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Feb 2021 · 107
Incompatibility Test
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Feel like each one of these
Spells it out perfectly,
But I was seldom so down with this,
Living it up
In my basement,
Encased in
The still giving up
We were barely embraced
And yet here I am
Wasted
So spaced in
The depths
And because you
Still searching
Their infinite breadth
For the rhyme
That brings genuine
Heat
To this house
Or the one to clutch closer
Despondent in doubt
I was cold,
Very distant,
A strange
Estranged lover
The same way I am
As a son
And a brother
Alone
You must know
But I want everyone
To be similar, no?
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Fellow humans
We don’t like each other,
We aren’t all equal
We aren’t the same
Individual being
Of course,
That’s naive
But we gather,
Amass, and before us
We grieved
Even for
Other creatures
Pretending we leave
For salvation
So nothing to fear
Just as long as you never forget
We are here
We are now
We were there
We are how
It’s remembered,
Preserved
And appears
As the form
We accept
And from henceforth
Revere
Feb 2021 · 80
Daybreak
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Ate too much
Drank too much
But it’s been days
Since I even absorbed
More than morbid malaise
Oh I know
I went there
All alone
Without fear
But I dread
Megan dread
We would ever be here
And her name is still fresh
On my lips
All the same
And my friends are still
Numero
Uno
Unchanged
But it’s different these days
We get weird
But estranged
To the simplest things we
Ever said
Disengage
At the first sign of trouble
We try and explain
How it happened
Elapsed in
Some time we perceive
Although few can still answer
What do you believe?
I’d say us
As it was
But so much is gone
Can not recover
The dawn
Looks enticing
Inviting me on
But I’d rather it end
Before then,
Curtains drawn
Feb 2021 · 71
Just the Two of us
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Confounded by how
As the hours elapse
I could still be attempting
To try and relax
Get a word out or two
So the day seems important  
And talking to none
But myself
So discordant
For mordant
His self-deprecating
Edge stings
As he pushes my buttons
And pulls on my strings
And it brings me no solace
To numerate merits
His tasks
Were just masks
That the now me inherits
And parrots with subtle
Distinctions
Of the instinctive
Prefers as rebuttal
Befuddled again
I know
So am I
Though
Even thinking it so
Would suggest
His shadow
Feb 2021 · 163
The Vital Impulse
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Makes us human
Not machine
Compels us to
Laugh at obscene
Without the instinct
Speciation
Specious,
Merely
Speculation
Artifice intelligence
The origin itself
Distorted
Only intuitions
Sort it
Out
For we are more
Conformed to flout
The mechanistic
Too simplistic
Logic
Carbon  
Organisms
In a rhythmic
River of
Consistent flow
Step in,
Step out
And then you know
This life anew
Not quite
A circle
Its dynamics
Sempiternal
Based on the philosophical position coined by Bergson
Feb 2021 · 111
Contradiction
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Like ravenous songbirds
Discordantly musing
I try to please ears
What you hear
Is confusing
And locked in this paradox
Box
I assess
What contributes
These attributes’
Lack of success
I’m a mess
Of misgivings,
Misdeeds,
Misconceptions
Mistakes,
Misbegotten
Misjudgments
Enmeshed in
Repressed fantasies
And misplaced former dreams
Like a sentience still trapped inside
Minds of machines
Feb 2021 · 61
Stay
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
How to make it go away
To wish you’d stay
Out of my head
Last vestige of my solace
Dread
Pervades
Devoid of you
Desert me in
This solitude
Surreal it isn’t still a dream
How much together
Could have seen
And thinking you prefer it more
With someone else
Corrodes my core
Yet peace consoles
Me in the dark
My heart is broken
Not apart
Too long from feeling
What we had
Except that now
It feels like sad
Feb 2021 · 105
The Scribe
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Guess we weren’t worth saving
Or only that once
The pretense of salvation
Was dust into dust
Just to sire creation
Abandoned to fate
