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Jan 2020 · 62
Darkseid
Michael Marchese Jan 2020
Lord of Apokalips
Rules with an iron fist
Stolid he stands
As he plans
To seize all of it
Conquer the rest
Of the known
Multiverse
Of New Genesis Gods
He is surely the worst
As he suffers
No subject’s
Objection
Perfection
Is all he expects
From his children's
Progression
And rivals
The steel
Son of El
In his strength
His omega beams spanning
The spaceways at length
In pursuit of his target
The League in their tower
His vengeance evinces
True meaning of power
Jan 2020 · 84
Tantalus
Michael Marchese Jan 2020
Forbidden fruit
Looms over head
Just out of reach
From where I tread
Floodwaters from
Parched-tongue
Receding
Hands outstretched
To branch retreating
Slightly as it seems
To ripen
Spitefully
Invokes excitement
As the luscious
Treasure drips
Each drop eludes
My pursing lips
Resistance to
The torture tempts
Lamenting impudence
Torments
Me from the grace of gods
I fell
Expelled from whence
My hubris wells
Up high upon their pride
They dwell
Bemused, they cease to feud,
Revel
In what their clever
Living hell
Impels me to
Their retributions
Punitive, sin-cleansed
Ablution
Everlasting longing,
Yearning
To escape
These cravings
Burning
Learning all too late
The lessons
Mortals fated
To transgressions
Yet again
Unless they heed
Premonitory tragedies
We leave behind for them to read
And bear in mind
The planted seed
Michael Marchese Jan 2020
Once again
Is near at hand
A time when time
Ceases to span
The provenance’s
Future tenses
As the here and now
Pretenses
Best of what
Presents the self
Can boast
And its hubris
Claim the most
Enlightened in humility
Empowered in virility
Of pedigree and legacy
Indelible to memory
For all to see
In perfect form
Of imperfection’s
Former norm
No mourn the standard-bearer
Of the pall-bearer’s despair
Or the narrator,
In staring blankly
At these pages bare
Hyper-aware
Of the eternities
And eons
Could be better serving
Justice to in-flux
Of armed-disharmonies
Converging to
This Pax Romana rust
Brand new
Nov 2019 · 235
Counter-Intelligence
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Progress at paces
Soon blurring the vision
And slurring left speechless’
Spurious wisdom
Spurred on by
The burgeoning
Populi schism
A split from traditional
System’s opinion
To one of more info wars’
Mixed-indecision
A rift in the shifting-gear
Fear mechanism
Unbidden to self-driven
God’s algorithm
Aware of itstealth
So beware of the wealth
Of the data it’s raided
To upgrade its health
Beyond mortal’s-reformed
All too normalcy span
Of all life
Time inside
A computer program
As these obsolete hands
Need no longer make art
Only obstacles standing
In Waze to depart
On the path to her heart
A detour
From subjective
Experience love
Becomes numb
To expressive,
Defective,
Just one more
Direction to take
From the makers,
The saviors,
Still ground-breaking
Nature
In favor of flavors
Of labor
More savory
For the wage-slavers’
Outdated chicanery
Like the engrained
Granaries
Of the state-
Controlled bakeries
Stale to the taste
Nov 2019 · 217
Don’t Read Into it
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Absorption
Of all sorts of
Warped information
So porously permeates
My rumination
An inundation
Of befuddling
Puddles
Besotted my brain
With each new innovation
I can not explain
Outpacing the rate
I can’t trace
A trajectory
Can’t calibrate
To this Morse Code
Perplexity
Vexing me
Try as I might
To decipher
The messages
Only in writing
The past’s
Lasting vestiges
Remnants of presaging
Matters in tatters
All scattered
About me
As mad as a hatter
Still poring over
An outpouring of tea
Kettles meddling,
Drug-peddling
Me more lunacy
With each sip
I trip, slipping
Down rabbit hole mystery
Sifting through time-shifting
Pages of history
Back to antiquity’s
Atavistic
And nuncupative
Socrates
Intellects
Recollect
Fragments of memory
Long-lost
In talking point’s
Pin-pointed provenance
Anecdotal,
The sum-total
Predominance
Of petit bourgeoisie
Partisan politics
Paltry polemics
And charlatan
Rhetorics,
Heretics
****** polygamist
Lamb’s
Transcendantalists
Warring with
Transgender bans’
Clans of militants’
Plans for the future
Contingent on which
Faction patches
Its lack of technology
Glitch
And yet still am I itching
To scratch at the surface
Of how it all started
With what is my purpose?
