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Jul 2021 · 79
The Commuter
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
When reaching the brink
Take a step back and stare
At the rest of the world
To remind me to care
A bit less
About frivolous nonsense at work
One more email detail
That I miss
Isn’t worth
The discouraged,
Demoralized,
Downright
Defeatist
Default to disdain
For these office elitists
When it
Isn’t perfectly preened,
Polished etiquette
Judgment and drudgery
Dress-rehearsed rhetoric
Better yet
Let me explain
My mistakes
At a pace
All too hasty
And cutting the brakes
On the full speed ahead
Destination soon dead
And the tire treads’
Only distraction
Is dread
That I’m digging my grave
Where I’m building my home,
That I’m going in circles
Where I used to roam
Jul 2021 · 62
Empathy Fatigue
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Grim as I’ve ever been
Waiting to die
Though at times
I may smile
I’m faking behind
The misfortune,
A most sordid
Torturous
Malady
Sounds like a job
For a cubicle salary
Spare me the lecture
On empathy
Drained
Enervated
Until my last nerve
Have I feigned
My last drop of compassion’s
Communicate brew
Until leave me alone
Is the obvious clue
Leading you to discover
However you feel it
Does positive, negative
Really reveal it
Or just make it more
Difficult to explain
We’re all narcissists
Analyze this
Ego brain
Jul 2021 · 124
Leveling the Playing Field
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Want to see
How the filthy rich live
Before I
Should become one
Myself
Rather die
Than comply
With the status quo notion
Of progress
Achieved
Only set in slow motion
And masses aggrieved
When appeasement has failed
And the stimulus spent
When the city upscaled
Can’t afford to pay rent
When the gentry
Carte Blanche
Becomes staunchly imposed
On the food insecure
Still ensuring their homes
Built atop the displaced
The eviction note’s
Victimless crime
Is eraced
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
There must be the end
Of the darkest tranquility
Silently,
Virally,
Into senility
Spiraling into
A bottomless
Pit
From the tempest tirades
I created the glitch
And a twitch into selfishly normalcy’s
Itch
In relinquished resistance
To actively
Passively
Still in existence
Oppose it,
Expose it,
Reveal its facades
And bring structures
To crumble
Like Titans
To gods
Jul 2021 · 73
Modern Engineering
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
That’s me in despair
Over there
All alone
Been around the world over
Still finding my home
Among those who saw profits
Exported ‘em on
Made it spread
Out in rockets
And then
It’s the dreaded
Undead
Picking pockets
The stock market’s
Bloc chaining
Gangs on the docket
The gains
Are net losses
The reign
Draining brains
To reclaim
The forgotten,  
Abandoned,
That we propagate
For some other gods
Means of controlling
Create
Like the state
Regulating
The hate speech
It deems
To be anything but
In compliance
With dreams
Jul 2021 · 74
No Secret
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
We can bask in our hedonist excess at will
We can ****
Any life
We deem lesser
With skill
And yet still
We are capable of
Inner peace
I know all of you’ve
Felt it
As happy at least
To be not so
Materially
Predisposed
Or to claim to have
Earned it some way
Undisclosed
Jul 2021 · 131
Crumbling Facades
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Typical, miserable
Modern life listical
Sticky note overload,
Stuck in a
Cyclical
Course of correction
Yet barely
Dirigible
Sense of direction
I aim for perfection
But always fall short
Through disorganized
Scatterbrained
Thoughts have to sort
Through the stress-induced fog
To dispel the despair
And repair it with
Documents left to prepare
For performance evals
And a palace of somber
Senescence
Deep into the night
Do I ponder
And wonder how much
Longer, I must endure
An existence in which
Only loveless allures
Me to strive for the end
Of the infinite
Endlessness
Watching the world
Melt away
Like my sentences
Leak on the page
Of polemicist rhetoric
Nobody cares
So I drain it of sentiment
Grin and I bare
The next day’s
Falling tenement
Jul 2021 · 86
The Nothingness
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Nowhere left
You need to go,
Nothing left
For you to know
Impermanence
If lingered on
Too long before its
Once upon
A time
Will leave you wishing
Wells
What dwells within
The seven hells
Can only be
Conceptual
The prose
Of intellectuals
And literal
Is critically-acclaimed
The fame and fortune
Game
The influence is everywhere
Original was never there
So stare intently
Into it
Abyss
I am
The nothingness
Jul 2021 · 107
Love is...