But still willing us freedom
To reincarnate
As you did
The deceiver
The charlatan
Prophet
Instilled with your Word
And imbued with your gifts
But like any man
Bows
Before my
Hieroglyphs
Feb 2021 · 76
The Witch and the Warlock
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
We liked to start pyres
And dance with the devil
Conspired to sire
Empires to level
We reveled in vices
Incited deceit
Then delighted in slaughter
Without eating meat
For the sheeple beneath us
Did not understand
How our black magic covenant
Did not demand
Some occult loyal following,
Supplicants bowed
To society’s
Just be a face in the crowd
Looking back
In judgmental
Disdain
For our kind
Liberated
We watched
As the rest of them died
In our most wicked rendezvous
Learning to fly
We devised evil plans
Of dispelling the norms
We divined how to conjure up
Energy storms
But were still good together
Not hurting a soul
Save the two we had long ago
More or less
Sold
Jan 2021 · 77
How it F*cks You up
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
You live out there
For awhile
And think about
Everything you left behind
When you get down
Below despair
She’s gone
Get over it
Beware
I’m pathetic
I get it
And really high now
I’m the third wheel
My guys
You know
I get down
I get mad
I get dark
I get all these emotions
You know
All apart
From reality
Barely
In gravity
Loved her so much
That I laughed
At her ghost
For the others
My mother
Can’t talk to her now
Don’t make jokes
Or I’ll watch you die slowly
And revel in pain
And feel nothing
Inside
As I burn in the rain
Jan 2021 · 112
Monsoon Dude
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
The unrivaled ego
In all of its vanity
Herald of Nature’s
Impending calamity
Sheer existential
Endurance
Incarnate  
Still armed to the teeth
Is my ethos untarnished
I harness
Indignant
And channel it
Rage
My composure as chill
As a blizzard ablaze
For in balance I strive,
With fluidity glide
I’m the tempest emerging,
Storm surging inside
And I won’t be denied
The landfall
After all
The deniers
Acclimatized
Feel me alive
Jan 2021 · 86
Can’t Help it
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Don’t think about her,
Oh look
Now I am
And been living the same day
All over again
I’m approaching a year
Since returning
From where
I expected to find
A more current affair
Fall in love
With a cause
I could actually care
For embracing
But space
Has a way
Of erasing
Connection
And to my dismay
I felt only depression
Regret
I had ever left
Whom I held dear
Now with nothing to show for it
We disappear
From whatever else
Might have been
Better together
Just sever the ties
This goodbye
Is forever
Jan 2021 · 119
The Landlord
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Always the hero
In my own story
I craft greater states
Just to bask in the glory
Of having fed millions
Or starved them the same
I enslave nations just
To preserve my surname
For I came, saw and conquered
Laid claim with a stroke
Of the sword or the pen
Lesser men I have smote
From the history
Victory mine
For all time  
With my sickle, the tithe
I deflower your bride
With my hammer
Devise
Revolutions worldwide

Be they Soviet winters
Or Yankee free trades
Be they fascism cinder’s
Unholy crusades
They all circle back to
Me on top of the graves
To parades in my honor
Yet at your expense
I dispense with fair housing
And build tenements
Whilst enriching my vassals
My castle secured
With a horde of war dogs
At my beck and call
Forge
The steel bent to my will
The wheel spinning the mill
The drill rigging the bill
Becomes law
I instill

In your progeny
Serving me
My private property
Simply livestock market
Panic posterity
Feeding my Titanic
Furnace of industry
Making my products,
My profits, my brand
Stamped upon its collection
Of serfs I command,
Posted signs propagating
Updated newsstand
Bought and sold
By my no more gold standard
Stronghold
Growing old
I suppose
But foreclosing
Still now
So submit to
Depend on me,
Bend the knee,
Bow
Jan 2021 · 46
Get It?
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Written it
Infinite ways
Through the years
But it’s always the same,
No one cares
No one hears
All the billions
Must feel
Often similar
No?
Then how do we silently
Suffer alone?