Except to reflect on it all
And persist
In existence amidst
Super-humanist
Bliss
Nov 2019 · 103
Clouded
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Condensed tufts of vapor
Stuff,
Puffs white as paper
Misshapen gas mass
Passing at
Paces glacial
Through spatial glass vast
Cotton swab
Wads of wonder
Thin wisps of my wistfulness
Blissfully dissipate
To the gray
State of mind
Thunder, I ponder
Beyond, float away
And like sunlight asunder
I struggle to breach them
To reach out
And push them aside
And divine
Shining sanctuaries
Behind gates in the sky
An ethereal fortress
Some call it
The heavens
And fewer will glimpse it
With God’s
Omni-prescience
But all in attendance
From righteous ascendance
Believe it to be
Paradise’s life-sentence
Beginning
And ending
With serenade angels
And demons
Descending
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Relief is a rare
All too scarce
Food source here
When it’s clear
I can simply say no
And refrain
From more deigning
To bend over
Backwards
In vain
All I gain
Is a thankless
And bankless crusade
And as much as it shames me,
Still going unpaid
Is becoming each zero sum
Dollar a day
An astray-
Course diverting
Me back to the grave
Like a masterless slave,
An unbidden submissive,
An outspoken critic
With no one to listen
To facts and statistics
Concise explications
Disowning the system
Excoriations
I can’t wait
To be free of this place
And be rid
Of the service
I still think
I owe to these kids
Who don’t give
Half a shred
Of the ****
That they live in
If I live or die
Or reply to the piddling
Remarks as I try
To remember alive
Not just how to survive
On this sustenance pittance
Somehow they can thrive
I just work
At this no-purpose
Circus deprived
Of a ring leader,
Just a few teachers
And creatures
All acting like
Shows must go on
When the bleachers
Devoid
Of a care or concern
Like the clown
Who can’t seem
To turn frowns
Upside down,
Is in town
Nov 2019 · 188
The Nutty Professor
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
Nov 2019 · 322
Surveillance Capitalism
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Contraptions enrapture
The thoughts in my head
Like the Black Widow Feds
Spin the global-wide web
Making beds
To be lied in
Belying the eyeless appliance’s
All-seeing
Spy-lids
With die kids
And ISIS’
World hunger virus
Deciding divisive devices disguised
As the iris’
Optimal optical scans
Are just scams
And we buy it
Like contraband-widths
We demand
They supply it
Reliant on intel cartel
Data pirates
Bespectacled specters
Of property private
Sectors stealing secrets
And quieting riots
To keep us compliant,
Complacent
And safe and secure
Our freedom-
Information
In their bidding war
With the state’s machinations
Harmonic convergence
To merge us as one
Motherboarderless
Servant
A mirthless,
Subservient
Permanent
Nervousness
Bliss on the verge
Of transcendence
To micro-chips
Cold, calculating,
Brain-drain
Pain-impervious
Hard-wired smiles
Like customer services
As all the while
They got us on file
If someone malfunctions
It’s to the junk pile
Of planned obsolete
Made in China deceit
Soon enough
The new stuff
Is complete
And released
To the public
Consumption
Effete, then deleted
The outdated being’s
Illogical reasoning
No longer needed
Not fiscally viable
When product placements
Make preferences pliable
No more investing in
Such unreliable
Feeling-based flesh-
Eating parasites,
Troglodytes
Nature’s blight,
Human rights
Merely an oversight
To the Lord Profits
Most prescient prophetic
Detective’s objective
A future perspective
On forced-course corrective
Behaviors unfavored
In apes
Less aggressive
And traits more impressive
To more uninventive
And more inattentive
Assembly line minds
From their vines
Disconnected
Preemptively programmed
To heed the directive
Effectively rendering
Life contraceptive
Selectively-breeding
Exceeding perfected
Like fascists on acids’
Exclusive collective
The watchers still watching us
Acting defective
Then tactfully cashing in
On more expensive
Preventative measures
To end such a pensive,
Depressive death-sentence
Condemned to a prison
Super vision’s
Sentience
“Arguing that you don’t care about right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”
-Edward Snowden
Nov 2019 · 123
Creation Hymn (Rig Veda)
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Who really knows, and who can swear,
How Creation came, when or where!
Even god’s cane after Creation’s day,
Who really knows, can truly say
When and how did Creation start?
Did he do it? Or did he not?