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Admire not always
Equating desire
I wanted to hear you
Appear to conspire
Against me
Preemptively tempting
Descent
Reinventions
Of tempestuousness
Lament
Unrelentingly
Holding me under,
Asunder,
Inside
In your presence
As placid as thunder
No wonder I stumbled
In humbling hubris
You needed no man,
Little boy,
And you knew this
Exuded it
True to your word
From the horse’s mouth
Thinnin’ the ranks
Of the herd
And that one’s for you
Out there
Without me
Succeeding
Exceedingly
Stick to your guns
Without bleeding
And that’s where the peace became
Nothing remains,
I would bathe
In a river of it
To reclaim
Your attentive
Retention
Of my complete
Sentience
And still even now
Can’t complete a whole sentence
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Tye-dying tycoons
With the blood on their hands
They deceive us,
Then leave us,
The really Bad Lands
Still abandoning kids
As if
Domestic terror,
To hawk and dove
F-22’s of a feather
All silent on climate
In inclement weather
All wires and viruses’
Six second tethers
To whether or not
There’s an ocean on fire,
A sickened sphere
Nearing
Its next Dallas Buyer
To coax the illusion
Of culture supreme
Propagating its art
Like the seed in the stream
So concede all your dreams
To the fascist fact-actory
Watch the facade of god
Build the ol’factory
Sense of the dollars and cents
In the hacking spree,
Even your stocks
Aren’t safes
When the state
Has already cracked codes
Of your mind,
Calculate
Jul 2021 · 76
Disguise
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Not into this night
Rather write it
Away
But instead I’m reviewing
This life
Pressing play
To resume
Repetitions
Of watching it go
Passes by
In an instance
Each aspect,
Component of me’s
Been relinquished
I look through the glass
But what’s looking back
Different
And it
Doesn’t recognize me
Anymore
Reminiscent of only
The mask that he wore
Jul 2021 · 67
The Spy Ring
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Another night
To roam alone,
Reclaim my ronin
Ego throne
I came a long way
Just to learn
In solitude
Could not discern
With certainty
I would return
To once a month
Day offers
Coffins
As my will
To power
Softens
Glossing out
The fanciful
Declassifying
Push and pull
Numeric factors,
Data hackers,
Economical
Disasters
Should they prove
My widow maker
Currently
No single taker
Seems to want to
Etch her lie
Across my heart
And hope to die
Jul 2021 · 151
Hammurabi
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Productive days
Of improv humor
Lately I’m
A real late bloomer
But a tumor
Lurks beneath
Metastasizing
In the deep
The sunset looming
Out of reach
No one to share
Its fading heat
And I fear never
Will return
Shall once more lend her ear
To learn
The myriad
Aways of me
Intricacies
Deceptively
Expressed
In this
Suppressive state
Oasis
‘Bout to immolate
At any moment
But despair
Still constitutes
The everywhere
I go,

No golden fools
Aglow,
Nor soulless ghouls
Sold out for show
Quite artfully enough
Pretense
My shattered psyche
Imp laments,
As I laugh last
At their expense
Though not aghast
At class
Distinction
Just as natural
As extinction
More surprised to find
The kind
Of people
Who see dollar signs  
Can look like me, or you, or us
Just must be someone
I could trust
Like confidantes
No strings attached
Contracted obligation
Scratched
Jul 2021 · 139
Remittances
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Still hittin’
Her hard
With disaster
Relief
Sinking boats,
Blocking votes,
No...