Who to tell
And to share it with
Commiserate
As you age
You’d think
Others
Could better relate
Jan 2021 · 86
Resigned Acceptance
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Not apathy
But naturally
Defaulting on
Catastrophe
Is possible
And plausible
And thus is just
Unsolvable
Too much exists
To comprehend
Too much resists
Its fate to end
And such attempts
Do not make sense
To rage against
Impermanence
In vehemence
Or fulmination
Air and fire
Conflagration
Made us all
And shall unmake
The urban sprawl
The wilderness
The in-between  
Is nothing but
Internecine
Conflicting clans
In entropy
Will ever be
How it unfolds
And with it my
Life story goes
Jan 2021 · 76
Priceless
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Everyone prides themselves
Free-spirited
But relies
On the all-seeing eye
Of the pyramid
Can’t live without it
Don’t doubt it has value
Enabled and bound
By what it
Should allow you
To feel you are true
To your word
Liberation
Not waiting on state‘s
For your due compensation  
From laboring
Toiling away
To have more
Of the choice
They supply
To the fully-stocked store
But you have to go back
Or else what would you eat?
Free to starve
In the market
Of cheat or compete
Jan 2021 · 127
Illness
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Sick of feeling
Myself wither
Spewed it from
My shriveled liver
Winter takes a heavy toll
And lachrymose
Is my old soul
For I was once
So young with her
But can’t go back
To how we were
In love
It seems
Can disappear
Or was it even
Ever there?
Apparent in
Some kind of sense
To me
Or else
Why these laments?
She mentioned
I might be depressed
Expressing now
The evidence
Presentiments
Of no known cure
But burials
Of premature
Relinquished will
To carry on
Endure no longer
Dead and gone
Jan 2021 · 95
Tannhäuser
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Beckoned,
Allured
By her tempting enchantments
The goddess of love
So enraptures me
Granting
Her sirens
Commanded
To pleasure,
Untether me
Take me away
To a world
Of forever free
To be immersed
In this curse
Divine feminine
Elegant in
Its resplendent  
Serenity
Though so detached
I soon longed to return
To one in which man
Had hence from me
Once spurned
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Can’t leave her side
Always on her
Rely
When without her
You cry
When she’s gone?
Can’t survive
Why belie
You are anything more
Than a child?
So eager to seek out
A care-taking lover
Replacing  
The lost embrace
Arms of the mother
Borrowed a quote from Donnie Darko for the title
Jan 2021 · 85
More Than
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
I like learning
  More than teaching
I like searching
  More than planning
I like being
  More than doing
I like thinking
  More than speaking
I like drinking
  More than smoking
I like broken
  More than hoping
I like music
  More than movies
I like winning
  More than losing
I like feeling
  More than judging
I like solving
  More than grudging
I like loving
  More than hating
I like dating
  More than mating
I like sorrow
  More than anger
I like risky
  More than danger
I like stranger
  More than normal
I like human
  More than mortal
Jan 2021 · 68
Ataraxia
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Never forget
It is we make the gods
Out of fear
At the end
They were merely facades
Fabricated
Created
Innate inclination
To justify,
Deify
Civilization
To coincide with
Our attempts to destroy
The void lurking
When searching
For peace to enjoy
But deprived of it
Sell ourselves short
And submit
To the will of some greater force
Must be the cause of it
Moving, unmoved
Influencing, unchanged
The timeless space
Formless
Encased
In the brain
Jan 2021 · 117
Montaigne
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Philosophize  
Learning to die
Take your time
Make the most of it
Closer each day
To goodbye
Don’t decide
Based on others’
Approvals
Withheld
Be ourselves
In a solitude
Solely our own
And entrust that within the world
We are at home
Jan 2021 · 56
Numbers
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Count them up
Equate success
Obsess over
A calculus
Fixate upon
Their digitized
Measure the size
Of atomized
Itemization
Stuff we buy
To keep the ticking
Clock goodbye
From timing out
Before its hands
Have through the cracks
Allowed the sands
To pour against the grain
Just one
Between them
Infinitely
None
Jan 2021 · 68
Revelation of the Progeny
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
I saw what we could be
And yet
What we are
What we were
All at once
Just the kids of a star
Jan 2021 · 88
The Failed Coup
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
But what have you accomplished?
