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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 success
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
Michael Marchese May 2023
Seal me in a cell
Of serendipity
Dismayed
I feel the flooding
Wishing well
Of unanimity
Betrayed
You know my name,
Control my brain,
Made me exclaim it
As I came
And in your absence
I am rapturous,
A ravenous
Despair
And in my sadness
I am avarice
A fathomless
Nightmare
The prey ensnared,
The barely breathing
Sense of freedom
Self-deceiving
There is only
Bound volition
Inclination
To be yours
A blind ambition’s
Snap revision
Of my book
Of nevermores
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Not sure
What is meant
By initiative
Listlessness
Proving itself
A more gainful
Employ
Like a bone
To a dog
When he’s been a good boy
It just comes to me
Gifted
Rewarded
Endowed
With the secret to reign
From a database cloud
Michael Marchese Sep 2024
Amusement
Sport
And profit
No unconquered kings
Could stop it
It was something
In the water
In the wind
And in the trees
A sort of sorrow
That could lift you
Swiftly
Take your soul with ease
Though it is not
Until she leaves
Can you imagine
How she grieves
And claim the same innate
Despondency
Through all the fated
Weaves
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
Michael Marchese Sep 2023
In bastions
Of Athens
In bathos
Unmentioned
We learned of my most
Civilizing
Pretension…
But miasma in the streets
The prices spike for gas and eats
And aisles full of the deserted
Still put ***** in the seats
Armada fleets
Exacting trade
By any force
Of commerce mightier
Than people it extorts
And it aborts its own last rites
To feed the richest
Their reports
And still under my aegis
My supremacy elitist
Representing staunch
And solely
No conviction
More egregious
Than my appetite
For sleight of hand
Subliminal starvation
My addiction to
The revenue’s
Casino reservation
To the totem
Status hierarchy
Token virtue’s
Price,
So tag the flag
Like body bags
And watch me wage a war
On rights
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
Feels like there’s almost
No road left to go
But much further along it
She’s out there, I know
And though doubtful
Convinced
That persisting at this
Will eventually see me
Back there in her midst
Or at best
Wishing wistfully
Wilting will cease
And some semblance of blooming
Vitality peace
Will release me,
Return me
Into the empyrean
Fearing no more
Like a free at last Syrian
Michael Marchese Jun 2018
Do as they say
Walk and talk just like them
In their images think yourselves
Gods amongst men
They have money and cars
Fancy clothes and success
All the power
They keep making more
And we,
Less
Michael Marchese Oct 2021
Now check the black code
Secret message
Embedded
Explicit content
Even Disney regretted
But only express it
When woke
Is the token
The singalong signaling
Virtue
Invoking
Nostalgic
Desensitized
Feasts for the eyes
The objectified princess
Is one of the guys
So best get with the program
Before the pogrom
Seeks to cleanse
The agenda
And cancel the prom
And instead impose masks
Of the master class act
Still determining
What the truth is
That’s a fact
Michael Marchese Aug 2024
This city
The world
All the rest of it
Looms
Overbearing
Without me
Expelling its fumes
Into some atmospheric
Calamitous ends
Into globalist visions
Dystopian trends
A greenwashing campaign
A whitewashing the stain
A robotic performance
Of hypnotic fame
But society
Beckons me
Back to bemuse
In its melody
Maladies
Fallacy news
Except now it’s infused
With a glut of my
Truths
And whatever you like  
All subscribe to my views
I write the narrative 🤫
Michael Marchese Apr 2021
These minimizing labels
There be pirates on these seas
And arming social revolution
Is in love with lunacies
Come in with tyrants,
Preaching violence
And enriching lesser clients
Privateers to privatizing
Water fronts to spread the virus
Be it powder wigs and kegs
Or kids with squids for their sea legs
It all submits before the rising
Of the bottom-feeding plebs
So call me leftist,
Call me liberal
I was born in the imperial
Ethereal imprisonment
The cargo hold’s
Bloodlust for gold’s
Dehumanized
Equivalent
A righty, if you write me
In genetics and supremacy
The strong, the weak
The idolized
And deified
Celebrity
But never on authority’s
Minority report
But indivisible as any individual
At court
And so I see the tribal fighting,
The internecine delighting
In the other side’s
Speechless demise
And stoke the reuniting
Life on the merry go round
Just gets better
Goes up
And goes down
But revolves around pleasure
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
A step ahead of Hermes
I rival the wind
And Pheidippides cried,
Herculean my stride
When no Nemean lions
Could swallow my pride

