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Feb 2023 · 90
The First One Who Wrote
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
No such oblivion
Be
Without me
Without all of us
Nautilus
Deep in the sea
Elegy
Bury me
Cast my ashes
To winds
And without me
About me
The story begins
Feb 2023 · 104
Born of the War-Torn
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
Conflict breeds
Catastrophe  
We greet it with
Alacrity
Come back with me
To see
The day
There ever was
A different way
Embedded in the DNA
We simply can’t resist
The urge
To scourge the Earth
And from it purge
The chance to see
Ourselves the same
Ironic how
We place the blame
When all complicity
Relates
To human nature’s
Glacial pace
To change,
Improve,
Evolve
As one
Resolve to cities
Overrun
Undone
Until
The sun is numb
And ghosts of gods
What we become
Feb 2023 · 116
My Girlfriend
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
There without fail
Far from perfectly matched
Nor entirely opposites
We still attract
And attached to her side
Like a shadow
Confide
In her deepest compassion
Embraces I hide
Like a lost little boy
Can return to his cave
To confront any foes for her
Stoic and brave
A tranquility
I haven’t felt
Since the grave
Became my adoration
My withering rose
My decaying eternally
Life-giving prose
Goes to show
I was waiting
What felt
Out of time
Now she occupies
All of it
Masters my mind
And without even trying
Commands me to write it
To gift it to her
And request I recite it
Feb 2023 · 77
The Book by its Cover
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
Lurking deep
Therein
The skin
The chapters
Formerly
I’ve been
And hid within
The shadow cast
Your judgments
Now my weapons cache
But only is
Its violence
Wielded
By my stylus
Shades
Of shielded
In a surface
Level
Worthless
No stone left
Unturned
Can hurt this
Novel
Storied
Introduction
Not for best-sale
Mass production
Only copy
Is reflection
1st edition
Sheer expression
Ever in my image
Molding
Meta-narratives
Unfolding
Feb 2023 · 131
The Furthest Gone
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
On some other level
Disheveled
And gray
And forlorn
In my mourning
My love led astray
Is the way
I was born
Winter storm
Summer haze
And adorned
In light rays
On my darkest of days
Although torn
From the warning signs
Tempting surrender
I passed all the tests
But I failed to remember
The chapter,
The captured
Enraptured
Most turning
Of pages I’ve wept
In the oceans of yearning
For once again home,
One last from it
To roam
And in all of finality
Finally known
Feb 2023 · 141
The Pretext
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
First it must break
Like a heart
Through a stake
Then partake
In the making
Of others relate
To creating,
Rephrasing
Our own contemplate
And pervading us
Phasing through
Matters
Too great
To control,
Or predict
To behold The Great Rift
And then swiftly
Through history’s
Rivers we sift
Feb 2023 · 109
The Unidentified
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
I am the stranger
Fall around me
Muses soothe
Instill,
Unbound me
Drowned,
Devoured,
Downward
Crowned me
Deity
Abyss surround me
In its heartless
Darkness
Found me
Wraithlike
In a state
Of fear
To glean this gleaming
Lucid
Sphere
Through all the eyes,
A vision
Clear
Feb 2023 · 129
Hubris
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
Hubris
A mountain
A mighty
Pride lion
A bastion
Of passion
The fall of the Mayan
The sky
In its blithe
Overconfident breeze
The incompetent narcissist
Trying to lead
Feb 2023 · 173
GrimMaturity
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
Older
More mortal
More time on
The portal
Less personal days
Fewer ways
To enjoy
What I used to make write
Not my type
Of employ
Now I work
And work out
If there’s happiness
Doubt
Even with
The girl missing me
More than
My worth
Even if
Underserving
Of her
Is my curse
Feb 2023 · 758
Invisible Ink
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
See not the messages
Lying asunder
Go not to temptation
To beckon my blunder
For under the surface
Observance
Is clear
And my cryptic
Ellipsis
A sickness to fear
But appears
An abstraction
Attraction’s
Blurred vision
And fades
From the page
Like a razed composition
Conveying the grave
Like a bladed
Incision
Still spilling its villainy
Victimization
Of poor little me’s
Permanent
Paid vacation
Upon what is free
Just a fee to exist
And then not just deceased
We will cease to be missed
Like a vanishing wish
Dissipates in the mist
Like a widow
Divorced from reality’s
Kiss
Feb 2023 · 143
Disempowered
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
Madness
Serenity
Misplacing
Memory
Never be
Jealousy
Moribund’s
Elegy
No more
Fecundity
Blooms
From the fertile
Just ashen heap
Mountainous
Obstacles
Hurdle
No optional
Off and on
Switch to the shifted
We riff,
And we drift,
And we sift
Through the misfits
And this is  
My gift,
My accursed
Uniqueness
The strength that I draw
From the wellsprings of weakness
Feb 2023 · 126
Wherefore art Thou?