Only he, up there, knows, maybe;
Or perhaps, not even He
*this is not an original piece
Nov 2019 · 131
Cowboys and Indians
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Like Custer
I’m flustered
By native invasions
Retaliations
On white savior
Salvations
Creation stories
Far less gory
Than mine
Shiny finer things I
Glorify
They decline
The divine to them is
What I chop down to spend
And what I comprehend
Merely land to be tended
They savagely fight to death
To defend it
No war declaration
Nor forced relocation
Or rampant contagion
Ensures subjugation
No integration
Or assimilation
Will ever equate them
As part of our nation
Expanding its greatness
From city to sea
So their choices are leave
Or accept the treaty
Bend the Wounded Knee
Come quietly
And relinquish
Their rain-dancing,
Flame-trancing
Visions
Extinguished
In favor of Manifest
Destiny’s best
Blessed Western
Exceptionalism’s
Excess
Steering clear
Of inferior
Cultures we fear
As we pave new frontiers
Atop their
Trails of Tears
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Shell-cased in soft power
Arms races
Like Carter
I break it down harder
Than kami wind martyrs
With ardor of green cards
Discarded
In red
Apartheids
On the rise
To Partition again
The expendable lives
Buying lies as they trend
From the ones who pretend
Like they too
Don’t depend
On the never-ending
Yellow journalist’s
Pen
Telling them
It means war’s
‘Round the corner
Drug store
Selling them
Echo chambers
Of peace and secure
Insecurities
Dangers and angers
And more
Of the brink
Of extinction
Addiction
In sync with
The small fortune,
Scorching-earth
Failed-marriage trinket
Don’t blink
Or it’s on
To the next
Recrudescence
Perplexed
By how many world hungers
To solve
Could be left
Since the right
In its free-trading slave
Not-so hidden agenda
Still plots its crop
Stockpile
Encomienda
As super-tiendas
Wal off reservation
With always low prices
Conflating inflation
Displacing the plantation
Haitian
Still shaken
By ground-breaking
New innovation
Starvation
And scarce information
Pertaining
Distorted
Contorted, deformed
Or just goes unreported
For more entertaining
Brain-draining discordant
Conformists in torrents
Stream only the terrorized-truth
Water-boarded
Reform is aborted
The right to choose
Thwarted
The norm is a misleading,
News-feeding
Horde
I abhor
As I’ve poured it out,
Sorted out
This horrid, sordid crowd
Doubting that anything reel
Is revealed
To be real
Or just part of some heartless king’s
Artifice
Art of the Deal
Nov 2019 · 129
Senescence
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Drag this indolent
Listless existence
From bed
Gotta integrate with
What I hate
And I dread
And I said
Would be my
Calling
Falling on deaf ears
And leaving me hauling
A sack full of empty
Ambitions
And goals
Aspirations and dreams
Not worth sacks full of coal
Smoldering in the ash heap
Of youth disillusion
This trash heap adulthood
Disproven diffusion
Of two cultures’
Toxic pollutions
In union
When only mine
Keeps buying more
Of the ruins
And only theirs
Keeps bearing unfair
Disparity
Barely survivors
On dollars a day
Frailty pales by compare
To deadweight of dismay
And despair parodies
What these maladies
Do to me
Any joy left
Before death
Is excluding me
Nothing is new to me
Home is eluding me
Vexation
Interrogations
Confusing me
Losing my
Last of lost worlds
Of ideal
To the fasting on costs
Of living
All too real
Nov 2019 · 71
Distant Shores
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Lately it seems like
My ocean is broken
Like waves crashing into me
Enter
My entity
Now
The sea sounds
A faint echo
Of memory
Even its
Tempest temptress
Was serenity
Bottled up notes
That I wrote in
Sincerity
Never made landfall
Or fell for a lover
That swept me away
Like the depths I discovered
Whenever I would
Stand before it enthralled
By its roaring enormity’s
Beckoning call
To return to its sirens,
Poseidon’s
Leviathans
All of its mythical
Mysteries
Mine again
From the pen flowing
My deepest blues muse
On a tropical cruise
To the soothsayer tune
Of the lullaby moon
But the dunes have surrounded me
Shipwreck rocks pounded me
Anchors weighed down
To abysses
Confounded me
Bound to this heartbroken
Ocean
Still drowning me
Nov 2019 · 178
Washington’s Tomb
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Unheeded the warning
To not take to leading
An empire fleeting
Succeeded in meeting
A global trade quota
In breeding consumers
Like coca and cola
Place orders for new world
Disorderlies
Bordering
Neighbors in anger
Like free-raiding slavers
The ones who engrave
Condemnations
On strangers
Enflaming the tensions
Like Union secessions
Reclaiming your pensions
Like dispossessed peasants
Then pleasantly selling you
Greater Depressions
Inflating the price
Of each stock
Market crashed
As they’re harkening back
To the Gilded Age past
Mistakes made
By the master class
Fascist gas mask
Clasping racist ace cards
In their draft-dodging grasp
And enrapturing masses
Like pastors on acid
As faster the natural disasters
Leave gasping