Congressional seat
Then deceitfully dollar
Diplomacy
Drain it
Of sugar cane
Brain
Generations
In training
To tolerate chains,
More urbane
Costs of living
Just giving in
When resist
Is just enlistment
A privilege to serve
In their wars of attrition
And still hear the bombs
Pounding into submission
The Spanish last bastion’s
Taino kid’s vision
Jul 2021 · 107
Freudulent
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Have it all figured out
Do you notice the silence?
The time is
Too late
And you haven’t surmised it
My guise is
Beside itself
Loathing devices
And you can not help me
The way she entices
My sociopathic
Traumatically
Psyche
Inducing illusory
Glands
To exuding
Some mental secretions
Of secrecies seeking
Someone to confide in
To hide in
You don’t care,
This session is over
Good day
And goodbye then
Jul 2021 · 70
Hooking up These Days
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Forgive me I’m new to this
Form of survival
Each time I approach
I am dead on arrival
No reasoned and practical
Method
Successful
Attempts to be more
Than myself
Seem essential
In order to turn
Even hi
To goodbye
For eventually
Soon enough
You won’t reply
Jun 2021 · 102
The Archer’s Son
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
The kid state of nature
Still brutish and short
I’m the wretch in the bowels
You couldn’t abort
Still distorting the false narrative
In my favor
I savor the suffering
Graven slave labor
Unwavering in
Serpent eyes of the tyrants  
Attesting my patients’
Rapaciousness virus  
To stop making conflict
Where none need exist
You American
Simpleton
Cease and desist
On insisting
Your cancerous culture
Still answers
The question
Who watches the watchers
With voter rights tamper
If viewer discretion
Advised,
Advertised
Still decides
The election
And class divides
Settle
The natural selection
Jun 2021 · 114
The Inner-Workings
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Don’t want to relinquish
Creatively spark
To the mentally-taxing
Evasion of darkness
I feel like a carcass
Just fed
Better than
Contradictory’s
Starkest
Disparity
Paradox
Toxins polluting
Utopian blooms
To a tombstone
Of ruins  
Reduced to
The narrowing focus
Priorities
No more recalcitrant
Question authorities
Just have a seat
Keep your hands busy
Eat
Imperfections,
Correct them,
Delete and repeat
Jun 2021 · 103
Talk to me
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Don’t want to feel alive
So go switch off
Concede the time
Is not of yours
For any taking,
Any making
Of design
Refuse to speak
Don’t deviate
From fate
Is sealed
In shades of bleak
Rejuvenated
From the enervating
Make a living week
If you go seeking
Conversation
You might find
Only deceit
But when you try,
Revitalized
By what you say
Begets replies
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Sitting in
On the these meetings
We have to stop kidding ourselves
There is meaning
Just rhyme without reason
So force me to plan
There’s no time of the season
Returning their land
Jun 2021 · 389
The Challenger
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Everyone’s so averse to solitude
But madness is more of a perpetual state
for me
Just varies in
Severities
And barely
Even
Scares me
Anymore
I’m more abnormal now
Aborted my ambition
And create instead
A battleground
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Though what you aspire
To be
Isn’t much
More than what you
Desired to
Serve as the crutch
Props you up
At the end of days
All in the thralls
Of finality
Keep holding on
As the walls
Closing in
To diminish
The outer appearance
And render you
Bending to
Internal spirits
Extending their hand
To the one it’s been dealt
As if it could be held,
Could be felt
By itself
Jun 2021 · 79
All Truism
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Hard to commit
When no one gives a ****