Michael Marchese Feb 2023
Sink
In surrender
She wouldn’t soon
Weather
The storming of you
Misconstrues
Valuation
My life is but dirt
To a withered carnation
Just want you to know
That my love is engraved in
The strongest of stone
Still at home in goodbye
Still acquainted with
Living for
Reason to die
Jan 2023 · 110
The Falling Out Zone
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Reconcile,
Make amends
Unite with old
Unending friends
Depends on what
Their loss entails
Laments
The reminisce details
Should they depart
Or disappear
Tomorrow from me
Steering clear
Of left to say
Unfiltered
Unrefined
Authentic
By myself
Sounds schizophrenic
Not exactly going back
To home
How far I veer off track
Intact I’ve tried
To keep contact
Can’t help it if
This trait they lacked
A lot like brothers
Bond inherent
You once
Saw through me
Transparent
Now aberrant,
Silent,
Strained
Unmentioned
Tension
Growing pain
Jan 2023 · 148
The Potentate
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Take my castle
Take my sword
Take from me
The ship of lord
And let it cast
My subjects
Mourning
In forlorn
My soul adorning
Torn from pouring over
Volumes
****** into
Securing communes
Just to see
Equality
And constitute
Its polity
My policy
Priority
Revise the word
Authority
Devising its demise
And when apprising its abuses
So obtuse is my disguise
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
All I know is
Nothing
Ever changes
Stays the same
We just revert
To we are worth it
We deserve
To own the Earth
And from rebirth
Temptations
Praying
We are thee
Foundation-laying
We aspire to eternity
Empires of modernity
Like spires in the skies
Re-deify
Its vast absurdity
Just blurring
Its distortion
Geospatial
Disproportion
Of its vaster still
Delusions
Of a prophet
Perpetuity,
Annuities
Reboot
And mass produce
Discontinuities
No please!
No please don’t shoot!