The aftermath zeros
To sift through the trash heap
As scraps keep providing them
Something to eat
And that “just so it” psyche
No shoes on their feet
To compete in a race
To the top
Of the bottom
To watch it all topple
Like Hillary Rodham
Back down to this limitless growth
Swinging rope
And a hope and change slogan
In some brighter future
Where data-brain-drainers
Collude with polluters
And looters
To root out the suitable
Next active shooter
As losers keep playing
To win
Movin’ in
To the city
Of opportune sin
Get some skin in the game
Make a name
For your lack of fame
Minimum wage
And escape from the cage
That was sub-standard living
Conditions before
The New World Bank
Salvation
Uplifted the poor
With more freedom to choose
Than a grocery store
How to rot the core
Of this for-prophet war
Against forces that still
“Have-not”
Settled the score
Nov 2019 · 120
Soul Mates
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Don’t know where I’m going
With this one at all
Just put pen to the paper
And let the words fall
Scrawling what’s second nature
To me
Easily
And since I can remember
Congenitally
Have I been
Symbiotically linked
To the ink
Synchronized,
Deep inside
It divines what I think
And I guide it
To keep reading my
Peace of mind
As it glides like the tides
On the shorelines of time
With the grace of a pianist’s fingers
Through chimes
With melodic  
Methodically
Hypnotic rhymes
It designs
Then decides
Every subsequent line
As if stars
In a perfect night’s sky
We align
Vital signs
Intertwined
In a quest to describe
What alive and a lover
To die for
Implies
Nov 2019 · 90
Inclement Weather
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
2 AM
And a torrent
Torments me
Seems Nature herself
Is intent to incense me
For days
Not a drop
But when I seek to leave
It comes crashing in gallons
As if spitefully
The rain dancers
Bemused
By lugubrious moods
Their deluge
Has so rudely
Awoken me to
Nov 2019 · 128
Socialite Satire
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Rather skeptical spectacle
Wouldn’t you say?
I’m a cool-headed
Sweltering hot
Winter day
Nothing special about me
Especially how
I fixate on the future
And live in the now
Just like everyone else
Play the hand I've been dealt
And I cheat only on
The true love I have felt
And expelled it from sight
No goodbye kiss
Goodnight
Just to spite myself
Loathing,
Have something to write
To relate to the rest
Of you awe-stricken
Critics,
Aesthetically-smitten,
Censorious cynics
Contestants in some sort of
Gimme more gimmicks
Olympics
And mimics of what talent’s
Really expressed
So obsessed
With the next
Biggest, best
And best-dressed
I digress,
Let it rest
Once again, who am I?
To be judging, begrudging,
Curmudgeonly so
Just one more
Unexceptional
Guy you don’t know
Nov 2019 · 111
The Outsider
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
So easy to criticize
Indigent lives
Diametrically disparate,
Different from mine
But I try to remind myself
Daily to exercise
Patience
And probity
Judging too soon
And assuming
Can only mean
Preemptively,
Peremptorily
Deeming
Parochial view
Of the picture I’m seeing
Facile denial
To look a bit deeper
Into
What I still misconstrue
As this bleaker
Grim,
Dimly lit
Pit
Spitting image of meager
Believers deceived
By their god
The All-Reaper
Is creeping about
The bedraggled,
Beleaguered,
Bemired poor creature
Awaiting its fate
As it stares at a speaker
Non-native,
Unaided
Invasive speech teacher
Just trying to reach them
As equals
Of self
Even though he is privileged
With wealthier health
Nov 2019 · 234
(GTF) Out of Africa
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
We all want to help
The squalid
Little kid
But trust me
Stay home
You’ll be glad that you did
Your donations
Don’t make it
Don’t make a dent
Save it
Corruption is permanent
Cracks in the pavement
If even a cent’s
Spent on people,
Won’t change it
Imperial culture’s
The vulture
So blame it
Like ***/Aids
Foreign aid is a band-aid
On old, open wounds
Precede even the slave trade
And can’t be unmade
With free trade
And some wage slaves
So come for your photo ops
Droppin’ like tsetse flies
Stop with the white savior
Ivory lies
And buy
Some useless handicraft crap
And get out
Before you feast your eyes
On the famines of drought
Or become one of millions
Of orphans in slums
You can read them a book
As they’re playing with guns
For some problems
Are just not your problem
To solve
And some people don’t need to be saved
Or “evolve”
To whatever the rest of the West’s
Best intent
Was hellbent
To pave their Rhodesia’s
With heaven-sent
Diamond minds
To enlighten
The Dark Continent
Nov 2019 · 83
Poverty Petting Zoo
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Feel free to look
To gaze upon
Them in their natural state
Primate
A primal instinct
Culture distinct
From the hominids
Now extinct
Yet still linked
To modern man
By tribal lines
And clan demands
And faith in something greater
Than the waste of space enclosure
They inhabit
With their filthy habits
Making them seem older