When it’s literally
You vs. the world
Call it quits
On convictions
Why give them
A second thought’s
Mindful devotion
When most people
Can’t even fathom
The notion
Surprisingly, as it could be
When religions
Of most
Contain similar
Selfless traditions
At least in description
But seldom in practice
Hypocrisy
Still spins the world
On its axis
Jun 2021 · 71
Getting Situated
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
I like it here
The quiet life
Appeals to me,
Reduces strife
And might just be
A place for me
To stay,
Remain,
Not run away
This time,
Just settle in
Refrain
From feigning
How it all goes wrong
The longer I still write this song
Is little more
Than wishful thinking
Lacking acumen
Or skill
No instrumental
State instilled
I simply try to make it sound
As pleasant to the ear
Is bound
In hearing
Not quite listening
As actively
As whispering
In darkness to yourself
At night
And then from nothing
Something write
Jun 2021 · 86
Kick the Bucket
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
If it really came down
To my last day on earth
I suppose I would do
What is actually worth
The investment of time
Precious mine
To see fit
Make amends
Mend the wounds
I am still burdened with
All too soon
If it ended
In fire and ash
Or a hole in the ground
It would not amount cash
Value added
To genuine closure
Regardless of cost
To my fragile composure
Again in your presence
To bridge the division
The distance
Insistence
I’d only make you and I’s
Pleasure
The mission
Jun 2021 · 73
The Divine Mania
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
The laughable death
Possibility seems
To no longer so dreadfully
Fill me with screams
Only merrily,
Merrily
Rivers of dreams
Flowing into insanity’s
Bottomless screens
Jun 2021 · 84
Disciple of the Ram
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Command the ripper,
Create suicide,
Drink despair like it’s nectar,
In darkness confide
Like a satanist
Deep with the secrets
Convene
And in discordant muse
Dialectics
Blaspheme
Jun 2021 · 178
Extinction
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Didn’t get
To speak my mind
The rest of life
Left me behind
Forgotten
By its innovation
Adaptation
Conflagration
No more home remains
To thrive
Survival, my last right
Denied,
Captivity’s
No place to hide
My species deemed
Undignified
And all I asked
Was peace and plenty
Not so different
From the many
Extirpated
Population
Biospheric
Degradation
Dust within a vacuum
Void
Of even empathy
Destroyed
Barbarians behaving thus
As civilized
As not enough
Consumption stuff
Could bring them back
In tact
Forever
Gone in fact
And never, ever
Coming back
Jun 2021 · 68
The Work Load
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
In the morning dread darkness
A comforting calm
Before storms of distress
Offers no sort of balm
To the overload mental
Disorders dismembered
On different directions
I’m pulled and outstretched
A laborious task master
Taxing unrest
Is the only force
Carrying on
To conclusion
To do it
Or just give it up
The illusion
I’m actually qualified,
Capable,
Savvy
With info wars waging
My piece of the happy
Jun 2021 · 77
Resort Staff
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Still masking en masse’s
And variant aryans
Nobody wants
A koala on fire
But when it’s a forest
It isn’t as dire
Exorbitant wealth
Little more for myself
I have no reservations,
The hand I’ve been dealt
Not immediate victory
But I make due,
Bend the rules
As I need
To upgrade
Ocean view
Jun 2021 · 63
Obstructions of Just This
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Could have these ideas
But no one to believe
They could come to fruition
As what I achieve
Though I see it in others,
Past lovers,
A few
There’s no knowing
For certain
They’d hashtag metoo  
As the unchanging image
Perfected, instilled
Within life passes by,