A thread of Arachnes'
Recalcitrant spin
Athena be bested
By webs I have vested
With powers I've woven
From gods I've contested

On Helios journeys
Apollo rescind
Narcissus reflection
Of Echo's complexion
And Oedipus kingdoms
Of blinded subjection
Michael Marchese Mar 2023
Can’t even boast
Of accomplishment’s ghost
When the sum
Of my parts
Washes up
On the coast
And I’ve been back and forth
All around
The rotation
Condemned,
Welcomed in
To an alien
Nation
To factor me into
The quantum equation
When numbers and value
Induces objection
But tethers and links
This hormonal connection
A balance
No palace
Could render
Distinct
If the masters we serve
All subservient
Sync
To the blink
We inhabit
This minuscule space
And the rate
We proceed
To extinction’s
Embrace
Michael Marchese Sep 2023
Don’t think you can sell me
On more than needs-based
I don’t think you can tell me
I’m wrong
To my face
That the price justifies
What the world lost to make it
To take it to market
For product replacement
Of nary apparently
Valueless cogs
With the e-commerce
Metrics
Of new money gods
Michael Marchese May 2020
Kid stays on his feet
All the live long day
Doesn’t care to take seat
Never bows,
Never prays
But offer
Refreshment
And you can expect
To make friends with him
Won’t be too
Farther away
From the moment
The genuine courtesy
Flows
And the mutual human
Befriends
Former foes
Start shredding the news
I’m grieving today
You play not so great
Parts
In the heart
Of LA
And ablaze
Is encroaching
Where lives matter
Most
Where the homelessness spreads
Avocado on toast
And the host
Of the talk show
Or podcast
Awoken
Amassing
Vast fortune
Non-fungible token
A hope that delusions of grandeur
Sustain us
Oases of plentiful
Potencies
Tame us
Proclaim to us
All the solutions
Salvation,
That Satan himself
Is the PBS station
But all machinations
Of waning states’
Greatness
Must propagate
Some form of hate
To create this
Supremacy culture
War’s winning mentality
Dog eat dog
Alpha male’s
Failed nationality
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
Pick a cause,
Any cause
Then traduce it
Down to flaws
Not justified
To drive its message
Sloganeering
Its progressive
True intention
Buried in
The factory wreckage
Manufactured
Discontent,
Last vestige of
The dissident
Michael Marchese Feb 2017
The dusk is my maker
  My cradle, my keeper  
The dawn, my destroyer
  My coffin, my reaper
The night is my maiden
  My goddess, my muse
The day is my widow
  My black and my blues
The dark is my armor
  My sword and my shield
The light, my crusade
  My faith battlefield
The moon is my wolf
  My loner, my guide
The sun is my lion
  My tyrant, my pride
Casting these shadows
  In which I will hide
From the blinding egos
  That I'm still trapped inside
Michael Marchese Sep 2024
Enraptured
Contraptions
Devices
Newfangled
As circuits and wires
In conflicts entangled
Move closer to further
From peace
Global order
To tech hubs and giants
Securing the border
With job loss creation
Dehumanized
States
And robotic connections
That make better mates
Than reciprocates
Costly emotion
Is worth
An economy
Planned
Obsolescence’s
Earth
In control
Of a streamlined objective
Uploaded
To all the collective mind’s
Function outmoded
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
Michael Marchese Sep 2020
They made it seem like
Love was more than enough
Like two people who fall in it
Never rebuff
All the time
Perhaps even
Forever
Believe in
Wholeheartedly that
It just wasn’t a scene in
Another romantic
False narrative
Standard,
The find you,
Consign you
To all questions
Answered

When they meet again
To rejoice in some end
But the real thing
To less happy ones
Often tend
Though I must say
The theme
That they get
Most correct
Is in its nothing left
All you’re left
Is regret
But of course
No one heeds
Universal guidelines
Just continue to wait
For the stars to align
Michael Marchese Jun 2017
It wanders restlessly released
In tombs of recently deceased
And surreptitiously it seeks
Just to be mortal once again
Sarcophagus of sinful skin

To hide the scarab-swarming flesh
An all-consuming nothingness
Falling to the floor and crawling
From a skulking skeleton
A rotting corpse of blending in