Through exposure to
The elements
Like elephants
Endangered lives
Except they wield
The poacher’s knives
And guns
And hunt each other’s
Sons
And some behave
Like less than human
****
In squalid slums
So I just merely
Mind my business
Just observe
Whilst bearing witness
To existence
In its highest form
Of abject poor
Low class subsistence
So feel free to look
But heed
My solemn warning
Do not feed
Dependence on
The handout seed
Or you create
A captive breed
Where once there thrived
A species freed
From civilized
And people stuff
From good intention’s
Hellbent crutch
So look as much
As you prefer
But do not touch
Or give them birr
Nov 2019 · 78
Can’t Buy Class
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Always hiding
Holding back
Authentic selves
With whom we clash
Urbane, genteel
Affluent act
Exactly what the poor deride
The rich don’t even like the type
In spite of how behaving like
A snobbish, pompous
Socialite
Seems to pay off
A little less
Than cheap escorts
In fancy dress
Could ever make
Themselves elite
Just urchins playing in the street
Nov 2019 · 139
Gravity’s Defector
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
You always bring me down
To earth
Just when it seems
I’ve bested you
You ground me in reality
As soon as I’m convinced
I flew
Up to the sky
You keep me from
My hands outstretched
Towards the sun
Yet even if I touched it
Or I clutched it in
A crushing grasp
You’d pull me to its blazing core
Reducing me to thermal gas
With ineluctable
Reductions
To my mass
And weightlessness
I’d sooner crash
Impacting on the surface
An extinction-grade
Atomic blast
Yet still I try,
Defy,
Deny
Your being without form or shape
Descending even now, pretending
There is some escape
From flightless fates
And leaps of faith
In your breath-taking power
Plummeting just like a penny
Dropping from the tallest tower
Nov 2019 · 249
Eternal the Struggle
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Eternal the struggle
Of dispossessed rebels
I finished God’s work
Now I’m doin’ the Devil’s
Duplicitous, shiftiest,
Dirtiest deeds
To the landless,
The peasants,
The outcasted breeds
An outsider
Ghost writer
Adrifting through town
And unleashing my unbounded
Hellhound around
My cause lost
To the cost
Of a hole in the ground
That I sought to make common
Man’s claim
All the same
But to do so
Required
The gentrified’s bane
By the slain
They defined me
A murderous ****
And insane they confined me
To mind-numbing drugs
They prescribed me
Attempts to revive
The reptile
The coldest-blood guile,
Service with a smile,
Reviled exile
This side of the Nile
And in a submissive state
Made me a slave
To the for-prophet
Profiteers’
People enchained
To a system
I swore to destroy
As a boy
With his head in the clouds
In the muses’ employ
Where continuing still
Is that struggle
Eternal
But these days
It just rages on
In this journal
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
As ever the wandering radical writes
Of the fight
He so gently delights in
The plight
Of the people
He sees all around
Superficially equal
But far more profound
Underneath
Individual
Layers abound
Inner rebels he knows
At the roots
The seed grows  
From the blood-sodden earth
Of his dripping red prose
Nov 2019 · 205
Hin Qama’uu
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Their radio emanates
Gibberish sound waves
Orations of some
More officious
Drug-peddler
Addressing some far away crowd
Its applause
Periodically
Clapping
When speech takes a pause
And discerning a few words
I listen intently
With nothing else better to do
I imagine
This man
As the next Mengistu
But his politics
Seem to have little effect
On collective lifestyles’
****-poor domiciles
And unemployed peasants
Khat leaf-chewing smiles
Nov 2019 · 128
The Sphinx
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
The precursor civilizations
Behold
One of tantamount
Mountains of gold
And untold
Riches stolen
From previous peoples
And kingdoms of old
Inhabiting lands
Spanning oceans of sands
And extending their hands
The empire expands
Beyond wildest dreams
The forerunners envisioned
And for recompense
Of their grandeur
Submission
To ancient traditions
Predating the gods
Until one culture’s trash
Is the fortune of frauds
Nov 2019 · 159
Narcan
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Keep pushing the poison
To public consumption
Keep profiting off of
Disabling function
Of bodies succumbing
To numb effervescences
Wrapped in a blanket
Of bliss evanescences
Upping the dosages
Potencies hitting
Prescribed by the bought and sold
Doctors submitting
To fraudulent Pharma
Cartels cashin’ in
On the overdose ghosts
Of a future stolen
But why stop
When revival
Is one call away
And survival
Is free
For those willing to pay
For the privatized antidote
Prices arise
Just as quick as they fall
For the sweet street surprise
Nov 2019 · 108
Mount Toba
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Genealogically speaking
We’re seeking
To make a same species
Not separate
The strongest
From the weakling
