Just hopes
The one chosen
Leads not to
Remission
Michael Marchese Dec 2024
I live with the stains
Past mistakes
On my conscience
And even now bleed
With the greed
Of my prophets
Not lost yet
Though searching
Sustaining
Pursuit
Of the purses
Of suits
And laborious
Fruits
For recursive
Reversion
Reflective
Reboots
Institutions
Mishandled
Dismantled
Since youth
But from root
To rerouting
My satellite orbited
All the exorbitant kingdoms
Deforested
Vastly too much
Of the natural
Progression
Made their own
Built their home
Price this possession
On value
Inherently
Lacking the man
To put into effect
An economy plan
Should the whole
Hulking edifice
Green in its gills
Let the market consume him
And claim what he kills
Nov 2024 · 32
The Fascist Takeover
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
Devils preach the gospels
And I fear that it is not so
That they clearly see
Absurdity
The shades
Of **** Germany
This slowly moving coup
Now made to seem
It’s just like you
Bankrupted victim
Of the system
Yet so privileged
By its gifts
Claims to uplift you
As it rips you
A new hole
Expands the rift
And in its grifting
Disempowers with
Its ignorance is bliss
As you believe its
Impishness
Is not impiety
Your faith
Begins to turn
From your convictions
To your notions
Nation-state
More based in race
Than in reality
More rooted in
Delusion
And even now it writes you off
Just like its
Constitution
Nov 2024 · 58
The Towering Monolith
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
Vultures and carrion
choirs conspired
I rose from the rubble
Ground zero
Admired
Domestically terrorized
Seven-year mind
In an instantly shattered
My people attacked
As I learned growing up
How much history stacked
On the odds
One by one
Like it’s fun
Reenact
Having seen how they crumbled
So carelessly cracked
By the Fed
We entrust
All our currency
Backed
And I saw it all bolstered
By oil and greed
By the war profiteering
American dream
Nov 2024 · 58
The Machinist
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
In a hot button second
I rattle my cage
Unsurprisingly
I’m not surprised
I’m enraged
Been engaged
Now I’m married
Been martyred
With cause
As I fell from the top
Of my most
Tragic flaws
And I’ve lawlessly
Toyed
With the thought
Of amoral
But lost the pursuit
Of my power mad
Quarrel
My grappling
With justice
And vengeance
Is best
Served a frigid
Despondent wasteland
Of unrest
Having wrested my claim
From the jaws of defeat
Battle tested my truth
In the tongues of deceit
To be wielding the weapon
Of painless infliction
Through words
Your inaction
Just fuels my addiction
To burning facades
Reimagining gods
To keep moving
In unison
One with the cogs
Nov 2024 · 39
Lasting
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
Now decide where you stand
At the end
Of the world
When it’s into oblivion
Forcefully hurled
That we go
With uncertainty
All that we know
But in faith perhaps
Aftermath seeds
We might sow
May they grow
To survive us
In some shape or forms
May they weather the wake
Having borne
Superstorms
To preserve legacy
To surpass our potential
All time and dime
Spent
Wasn’t inconsequential
Nov 2024 · 49
Good Days Again
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
Without turmoil
Turning from turbulent
Trials
To what I’ve compiled
In more secret files
How miles and miles
I’ve traveled and tread
To eventually find
What goes on in my head
Is a spiraling
Virally
Spreading
Contagion
The rage
Can’t contain
The mass grave
I am caged in
Before
In my bouts
Of capricious good luck
I have sought after
Found
Raking long in the muck
A compassionate partner
To clean up my act
To provide me a peace
I’ve so ceaselessly
Lacked
Nov 2024 · 327
Getting the Part
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
We all have a role to play
Function to perform
Within society
We try to be
A little less forlorn
About the whole entire
Universal
Existential
Crisis
Seeking purpose
From the worthless
Void
That even now
Must write this
Affirmation
Of self-righteousness
What validates the strife
A simple note
A memory
And in totality
Is life
Nov 2024 · 34
Surgery
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
I’m grateful
Is all I can say
On a day
Where dependence
Sustains me
And expertise may