With those who see no form of pharoah
Decomposing in its marrow
Just disgust accruing dust
As time embalms its bones within
These pyramids they've never seen
Michael Marchese Sep 2024
Ravenous gluttons
It’s rather
Disgusting
Discussing this subject
Another taboo
Never mind
We’ve more wealth
Than we know what to do
And get used to
Consuming
Confusing
Desire
With need
As the greed
Transfers now
Through a wire
Michael Marchese Jun 2024
Continuous
Bickering
Makes us both
Sickening
Slipping right back
Into silences
Listening
Only to sounds
Of our own
Reassurance
The other can’t possibly
Get this occurrence
I’m hurt
And you just
Carry on
Unperturbed
And it worsens
Two persons’
Attempts to be heard
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
But I just consume them
Not sure of the science
Behind it
Just know
That they offer me
Spiritual guidance
Reliance
I can’t say
Upon them depend
I just like how it feels
To my ego
Suspend
And upending
The preconceived notions is fun
My ineptitudes
Most uncouth
Weirdness
Becomes
An invaluable asset
A tingling sensation,
A spree
Of the glee
I am me
Revelation
Michael Marchese Aug 2020
We laid there together
But couldn’t quite seem
To forget that the world
Wasn’t living the dream
Or at least wasn’t seeing
What we were conceiving
As of the ethereal
Garden of Eden
Michael Marchese Mar 2018
You know I’m the vengeance
Directing
The reckless
Infestive
Obstructive destructive
Despondent injection
Obsessively restin’
Asleep at night
Sextin’
With demons
Of order and chaos
Aggression
Next lesson. They tell you they’re vegan while un-salad dressin’
Testin’ and testin’ and Bespin your friendship
And readin’ your story
Awaiting to end it
The hatchets we bury
To Hades we send it
The western elite of the borderlands wolves
In the north but there’s so much more northern to go
To the arctic we bask
And then drown in the glow
Cuz we flow with the snow
And we stroll with the wave of the LSD
slideshow
Rock and we roll
And we let the world know
There ain’t nothin’ this Latin American don’t
Consider before resorting to violence
Trust me my people were peasants and pirates
We’ve made a new world with some Holy Cross virus
We burned down the fields till the babies grew quiet
We built all your cities for ours were of gold
Then we ripped out your heart and we watched you grow old
In the cold
Jungle heavens
Where 6’s 8 7’s
Pollutants and mutants
And magic illusions
My gods are the marvelous magnetic humans
A core brotherhood
Left A F, but not rude
We bump night in the dark
And swing noose on the mood
Like the Musso de’ Lini
Yea Mikey says hi
Let him cry like the grito de lares
Inside
A reminder I claim his Malinche,
My bride
And I show her the world
From a whole other side
Where united as one
We keep mixing perspective
Until all the colors of wind
Are reflected
I draw peace across the cavern walls
Michael Marchese Jul 2022
Who fathoms
Such fell
Otherworldly
Monstrosities
Pray tell the master
Of cosmic
Hypotheses
Inter-dimensional
Overlords  
Reigning
Unyielding,
Unbound
By these pages containing
The secret to death
And its infinite ominous
Dominance
Bottomless
Is the oblivion
Marking my provenance
Summon calamity gods
In my godlessness
Vaunted to prominence
In the abstract
Science-fiction
Addiction
Dark matters
Of fact
Michael Marchese Feb 2022
Fluttering
Hovering
Into the evening
To delve deeper in
A most hedonist Eden
Still shy
Beyond reckoning
Recklessly beckoning
Her to appear
Disappear
From my fear
From the mere
Insincere
Steering clear
Of my view
Then renew like a library book
Overdue
For a fuming
Subsuming
The room kind of gloom
As she channels the solace
Like tides to the moon
But in howling
She hears
Only words to ignore
And in floating through space
She is ready for war
And she tore me to shreds
For my feeble submission
Selection of lesser muse
Radio friction
Just listen
And learn
She will spin you a web
As her siren songs shriek
In the back of your head
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
Michael Marchese May 2023
Blank me out
Stare
At my pair of
Disguise
Wipe me out
Like a drought
When you answer
The whys
The goodbyes
Must ensue
Seem to always
Come true
Never quite
Empathize
What we really go through
Just conclude
Only ends
No escape
No return
The wound mends
The mind bends
Ever love
Never learn
There is no perfect union
Just fragments
Of whole
Optimistic
Endeavor’s
Unreachable goal
So forget’er
World nether
Embrace
The amnesia
Induced by my
Loosening
Trip synesthesia
Michael Marchese Apr 2023
Still slaves to Apple
But they treat us nice
For their only demand
Is a brand new device

Still beholden to Google
But they see it all
And they only expect
I continue to call