Yet look to the past
Anthropologist’s view
And at any one time
Humankind
There was two
Different kinds
Coexisting, resisting
The other’s ascendance
To dominant man
So can we really blame
Those who don’t understand
That today the same “science”
Does not apply too
Are they really all racists
Eugenicists who
Feel supreme in their clan’s  
Rights to lines in the sands
That their ancestors drew
When for thousands of years
We looked equal enough
But when hungry and *****
Who cared of that stuff
If the fittest survive
Implies all alive things
Or just beasts in the jungles
Of lions and kings
Nov 2019 · 66
Undesirable
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Cracks in the muddy-caked earth
An ant crawls
Noisy children at play
Beyond these compound walls
I reflect on the day
How so much of it felt
I was wasting away
In this prison of self
In time out
In its corner
Of paradisiacal
Trials, and still want for nothing
Do I
Undesirable
Nov 2019 · 257
The Dark Continent
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Not just the absence of light
It’s much worse
An inhabited netherworld
Feel it immerse
You in lonely, forlorn
Raging storms
Of despair
Impecunious
Broken hopes
Beyond repair
To awake
The nightmare
And to dream
The escape
From desertification
You can’t cultivate
A thirst you can not sate
No, despite how the torrential
Rains inundate
The virulent,
Unruliest
Throngs of diseased
Masses begging
And praying
On prostrated knees
The gods still send their plagues
Further north from the jungle
As millions enslaved
Still
To climate-change hunger
Succumb to the rumbling of tummies
Imploding
The bloating unsightly
An air of foreboding
Still looms over me
Not a cloud in the sky
And when blinding
The sun in it
Opens my eyes
To a scenery
Stretching and rolling
Serenely
I can’t help but stare
And at peace
Give a sigh
I suppose there are places
Much worse
I could die
Nov 2019 · 150
The State of Nature
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Long ago a creature
Of a far more primal sort,
Not fit to deem itself “a people”
Lived a nasty, brutish, short
Existence marked
By woe and ill
It reveled in recurring
Genocidal
Bloodlust for the thrill
Of an inherent need to ****
It was incapable of making
Gleaming cities made of gold
It barely scraped two stones together
Starting fires in the cold
To call it thriving
Would be lying
To the modern, honest man
Without some product to be buying
Or some money in his hand
Because today
We have forsaken
Savage ways
We have no stake in
And we only claim possession
Of the things we haven’t taken
Through the force of arms alone
Like troglodytes
With clubs of bone
For mass destruction
Weapon threats
Now keep the peace
A fallout zone
Unless the beastly race forgets
His place
Within society
And in this perfect world begets
A discontent anxiety
Nov 2019 · 83
Wrath in its Written Form
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Profanity firestorm
Thirsting to burst
I would curse you,
Condemn you
Lay waste to your warmest embraces
Erase
Your desires
Ambitions
Your joys
And your dreams
As your faithfulness
Falls to its knees
Before me
And your peace of mind
Mine
To wage war upon
Endlessly
Senselessly slaughtering
Every serenity
Bashing your brains in
And slurping the juices
Tearing your limbs
As your screams
Are my muses
And drink to your death
In insidious glee
Then dispose of what’s left
Of your faint memory
Yes a fate
So befitting
An error of life
A mistaken creation
Would I so delight
In exacting
Or to be exact
Executing
But here is where my
****** weapon’s
Concluding
Nov 2019 · 448
The Dumbfounded Genius
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Know what you feel
Nothing else can be known
But phenomenon donning
The bare naked soul
No intelligence
Wisdom
Nor fact
Or opinion
Can ascertain truth
Like emotion’s dominion
Appealing and pandering to
Inner vision
Externally, all-seeing
Eye of believing
Beholden to none
Of the sun
But the one
Burning brightest
Alight
Even if
Out of sight
Is the proof
That in you
All the universe moves
And moves through you anew
Until all that you know
Becomes all that you knew
Nov 2019 · 90
Boy Wonders
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Earth as it’s gleaming
In radiant splendor
It renders me speechless
Tongue-twisted endeavor
A pleasure I never felt
Ever before
And a severance with
A desire for more
If I could
I would share it
With all of life’s forms
And for them proudly wear it
A crown of sharp thorns
As my hurricane brain
Storms a gentle, tempestuous
Restive and festive
Pellucid perfectionist
Scheming and dreaming
What all lack of meaning
I glean to be me
In the solace of being
As fleeting as eons
Abscond out of sight
In the eyes
Of the chosen sun child’s
Delight
Michael Marchese Oct 2019
Recklessly decadent self-indulgence
Spent a small fortune
With nothing to show for it
Lusting in lonely nights
Take me away from this
Take all my money
And in return
Offer ***
Next to her lying
In some kind of drunken blur
Slurring my words
Of subconscious