Be the primary reason
I still get to write
Get to live to see futures,
Sleep soundly at night
Because I cannot cut
The afflictions from skin
Can’t return me home safely
From waiting rooms
Been
On the operate table
The last couple hours
As people who care
If I make it
Empower
My waking mind’s eye
To in vertigo
Know
That although
Limited
Not my time yet
To go
Nov 2024 · 625
Last Day of Work
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
Look out
One last time
How it all
Just goes by
How I started here
No one
Afraid to be seen
Lacking confidence
Cognizance
It would soon mean
So much more
Than a job
Now a part of me
Robbed
And though grateful
A hateful
Irate
Inclination
I can’t seem to quell
To dispel
Its frustration
When duties I’ve taken
For granted
Retired
And services rendered
No longer required
Nov 2024 · 51
30 Years the Wiser
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
I’m not scared anymore
I’m just tired
Exhaustively
Seize where it goes
Does my lowest point
Caustically
Seek to corrode
The empyrean edifice
Feckless kings’
Treacherous
Half-assed attempts
To seem not
But a nemesis
Rather the victim
The hero
The savior
The puppet in penguin suit’s
Bankruptcy wager
Nov 2024 · 58
The Shuttle Driver
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
Check my ambitions
Of power and greed
For today I must write
What the histories
Read
Not what leaves me
Beleaguered by
Years of devotion
Implosion
Awhirl with
Conflicted emotion
On one hand
The wheel
Toward the road ahead
Steering
Just now I’m not paid
To set down the path
Veering
The other still reaching for
Lists to give
Tips
And a look back to see
The familiars I’ve missed
How I wished to keep
Rolling along
What I learned
A new town
The best spots
Play my songs
As I earned
An affordable  
Stature
An honestly
Modest
Addition
Opinion
On timeliness
Promised
A charioteer
For a castle beside
The vast shore
And horizon
Deep into
I’d ride
Down its corridors
Stride
In its passages
Hide
And its passengers
Welcomed
Their guide to confide
Nov 2024 · 108
Laid Off
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
My overloaded  
Brain
Is short-circuitously
Sane
And drained away
Its finely balanced
Jenga tower
Pieces lay
All strewn about the floor
Defeated
I’ve conceded
Earnings needed
When the wellsprings that sustain them
Are supposedly
Depleted
And it seems
Despite devotion
To in service
Indispensable
Convenience
Kindness
Courtesy
Is not so fundamental
As to render it
An integral
Expenditure
To budget
And from livelihood
Parts of me  
Now they must cut it
Oct 2024 · 271
Nightingales
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
Reminded her of I
I am just your average guy
I go to work
Am always lurking
In a million reasons
Die
Before the fallen in submission
In its limitless capacity
Has taken from me
Plundered
Cast asunder
What impassions me
Like writing
Soul igniting
Lightning strikes
And nightingales
Be they encaged
Or just engraved
As never fails
To feel my serenade
Oct 2024 · 42
The Ravages of Existence
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
Fleetingly wary
We aren’t alone
As a species
But personally
On our own
And the dread revelation
Intelligence
Solely
Just isn’t enough
To convince me
It’s only
This civilization we build
That defines
And distinguishes us
From developing minds  
So ephemeral
Cognizance
Merely a product
Of permanently
Be the way
We were brought up
Despite how we nurture
That nature
To harm
Fortify self-defenses
And rapidly arm
For a conflict ensuing
To err with more fanfare
Than opposite sides
Can barely take stand where
The human decides
Oct 2024 · 50
The Underling
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
From provenance
To Providence  
To prominence
I rise
Among students
And teachers
And principled minds
But in mines
I’m the guy
On the line
Getting by
All the while
Unearthing
What we
Stratify
Oct 2024 · 61
Heir to the Assembly Line
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
Without these machines
There can be no me
Earning
Consuming
Subsuming
The natural world
Burning
Through boundless renewable
Bits of pollution
But only more robots
Can find the solution
And solve the intractable
Heedless conundrum
The needless
Egregious excesses