Jan 2023 · 511
Tactile
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
See you more frequently
Speaking in person
In total immersion
Within our best
Version
Is all I desire
But patiently wait
To biweekly
Engage you
And impulses sate
It’s so crazy
My lust for you
Can’t be expressed,
Or repressed,
Just addressed
Keep my hands to myself
Is impossible
Not optional
In the slightest
Unless it’s too much
Or my touch
Was of Midas
Jan 2023 · 679
The Girl I Write to
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Longing
Becoming
Inherent
To me
I am yearning
Her turning
Her head back to see
In my imagery
Vividly
Visions of us
In eternally
Wondering
Wandering trust
Reaffirmed in a gesture,
A word
A display
I can’t wait
To embrace you
And next to you lay
Every night if I have to
Be glad to
Awake
To the unruly mess
Of your hair
That we make
To escort you again
To consort with you
Lend
What my pen
Can’t report
In these letters I send
Jan 2023 · 124
The Mainframe
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
Jan 2023 · 948
The Vast Expanse
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Never forget
There’s an ocean
Around us
Through logic
And reason
Its meaning
Confounds us
Unbound
Although wound up
In threads
And unwoven
Awoken
It speaks in our heads
Yet it tethers
Connects
And continues
To carry
Reminds us
That wisdom
Is simply be wary
Apparent to you
Could to others
Be barren
Yet wearing this
Gallant
Medallion
We earn
Is but shade to the shadow
To which we return
Jan 2023 · 105
Climate Justice
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Weary of watching
The funeral
Clocking
The countdown
To meltdown
With no sign of stopping
Just racing
Ourselves
To extinction
Embracing
No clear-cut distinction
Just surfaces
Facing
Annihilation
At the hands of time
Wasting
Too late to make progress
When profit prevails  
And the crimes against nature
Are tipping the scales
Jan 2023 · 337
Know Regrets
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Wearily
Wearing thin
Skin
I begin
To default to
Defensive positions
Less frequently
Mishaps,
Mistakes,
And misfortune
Still teaching me
Better than any
Successes
I’ve wrested
From jaws of defeat
My integrity tested
Surrender,
Abandon,
All ethical bent
As incensed
Becomes sorrow’s
Tomorrow lament
Jan 2023 · 192
Unto the Oppressors
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Know I will hunt you
Beyond
Where you rest
May your legacy
Wither and wane
Dispossessed
Of the power
You lorded
Unmercifully,
Unrelentingly
Binding
The meaning of free
To conditional terms
And relinquishing rights
So we feel more secure
When all turns to black
Sites
Jan 2023 · 178
The Commercenary
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Can do
Almost anything now
For a profit
The older I get
The less likely
I stop it
This urge
To encourage
The remonstrance
Resonance
Counter-intelligence
Twisted
Its gifted
Most fervent
Resistance
Enlisting in
Anthropomorphic
Existence
Jan 2023 · 90
Thought Process
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Panicking
Panicking
Vanishing
Sanity
What would I do if she notices
Manic me
Banding together
With dissociation
Untethered
And severed from
All limitation
Though wandering aimlessly
Fathomless depths
Recollecting the cost
Of my countless regrets
In a frenzy
Frenetic
Warp portal
Distortion
Awoken
And dreaming
Without
Disproportion
Beyond
What this vessel
Could ever contain
Unrestrained,
Scatterbrained,
Cogitation
Unchained
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
When I still use my brain
Find the waves
At the source of it
Radiates
Respirates
Shapes
The discourse of it
Takes
Its exalted,
Alt-ego
Display
And devises
More challenging roles
To portray
More urgent
Admonishment
To beware speech  
Is remembered
But renders
The colors to bleach
So it’s not what I teach
No the words
Must be written
And through divine muses
Bring you to me
Smitten
Jan 2023 · 102
The Puppet Master
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Light up my vast abyss please
Let me write it
And only
When lonely
Forlornly
Recite it
I’ve been there before
Where the peace becomes war
And in slumber
Restore
Torn from pages
Of Nevermore
Once again
Almost
As always
It fits
If I keep writing out to its
Ghastly misfits
Jan 2023 · 585
Nuclear Winter
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Yea yea
Can barely feel my hands
Yea
Not feeling so well
But I can’t even
Stand
Yea
Still rolling around
Head in the ground
Nowhere to go
No
Can’t think for myself
I need someone else
For I am the foe
Woah
Don’t want to go there,
Can barely repair,
What I did to myself
Thinking lost and alone