Still an Amazon serf
But to work for them worse
Is their presents
More peasants

A gift or a curse?
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
Michael Marchese Oct 2022
Nightling
In the quiet rapture
Soon to take you out
To pasture
Casting shadows
On the wall
As in and out
Of love
I fall
And scrawled a codex
On the floor
Rosetta ******
In Nevermore
Eternally
Nocturnal
Wake
Forsaken son
Of goodness sake
I’ll break into
Your safest space
And bank on black
You’ll never find me
See you at
My not-so timely
Unassuming
Doom and gloom
Just feed me to the void
In bloom
Michael Marchese Mar 2019
I guess I could smile
Pretend I'm a friend
And exude the illusion
That they can depend
On my purest intentions
To cleanse filthy hands
Of the innocent guilt,
Smite it dead where it stands
Because there is no counting
The crimes I've committed
Or those they have yet to try
Thee unforgiven
Transgressions unspoken
The word of God
Covenant
Binding chains broken
And to higher powers
Influence awaken
Not those a savior
Or those of a Satan
Could stop them
Control them
Or answer their prayers
When they find
Only they
Overcome the travails
Set before them
By not
A didactic instructor
Parental mentor
Just the world
And its suffering
Life to endure
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
Lost in deserts thirsting for  
Oasis destinations
These mirages passing through
Like the kings of old who drew
Their course from constellations

Drifting through the wanderdust
Across Sahara's dunes
No Ra to guide me through the day
Khonshu himself could not convey
My weary traveler moons

A pharaoh needs no resting place
When he becomes the Nile
And watches pyramids of sand
Slip right through each clenching hand
The tombs of his divine exile
Michael Marchese Jun 2022
Don’t settle just yet
For the easy way out
The perfunctory effort’s
Diminished amount
Of concerted
Reverted to
Just getting by
Such a welcoming trap
To succumb to and die
Having never affirmed
Your invalid credentials
To still go unlearned
Your holistic potential
With no differential
To make you unique
Clocking in again
Out again
9-5 sheep
Michael Marchese Feb 2022
Have all these images
Who we’re supposed to be
He and she norms
I romanticize
Hopelessly
Lovelessness graves
I’m contained
In her ghosting me
Spirits and vapors
Erase recollection
And she disconnects
Into astral projection
As digital,
Pivotal
Message subliminals
Steal her attention away,
I’m invisible
Can’t be more tangible
Still though untouched
Like a hand-held device
Is more worthy of trust
Though I’ve clutched her frail digits
And kissed her eclipses
I’m still overshadowed
By sideshow exhibits
And live in this
Freak on a leash
Other world
Where no fakes
Can heartbreak
Such a nothing’s real girl
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
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
This lingering, faint recollection of feeling
I banish from sight
As the dark
Does the light
And the happy and sad
Are but furnace nerves steeling
To iron-blood boiling
Tranquility cauldrons
Concocting this needless emotional state
From the mental blockades
Playing games
With perception
And dulling my sharpest instincts
On reflection

All manner of new information is ancient
I can not recall
Where my dinosaur days went
Just pay spent in dazes of hazy tomorrow’s
And mazes of ways
I can’t save them
To suffer
The sorrow beseeching
The preacher,
The teacher,
The savior,
The seeker
The rebel warmongering silent peacekeeper
The down in the deeper last breadths
Of the depths,
Leave him gasping for breath
Now he’s choking to death