Must come from
Some source of organic
Emotively
Sentience
But rust in its oil can
Tin man
Descendants
Oct 2024 · 35
Goodnight In
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
Know I should for many reasons
Know I want
For even more
To be with her
All around the world
And rest upon the shore
That we reclaim
From seeing favored
Futures
Critically endangered
In the face
Of nation states
And longer waits
To break the silence
Can we see ourselves as humans
Or just predisposed
To violence
And divided
Never have we been
Inclined
To be united
Just innately
Form equations
For salvations
We can hide in
So as much as this is me
The same as you
The same as we
I must confide in
Only one among us
Her
That I can rest my head
Goodnight in
Oct 2024 · 53
No Lands Man
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
Dispossessed
Disavowed
Distant
Disowned
Have no plot
Crops to rot
Or a place to call home
And so easily stripped
Of a dignified claim
To a decent
Affordable living
Sustained
When an honest mistake
Can outweigh
The successes
And failure gives way
To implacable stresses
Impresses upon me
The titles and deeds,
The smallholders,
The Monsanto millions
Of seeds
The uprooted
And ripped
From their ties
To its yield
The ones blighted
And bound
To its dream-
killing field
Countless casualties
Rendered
Mere renters
And tenants
Dependents
On wars
Of some lord’s
Independence
Oct 2024 · 66
The Self-Immolated
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
This bastion
Comes crashing
Dystopian
Social experiment
Taxing
So prone
To mob rule
To upheaval
Amassing
But passing that off
For empowered
Is lacking
If all that amounts
To each other
Attacking
And in the ensuing
Hysteric highjacking
Of lives
Livelihoods
And our whereabouts
Tracking
We back oligarchic
Solutions
Divided
Or seek an anarchic
Conclusion
Ignited
Oct 2024 · 63
The Psycho’s Analysis
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
To me you’re all crazy
And I’m just the lazy one
Languish alone
Often talk to myself
Like a friend on the phone
As I watch you all
Frantically
Manically
Panicking
Planning
And scamming
Your lives
Micromanaging
Hyper-aware
You are barely
Apparent
And desperately try
To be not so
Aberrant
To fit in
And blend
And comply
Without end
In pursuit of delusions
Just playing pretend
The solution
The problem
Is how much you spend
But I know the price paid
We can’t hide from the grave
And I’ll take it to mine
As the one who’s depraved
Oct 2024 · 57
The Ever Looming Left
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
And we will see it
In the advent
Of our children’s
Reveries
And we will bend the will of titans
Bring the muses
To their knees
We thee unseen
Consent decrees
Still issue warnings
Troopers storming
Terraforming
Free degrees
For privileged legacies
To breeze
And earn their progenies
With ease
And vested in
Investing in
The inclination
To exceedingly
Succeed
We will remind them
Of the trees
And of the people left to feed
For we are ample
By example
Will we will teach them how to lead
Oct 2024 · 50
The Canada Goose
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
Crooked cronies crowing
For a fatter slice
Of pie
Murderous
The blood is flowing
Reservoirs
Are running dry
And all the while
Skying high
The eagle profits,
Cuts its losses
And makes turkeys
On Thanksgiving
With its guns
And burning crosses
And its greater
Costs of living
Of the doves
And hawks
The parrot squawks
Their dreams of being free
But from behind
A barred complex,
A nest,
A caged
Hypocrisy
Oct 2024 · 67
L’s
Michael Marchese Oct 2024
In command of my heart
I was hers from the start
And in parting ways
Rendered
Alone in the dark
Off the mark
A few times
Out of sync
With the spark
That originates
Gravitates
Back to renewal
Like nuance
And novel
Gives pause to refuel
To in retrospect
Reconnect
Severed synapses
And then progress
Prosper
Rebuilding collapses
And tactics
For how we
Attack
And engage
Confrontation
Conflated with
Wars we must wage
Just a sudden deathmatch
To match
Mounting affronts
Like the salting of earth
And the growth that it stunts
We annunciate once
To the victor go spoils
With each escalation
But both of us fighting
Lose communication
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