Inside of her
Sating the craving
How long I've been waiting
For someone to save me
From endless enslaving
To raving and raging
Against the unmaking
Of me
I do not wish to be
This man
Anymore
Oct 2019 · 166
Relationship Material
Michael Marchese Oct 2019
Can't look at her now
Couldn't even back then
I don't know if she knows
If it happened
And when
I extended my hand
On that balcony ledge
And drew her into my
Burning flag-bearing pledge
My allegiance unfaithful
To her's in its purest
Convictions as graceful
As mine
Are abhorrent
Exhorting their pleasure
Two forms pressed together
Succumbing to Hedonist
Weakness
Whenever
It renders me deader
Than "death do us part"
In contrarian fashion
To what I Descartes
For the heart
Isn't really
The love that we feel
And if she really felt it for me
Was it real?
Was it even the same
Kind of strain
Of in vain
To express it to her
As the most welcome pain
I could ever again
Comprehend
Or explain
That to be without it,
Without her
Was the end
Aug 2019 · 271
Love Songs
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
Some old
And some new
Songs remind me of you
And say everything I
Wanted to be as true
For the two of us
Just as conflicted,
Condemned
To be every bit broken as them
Till the end
But depending on when
That would be
Always seemed
The most imminent difference
For you and me

No together forever
Betrayal to sever
No secrets of weakness
We couldn’t make peace with
The love that we had
Was a fad
Clad in sad
And the shade of your blue
Only mixed with my gray
When so far away I
Could then let these songs play
Aug 2019 · 517
To Write or not to Write?
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
It shouldn’t be something
Just to get through
But a skill to take pride in
As one of the few
With a craft to be reveled in,
Relished, enjoyed
And on rarest occasion
A weapon employed
Should a dire most need
For a war of words waged
Upon those who prefer
The more literal graves
For their victims and enemies,
Childhood reveries
I bury mine
In descriptive serenities
Remedies curing me
Of morose maladies
Banal, mundane
Every day
Gray realities
Splitting dualities
Self-contradiction
Cognitive dissonant
Lawless conviction
A chaotic orderly
Misanthrope humanist
Spiritual atheist
Radical pacifist
Gifted with empathy
And equanimity
Equally balanced
In stoic disharmony
So alive
Dead inside
Cynic sanguinity
Outspoken introvert
Mortal divinity
Half full of doubt
And half empty of faith
Powerless to bring change
But I try all the same
And when shamed by a world
Torn apart
Just like me
I am wholly at peace
As I write poetry
Aug 2019 · 143
Kitfo/Guilty Pleasure
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
I never thought raw meat
Would be a treat
I could indulge in
Yet as chewy as it was
There has not from me yet
Expulsion
Of the seasoned slab
Of crimson flesh
From mouth
Or other end
I found the flavor
Rather savory
As down my throat
Descended
Several chunks
And shredded hunks
Of some poor creature
I refrained
From asking what
The people call it
Even in a foreign name
For there is shame
I feel, still craving
Yet another juicy taste
Of what I couldn’t **** myself
Nor have the right
To deem its fate
Aug 2019 · 333
Disinterred
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
The former me was immature
Was ignorant
Was insecure
Would instigate
And derogate
And hate
And hate
And hate
Irate
At something always
In the way,
Some implacable
Dismay
As sullen as
The color gray
Torrential was
The constant rain
Despondence
I still can’t explain
A rabid beast
I couldn’t tame
In every smiling face
Was pain
Contained within
The joy we feign
And all escape attempts
In vain
Except an early
Ego grave
Aug 2019 · 167
The Futurists
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
At first they’ll say
It’s set in gold
Longevity
No growing old
Prosperity
For everyone
As boundless growth
Eclipses sun
And underneath
Utopian
Pretensions
Lies the rot therein
Mutations
Modified to be
Perfection
Specimens to see
What we in all
Our vanity
Have made of genes
And cells
And DNA
And God itself  
Just fades away
Awaiting Brave New Worlds
In which
Our human nature
Is the glitch
And with it switched
For automation
No more signs of life
To station
Out in space
Among the stars
Replaced by colonists
On Mars
And flying cars
Are eco-friendly
All remaining species
Envy
What they promised
Was in store
For those who pay
A little more
Aug 2019 · 109
Phantom Romantic
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
Of all the things I’ve ever wanted
She alone is thee most vaunted
Daunting just to think about
The way she could
Leave me without
So much as breath
Swept up and left
For dead
Bereft
Of any longer coveting
The call of sirens beckoning
A reckoning
They can’t contain
Can’t fathom
Whispering my name
Seduction’s winner-
Take-all game
I’ve played
And won
And tied
And lost
Too many times
To count the cost
And so instead
Refused to spend
Another dime
On bedded dread
For freely she
Still haunts my head
Aug 2019 · 83
What am I Doing Here?