Daily labor unskilled
Willing it to be more
Doesn’t make it so
Though,
Doesn’t make the plants grow,
Doesn’t reap what I sow,
Foes will ever abound
Around corners
And bends
In the mind
Of no matter
How all of this ends
Jun 2021 · 237
The Tinkerer
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Commanding machines
To do my
bidding schemes
Merely means to the end
Of all history’s themes
One more stain
Of a racial
In nature
On nations’
Supremacy legacy’s
Story creation
Remembered for glory,
And honor,
And pride
But forgotten by all
Of the commodified
Jun 2021 · 78
Career Guy
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Tasks and podcasts
What I do for a living
Is can’t help but ask
When I fail,
Be forgiving
Please don’t get frustrated
Irate with me,
Makes me
Go crazy
In shellshocked anxiety
Coming off lazy,
Aloof
Or ungrateful,
Another white privilege kid’s
Pride is disgraceful
But only to eyes
Of untrained
Office spaces,
I see through their looking
Class consciousness
Faces
Jun 2021 · 62
Productivity
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Making myself
Right at home
In new places
A slight sense of danger
Inside your safe spaces
And into the inner
Circles
Infiltrate
Like a viral,
Hard-wired
User’s
Interface
With machines
I can seamlessly
Communicate
As if secret codes
Weren’t embedded
In flesh
And the numbers
That give them
Emotions,
Expressed
Jun 2021 · 137
Cities in the Desert
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Oasis of duplicitous plenty
Its criminal overworld
Dripping its leaks
From a rusty, dystopian
Faucet ****’s squeaks
And I sneak
For the scraps
In the back
Making stacks
Of their precious supply of
The liquidized facts
Soon enough
The untenable
Fragile
Facade
Shall come crashing down,
As we drown,
In the mirage
Jun 2021 · 229
Out Patient
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Now broken
My psyche
No longer excites me
Just seeks to so spitefully
Shatter me nightly
Piece me back together
By day
The day job
Mental health,
Raise awareness,
Dispelling the fog
But surrounded by experts
On shadow self darkness
Still fails to elucidate
My sick at heartness
Jun 2021 · 146
(Life in the) Peace Corpse
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
My luminous thralldom
Plunged back into war
I could not save a soul
Mine was nevermore
Sure
And the traveler
Side of me
Once optimistic
Fell prey to the death of ideals
Unrealistic
There was no escape
Nowhere else the tale goes
Though I found a few hiding spots,
Highs were still lows
I felt useless,
Abused,
Disaffected
Confused
And with each passing day
Became more a recluse
And I could not excuse
My aberrant behavior,
Attempts to explain
Only made me seem stranger
The anger again
Was what woke me from bed
Or else probably would
Have just laid there
All dead
Jun 2021 · 120
A Denizen Among Citizens
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Still never underestimate the peasantry
The plenary
Pie in the sky
Deified
Penitentiary
Since humans are
Simplest of
A life’s forms
Only one
Lives for more
Than existence’s
Norms
Jun 2021 · 129
En Masse
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Still rising
And writhing
In bellies of beasts
Like a maggot-filled carcass,
In darkness
I feast
Beneath criminal underworlds,  
First come to serve
And just might
Get the labor force
Striking  
A nerve
Jun 2021 · 146
Cultural Radicalism
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Some art this weekend
No less
Don’t know nothing about it
I just like the stress
Of interpreting languages
Someone can paint
Guess I’m just a romantically
Hopeless
Restraint
On the pawns
And the puppets
The sheep
And the saints
Just constraints
On the ranks,
On the tanks,
On the skanks
I just want to control
The whole show
And rob banks
Jun 2021 · 164
Is This Thing on?