Have you gained?
Have you changed?
By its very definition
Revolution
Is the same
At the end,
From the beginning
Circles back to where it stays
The power reigns
Just in the form
Of what the order’s law
Betrays
The best intentions
Left eventually
To hell the roads are paved
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
I have to accept that she’s gone
The left fading
Yet growing in strength
When we talk of pervading
We protected animals
Not even human
In ruins
We let them all grave
And got through it
Together
I tell you
United
Undaunted
Two kids in it breeding
Unheeding
In e
And trust me
I want all the revolutionaries
There
Reunion
Seeing splattered frames
Depicting
In excessive art
The drunken trip
I told my best friend
You were death
From the start
And still here we are dead
The left politics club
And we are from all ranks
Of all classes
And my family still honors me
Never without me
And when you seek
Educating yourself
To the end
It just happens
To happen
Before you are ready
The easiest living
Soon as I can remember
Myself to forgiving
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Was there with the simple folk
Brokering peace
Liberal hubris incarnate
From Hellenic Greece
I was sent
To sow discord
And sword out the weak,
Like a lord over wheat
Grew inured to privation,
In filth I would eat
Not the least bit perturbed
By the state of police
For I stated my nature
With wraiths in my speech,
Cultivated my culture
Like vultures in heat
Infiltrated the ranks
Of the skanks there to tempt me
A sentry, preemptively,
Of feelings emptied

Before compromising,
Devising the next
Annexation prospects
And subjecting the rest
To exalt the apex
Because love is a war,
Just a game of conquest
And my argument formed
Of the West’s architects
In the bastion of sophistry
History’s greatest
Imperial city,
Glossary glossing me as
A Romantic
But no sense disputing
The paltry semantics,
Was just serving what
Time itself can’t resist,
The interest
Of my people’s

Utopian bliss
Jan 2021 · 72
The Pundit
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
No industrious,
Sedulous
Worker ant slaving
I just deride hive-minded
Throngs and mobs
Paving
The way
For a more supreme order
Since discontent rules
And the truth’s
A reporter’s
Opinion
Dominion
Still supersedes fact
What is that?
But I know
What you don’t,
And that’s that
Jan 2021 · 72
Immutable
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
It will still always be there
The sorrow incarnate
Explaining it would take
As long,
Disregard it
Forget it
Just let it
Come to its conclusion
The you and me
Romanticizing
Illusion
Or mostly me
Selfishly
Leading to ruin
What good ever happens
To dare I say love
Reveal itself to be
Still not quite enough
Jan 2021 · 99
A Stray
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Just wanted to go
Through the time flow with you
When it was more convenient
To let it resume
At a later date
Procrastinating
What fate
Might have preordained  
Only in movies
Afraid
It so seldom transpires
Or seems to unfold
Quite the same
Way, astray
Is with whom I grow old
Jan 2021 · 72
Fade
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
And now I get angry
There’s no one to save me
Can’t make me be happy
I might as well stake
My heart through
Love is blue
Each attempt,
A mistake
And you knew
Going into it
Sooner than late
It would break,
Fall apart,
Or deteriorate
As it has
Now diminished
To here we are finished
With you
And with me
All my flaws
Insurmountable
Just a lost cause
For the fallout
Accountable
Doubt permeated
My brain
And unmade it
Created estrangement between us
And bade it
To hating what we couldn’t change
Or rephrase
In a more perfect way
Than just from our lives fade
Jan 2021 · 77