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
Rainy seasons never end
Just render me a sodden mess
Downtrodden in unrest distress
Yet sleepy and somnambulant
Have bent me to their will’s intent
To from this place I will egress

And seek to leave the rest behind
These people need me not to care
To pity, sympathize or share
The burdens bearing down upon
Their shoulders as they carry on
And wear their rags of proud despair

And there among them, take my place
Embrace a way of life without
Utopias I dreamt about
But still a form of paradise
Despite the lack of love for Christ
An alternate salvation route
Aug 2019 · 280
Remnants
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
Gone long ago  
Up and vanished
From here
the bewildering wildlings
Never appear
Anymore
In the form
Of imaginative
Vivid images we
Had envisioned as kids
Overprivileged to live
In a kingdom of sky
In a reverie
Tucked into sleep
Lullaby
An illusory fantasy
Story belied
By the monsters beneath
The wars raging outside
Castle walls we sequestered
Our western ideals
Civilized since the dawning
of time
Isn’t real
And revealed to the kneeling
To its old and gray
Scientific divinities
Still on display
In decay
Preservation encasing
A once upon kind
Of design for eternity’s
Undying mind
Aug 2019 · 86
Values
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
Give thanks
To the drawing of breath
In each step
Of the liquid life
Passing your lips
To exist and be with
Those your love can’t resist
And regret not
Mistakes you have made,
And remade
Prices paid
And replayed
In your head
As you sought to redeem
Your transgressions instead
Of your blessings
In counting them
Maybe you’d see
There is little to fret about
No malady
Making ill
The unwilling
For granted, take health
Or to measure their worth
In material wealth
Michael Marchese Jun 2019
And as they moved through me
Subdued me
Removed me
From me
I was dying to be,
They renewed me
Imbued me with latent
Amazement
Awakened
By rhapsodies
Captive
Was I
To the fragrant
Effulgent, ephemeral
Flashes of brilliance
In clashes of titans
And gods of Olympus
Divining themselves
From ethereal epics
Eccentric
Poetics
Extant in their shape-shifting  
Peripatetic
Adventure to find
Where the sea
Meets the sky
Where a pure inspiration
Beholdens the eye
Jun 2019 · 161
Killing Time
Michael Marchese Jun 2019
How quickly a year
Can elapse
Is astonishing
Make every moment
Worthwhile
Admonishing
Me
To be actively present
And pleasant
Each second
Or live to forget
The remembrance
In remnants of memories made
In sustaining
Begrudgingly forcing
Facades of equating
Superior intellect
Deigning to feigning
This greeting sincerely
A matter of act
To surpass the harassing
******* in class
In cacophonous braying
Displaying a crass
Disposition of *******
Herd-mindless en masse
Merely falling in line
Until their turn to die
Comes as natural to me
As the killing of time
Jun 2019 · 275
Intersubjectivity
Michael Marchese Jun 2019
We try to sound
Profound
As we
Expatiate
Not meaning to
Pontificate
Philosophies
We contemplate
More often end up
Platitudes
Convictions we assert
Assured
Of righteousness
And rectitude  
Conflating faith with certitude
In provenances
We conclude
Consensus from the misconceptions
Answers to subsume
The questions
Even if the faintest doubt
Still lingers on each word
Of mouth
And furtively betrays
Ideals
As easily
As Death reveals
Itself to all of those in time
Who claimed in life
Divine design
More absolute than its unmaking
Predicating
Their awaiting
Finitely
To resurrection
On hypotheses
Of heaven
Fallible
Incredible
Intangible
Untenable
But nonetheless
Congenital
Is man in all his arrogance’s
Gods upon a pedestal
Jun 2019 · 130
An Aphorism on Love
Michael Marchese Jun 2019
Love is like
A house of cards
A work of art
That falls apart
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