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
And she’s not
Coming back
Dreadful fact,
Drop the act
Your just mirror and smoking
The unspoken pact
Perhaps it
Could have lasted
And withered away
Still at least in the sight of her
Aging and gray
Waste away with me,
Lay with me,
Bask here all day with me
I ran astray
You were my
Scared of death delay
One greater reason
To actually care
To despair less in knowing
I’m all too aware
It was barely a blink
In the lifespan of time
It was scarcely-resourcing
Discourses
Of mind
And yet mine is here wondering
Onward into
Was it me who so tragically
Failed to love you
Jun 2021 · 158
The Com-Intern
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Irrelevant to anything
And relative to everything
Irreverent and vengeful
I just let vendettas fester
Irrespective of the damage
That it does,
Leaves me a specter
Of intuitive  
Construed
As disapproval
Of the members
Of society
Dismembered
From futility attempts
To settle conflicts,
But engendered
Is this neutral and submissive
Craving orderly
Pretense
But still regardless
Never shown
And never known
My true intents
Jun 2021 · 104
The Rubicon
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
False flags,
Fallen idols
Are flatlining vitals
Declines of empires
Who can’t feed their people
Distractions of
Factions of
Separate but equal
And even the pretense
Democracy wanes
Until only
The cash-cropper’s
Judgment remains
As the guild
Fixes prices,
Elections,
Opinions
But can’t repair roads
Lead to Roman dominion
Jun 2021 · 127
The Privileged
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
I don’t envy wealth
Redistribute its health
Comprehend its convenience
And savor the self
Long enough to destroy
At the end of fear
Void
Unemployed
Still deploying
My droids
Opioid
Like imperial fleets’
Archaeopteryx
Vision
All Rhodes of Colossus
Still bow in submission
To vanity’s
Villainy
Guilt
Contribution
The filth
Of free trade’s
Ethnic cleansing solution
The hack in the tax hiking
Ryker’s
Next door
We’re the youth who inherit
The engines of war
And will staff its advances
With hardwired sects
Of the next level
Technocrat’s
Spoiled execs
And we’ll show you
Who runs the world
Kids of the west
May 2021 · 164
Lost in San Diego
Michael Marchese May 2021
Wandering aimlessly
Never in vain
But this weekend
I couldn’t find
Where the right way
Was directed,
Expected
To be at my car
In a matter of minutes
But ended up far
From its parking space
Downtown and bound
For another night ruined
And in its shame
Crowned
Michael Marchese May 2021
Informed to form
My firm opinion
Not my friend
Just yet
Regret
A little more
Before
Then talk,
I am the scarecrow
On the stalk
The laughing stock
Holders in stocks
And still I shock
The mock show
Trial
Dam nations
Like a sun of the Nile
Reviled for spreading
My virus papyrus
And bleeding peripheries
Dry of supplies
Like the juror within
Privatized little spies
Just bejeweled
In the severed crown’s
Israeli ties
Active, legit hot war in the Middle East’s last (and first?) pseudo-democratic holdout. Could get real. Stay tuned
May 2021 · 110
For a Living
Michael Marchese May 2021
When even the bosses
Are kind of cool
Why feel compelled
To overrule
No need to play the fool
To lead
Remain seated
Pretend to read
Or carry on
And take to task
If I’m not sure
I simply ask
In confidence
No stupid questions
Just me listing
Speaker sessions
For the annual
Objective
Your just cause
Is just my breakfast
May 2021 · 123
Humanitarian Work
Michael Marchese May 2021
Guess I missed my meat today
Still satiate
My need to slay
Shade-casting
For my ego play
With ruffled feathers
On display
The never nether
Worldlier
Than isolationist
Dissent
Lament my oldest friend
Adorns
Me in cocoons of decadent
Ecstatic status
Boost caffeine
The fiend,
The dream,
Anthropocene
May 2021 · 85
Trivial
Michael Marchese May 2021
Memorizing names leads to the forgetfulness of the concept

Where’s the drive dude?
Still just shootin’

Never write another word
If it meant
Being
Right
Beside you
Heard

I control the stories
Said the imperialist

Can’t do anything
Write
So much my fingers hurt

An imperial power
Comes into a ****** land
Against her will

Chasin’ monsters
Now you are one

And still am the infinite
Nothingness matters
Still leavin’ the labels
On fables
In tatters
Just kept adding random, disjointed thoughts to it
May 2021 · 80
Dietary Guidelines
Michael Marchese May 2021
So carnivorous sheep,
Telling me what to eat
Check your life-
Taking knife
Before swallowing meat
Or just leave me alone,
You know?
Why even go?
Down that road
When the river,
Though withering
Flows
Not unto the dead end
Of development goals
But to refuse-seas rising
To diamonds from coals
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