Collapse
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
One in a billion
Awaiting out there
But I’m certain
In that many years
Can’t compare
To the healing
You were
My affliction, despair
I was barely beginning
To finally care
About what in the world
Wasn’t just me aware
Of your rarity,
Verity
Taken for granted
How much you were there with me
There when I
Ranted
Recanted,
Commanded attention
And by you enchanted
Enamored I guess
Without saying the word
Thought it best
To be best of friends,
Not bridges burned
Jan 2021 · 75
Falling out of Orbit
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Take all of my childhood trauma,
Distress
And the rest that I earned
In the vast emptiness
Of a world
We’ve both seen
Diametrically skewed
By the you and I
Have to get back
To renew
This connection,
This bond,
This innate
Journey on
I just took it for granted
And now you are gone
Perhaps even for good
This time, really
You should
Try to help me no more,
You want more
Than I could
Hope to fix,
Ever change,
I’m the same
Sad abyss
That I was when I found you
The sound of you bound
Me to now have to her
Revolving around
Jan 2021 · 152
Shadowfax
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Outrunning even
Wraiths on wings
Headlong into
The battle brings
The wizard back
To task
Complete
The sleekest steed
Whose fleeting streak
Inspires awe
In noble
And meager alike
Alight he charges
Into night
Against the forces
Sent to claim
The kingdoms free
Of Mordor’s chain
And unrelenting
Charges on
Throughout the ages
In this song
Jan 2021 · 75
Prospects
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Promising leads
On a path into middle class
Comfort and ease
In addition to burdens
It seems to relieve
Would be nice
Not to worry
Just constantly hurry
Through tasks,
Obligations,
Demands it entails
Make myself of some use,
Lessen others’ travails
Promote global affairs
And take care
To be wary
Of how my impact
Can be made
While still keeping
The world peace in tact
Jan 2021 · 119
Stimulus Checks
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Friends come to conflict
More often than norm
Agitated with ease
Merely from
Being bored
Self-absorbed
In the day goes by
Nothing change brain
Draining out
As it preoccupies
Its inane
Inclination
To waste its own time
But what better use of it
Than live off the dime
Of the government’s
Money
Least partially mine
A leech parsing through slime
I’m just making my way in the world
Going buy
Jan 2021 · 102
No Help Needed
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Just ask you provide me
The means
To subsist
A sufficient
And dignified
Living
Exist
Not persist in the bill-paying,
Tax-collect
Fraud
Just a scam away,
One bad day
Further from God
Journey on
To convince
It is somewhere out there
Haven’t seen it though
Since
I was all too aware
Of the manic depression
Inherent in bio’s fears
Warping dimension
Mind-bending this lucid sphere
Shaper’s intention
Must be in this state  
Only madness makes sense
I just do it
And write it
With more eloquence
Jan 2021 · 84
New Low Score
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Playing phone games
For a living
Just giving
Up trying
To be
A professional villain
Or willing to power
Mad-driven ambition
Spend all day alone
Or unconsciously wishing
To not wake again
And go peacefully
Deep in some dream
In the end
I was never intended
To make it through
This
Don’t exist
Don’t belong
Dismalest
Nothingness
Jan 2021 · 82
Resolution
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Who really cares
Enough to
Follow through
Or to start over
When the year changes
To new
Think you could,
But just won’t
Know you should,
But still don’t
So then why
Even try
To convince yourself
Otherwise?