On the fact and the fictions
In non-fiction sections,
Contra-contradictions
In history lessons
And ghosts
Of his former past selves
He dispels
But forgets how to spell
The most simple of tasks,
When a jack of all trades
Is the crack in his back,
And the flash-backing
Visions
Are worlds far away,
Yet still do they elude him?
Is anyone’s guess
For he knows nothing less,
Nothing more,
Nothing true,
Just knows all of the lies
His eyes see
Right on through
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
As I ponder the mysteries
Question the answers
Entranced by enormity’s
Drawn-to-scale terms
They take turns
In their petty,
Pathetic
Concerns
As I’m turning each page
To disturb me,
Disrupt
What I just want to seek
Not to share
Nor explain
Nor would I deign to teach
For to do so
Would merely be
Lessons in vanity
Man in his vapid
Evaporations
Condescendingly
Rising in higher-formed
Hubris delusion
To elevations
Far above
What the students
Of even
The most of well-grounded,
Eclectic
Diverse juvenescence
Have ever expected
Of class is in session
From me
Or the host
Of these Holy Ghost preachers
Pretending
We’re of degrees equal
In kinds
Of mind-bending
The will of the people
Michael Marchese Aug 2022
Oh no I just live here
Just try to exist here
Don’t own my own home
Rather roam
Open road
Than be humble
Abode
Welcome guests
Nonetheless
To my house party
Mode
Where I’ll make your acquaintance
Conversing renascence
And cohabitate
With all
Homeostasis
Michael Marchese Jun 2023
I will always be the shadow
Seldom seen,
Rarely heard
Barely verbalizing
Any
Written,
Stutter
Spoken word
But on the mountain
In the fog
I am the ghost
Of mostly gone
I am forgotten,
Undesired,
Disappearing
All along
You cannot find me,
Just remind me
To at times
Make presence known
And should I feel like talking
Only locking eyes
With her alone
Michael Marchese May 2021
This community
Of color
Is a dark distorted lover
Off the lot
Missed her a lot
When you’re the arid swamp
Despot
And misbegotten
Bird of mocking
Make the penman
Fill the plot
And not a thought is lost
On motions passed
In petty Freddy Gray
In petty cash,
In gaseous masks
In play bills on parade
Just herbal verbal
supplementals
Twigs and cap and spores
And scores of elemental
Muses
Understory roars
When force alone
Can often turn
The people on the camera
And suddenly it’s like
Entire worlds
Are out to scam ‘ya
It’s a capital imperial
Dominion
Taking hold
And Capitol-attacking
Masses
Who still want it for
The gold
Michael Marchese Jun 2024
Cavalries,
Fleets,
And the streets
Are all mine
All these corridors, mine
All these concubines, mine
All my coffers are brimming
With enemies’ dime
And my dungeons still reek
Of the insolent swine
And my right to command
All the land
Is divine
But I will
Cause depression,
Make hunger a weapon,
And question the curs
Like a history lesson
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 exact
Its transactions
You still are inherently bound
To its taxes
Michael Marchese May 2018
The opioid battle droid
Children butchered
Homes destroyed
Can’t go back and face
His nation
State so full of hate
Can’t take it
Great again is just a saying
No amount of pity praying
Seems to stay each day decaying
PTSD noise parading
Medicating, mind grenading
Every step is compound raiding
Waiting for the pain to fade
But they just trade his life away
False promises, he’s led astray
To drone alone and aimlessly
Fight on these Clone Wars shamelessly  
In vein is he
More mech than man
Reprogrammed by
Afghanistan
Cutta’ peace  
Of the skyscraper
Cake
Let them eat
From the scrap heaps
Of history
Still on repeat
And asleep
I could teach
A class
Clearly distinguished
But through it
Exude
A feud
Not yet relinquished

So onto impending
Long marches embark
To the promised landless
Wealth disparities
Stark
And the heart of it?
Darkness
A global south reeling
Like sea levels up to
Our bets
In debt ceiling

The whole world is feeling
Disorders
And borders
Our minds
Are bombarded by
Media mortars
Attention-grabs constantly
Picking our pockets
And more artificial
Brain draining
Can't stop it

And you think it’s what?
An Israeli
Witch hunt?
Robber baron
Trump cun🙃’s
Next publicity stunt?
That will salvage this sinking
Titanic disgrace
This imperial ******* cede’s
Unresolved race
To consumerist
Tok bottom's
Mass-produced waste

But my warning
Though cryptic,
Explicit for years
It would come
With a flag,
And a cross,
And some beers
But I’d gladly break bread
With my countrymen
Now and then
Free to speak
Their preferred tongues
Of American

Fluently spewing
Self-evident truths
Yet proficiently parroting
Penguins in suits
With their legacies
Stained
Merit-baseless
Admission
Still masterfully feigned
As a unified vision

Omissions of guilt
From the most
Greedy filth
We have seen
In our time
By the millions
A minute
Their profit ships
Climb
And so many
A powerless man
Left behind
And their penny stock
Options
Seem more like a crime…🤔…

But I guess we don’t try
Those offenses
In court
We just settle for less
Than a right to abort
We don’t hold to account
All the coin they extort
Don’t put tariffs
On trafficking human
Import
Unreported
Distorted reality
Snort
When the law
Is a ***** fat cat,
A Musk rat,
A rohypnotize
Broligarch
Party boy
Frat
Michael Marchese Mar 2024
Now you see me
Now you don’t
But looks
Can be deceiving
Won’t
Reveal my secret
Lest you steal
My thunder from
The big reveal
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