Jan 2021 · 82
For Real
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Basket case
Waste of space
Nobody loves me
Not wanted,
Not needed,
No gods up above me
Just waiting around
For the better to worsen
Can’t do hookup culture,
Would rather in person
Don’t want to be laboring,
Toiling away
No careers or professions
Appeal to allay
Unassuageable
Dissatisfaction malaise
And the qualms that I have
With consuming to gain
Anymore than I need
To politely refrain
From engaging behaviors
That only attain
Me a pay to play
Game of life
Simulation
Dec 2020 · 51
The Domesticated
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
I still keep the peace
But at times
I disturb it
Since often it feels
It is best
To unlearn it
Return to a less civilized
State of mind
And just take
What I need
From the one in decline
Currently
It seems easy
Enough to collect
On my unemployed intellect’s
Sustenance check
That without it
Deprived
I would live in the wild
Estranged from the system
In hungry exile
But no,
Not again,
Can’t contend the sovereign
So instead I depend
On its to survive
Spend
Dec 2020 · 46
Poetry
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Reading so much of it
Mine is inadequate
Even my more adored,
Said before
Better
By others
Precisely
Perfecting each letter
Intended to mean
Subjectivity
Intricate
Simplicity
But regardless of brevity
Nonetheless fails
To convey
What I really would like to feel
To no avail
Dec 2020 · 56
The Cognizant
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Lean up against the wall
And wait
Someone will be along
To state
Sooner or later
What they make
Themselves appear to be
Awake
But I’m aware
The only one
Who’s really in here
Having fun
Dec 2020 · 128
The Journeyman
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Yearn to be back
In the vast expanse
Questing
Adventure still beckons
But more second guessing
The longer I stay
In this place of stagnation
That keeps me at pay
Levels meager
But somewhat acceptable
More than I’d make
As a vagabond spectacle
Dec 2020 · 55
Don’t Even Know Anymore
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
But that’s just it
You know
I go
Around the town pretending  
That there’s any other girl out there
I could imagine ending
This disgusting
Hollow shell of life for
No more sorrow to incite for
Violence, we want peace I know
But none will ever let it show
The way I did
And could
With you
The guy who knows about the feud
But only covets more of you
And he together
Words ensue
Organically in my dementia
So much left to tell you
Never
Can I have the days return
So much left
Us both to learn
But please forget me
Leave me gone
I fear that I must
Die alone
Don’t answer me
It helps to flee
So far away from
Happily
Conclusions that we’re both aware
Would only make us
More despair
I wasn’t perfect in the least
You weren’t some too easy beast
I broke just like the others
How?
Were you before them
And still now?
Dec 2020 · 53
Why I Do This
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Would appear
They take liking
To ones about writing
The most
But I don’t mean to boast
Of my scribing
Capacities
Lyrical rhapsodies
Nothing like that
I just type what comes naturally
Try to keep track
And reflect back upon
Who I was yesterday
So in years from now
Both of us know
How I changed
Dec 2020 · 94
Never Wanted
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Am I just bitterness
Unfulfilled
Discontentedness
Restless
And anxious
Just want to escape this
Perpetual do-over day
None to blame
But myself
For this dismal, morose,
Woe is me
Soul decay
Which I know to say sounds
Like a lousy clichè
Not the writer’s expressive
Quintessence
Expected
From one such as I
Am by others rejected
Insect among tachyons
God among atom bombs
Nothing else left
Except left-leaning martyrdom
And whom I long
To behold at least once
More before
I return
To this ongoing war with
What keeps me from her
Dec 2020 · 113
The Grinch
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Be right back
Stealing Christmas
Real quick
I’ll be swift
As a flash
Not a light I’ll let flicker
On trees turned to ash
And I’ll stash the cache deep
In my cavernous lair
And it’s there it will keep
Until I reappear
In the new year
To do it all over again
Upend every tradition
And dollar you spend
On material sentiment
Commodified
As this luxury fetishized  
Marketize lie
Dec 2020 · 76
Sold Out
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Opportunity knocks
An incentive to write
Otherwise
It’s just normally
How I do life
Never needed a reason
Or rhyme
To break even
And I never coveted profit
Receiving
For what I’d prefer to be shared
Just like this
A communal experience
Still penniless
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
It’s days that go by
I’m left wondering why
I thought living without you
I even could try
To pretend I don’t need you
Don’t see you now writing
Your likeness instilled
In my gloomy moonlighting
As some independent
Erstwhile
In-lover
With you it was always
Just being each other
But I was still lonely
Somehow
Didn’t hold you
As long as I could
Should’ve told you the words
Maybe you never would
For at best
It was care for you deeply
I feel
And trust me
I felt it too
Good to be real
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