Was the progeny flow
And I learned how to turn it
Up into aglow
Jan 2023 · 298
The Cave-Dweller
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Ruin me
Leave me eschewed
From indulgence
Removed from
Illumined,
Enlightened
Effulgence
For brightness no longer
Dispels what the dark
Can so harken me back to
And seamlessly spark
Reminiscence
Insistence
On spectral
Temptation
Forsaken
Intruders
From dreams
Reawaken
Retracing my steps
To misplacing regrets
Just reveals
That I feel
Empty nest
Hollow threats
Either change
Or keep feigning
Your value equates
Unconditional love
In two natural-born apes
Jan 2023 · 88
Odysseus
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
How proud I have been
Have my head in the wind
And have silenced the sirens
With whom I have sinned
And though kindling
These days
Fell, deforested jungles
She has my whole soul
And the hubris it humbles
The thunder upon
The awaiting oasis
Keeps secrets
In seeking
My moribund waste pits
Embraces me
Equally
Scared or supreme
And then beckons my wanderlust
Back to redeem
What remains of my
Virtuous,
Purposeless
Quest
And my failure
To care
If I pass the attest
To some legacy
Memory
Somehow its haunting me
Long before I
Hyper-sleep in the pod  
Having never found
Such a more flawed
Human god
Jan 2023 · 129
Thoughts on Schizophrenia
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
We don’t know
What makes it
Gives way
To its presence
What manifests
Consciousness
Anyone’s guesses
But please rest assured
Inconclusive is bliss
I suspect
And expect
That the answer to this
Would be nigh on
Inscrutable,
Vexing,
Immutable
Mystery boxes
Whose contents
Unusable
Lose your mind trying,
Go mad with despair,
Clawing frenziedly,
Frantically
Rip out your hair
But your scalp
And your skull
And the null void within
Won’t reveal
Either still
How it makes the head spin
So give in
To the severance
From its
Malevolence
Join me apart
From its self-indulge
Edifice
Jan 2023 · 90
Reunion with the Void
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Now so enamored
I just couldn’t leave
If you left me to die
The loss I still bereave
Furthermore would the memories
Cease to be made
I would give up,
Give in,
Nor again
Try to save
What remains
Of my wayward
Outcast
Unaccomplishment
Mask
Having worn it so long
While pretending to try
I would never again
Let these causes belie
Without her
Just a blur
Between then
And the end
Nothing new though
Oblivion
My oldest friend
Dec 2022 · 114
The Sentry
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
But for her
I am lust
And libido
Entrust
Every ******
Of my blade
To the page
And combust
Like a wayward inferno,
A magnified ant,
A Promethean seedling,
A nuclear plant
And my rant
Slash and burn
Still unearthing
Unerring
From Gaia rebirthing
‘Til deathless
Despairing
And wear her depression
Expression
Unvarnished
Full force of her nature
Have I learned to harness
And won’t soon submit
To her profligate
Enemies
Taking her vengeance
To weather extremities
When their atrocities
Go unrepentant
All in
Her empyrean
I am transcendent
Dec 2022 · 91
The Dreadful
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
Insist I must join
Then cajole me to coin
The new terms
Of my sanctity
Yours to purloin
To purportedly
Read
What goes on in my mind
Is for me to decide
Not derided by others
For even among
Trusted friends
I discover
The silence is tension
Is failure to mention
My unwelcome thoughts
Of complete apprehension
Dec 2022 · 154
A Few Words
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
You’d think
I’d run out of ideas
To keep writing
Exhaust the last fume
Of creative igniting
But come gloom and doom
Through the roles
I’m reprising
The constant
Invariable
Is revising
Disguising no longer
What made me this way
It’s as natural to me
As a child at play
Its intricacy
Formed
By simplicity’s
Hand
And it’s guided along
By emotion’s command
Yet unplanned
Like a pregnancy
In love conceived
And reflected upon
Like a widow bereaved
When I once again leave,
Venture on,
Bid adieu
To the words overdue
For the few I write you
Dec 2022 · 116
Ravens and Writing Desks
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
Still writing
The sorrow incarnate
Foremost
I’ve been dead to the world
For so long
I’m a ghost
And forlorn
Only shores
Of serenity
Mourn  
Though reborn
In the storm
Of asunder
Am torn
Into equal parts
Heartened
And darkened
By day
So alive
But inside
I’m comprised of decay
Not astray
Anymore
Not afraid
To endure
But the horror
Of losing her
My Nevermore
Dec 2022 · 134
Should you Need me
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
Seek me
When at your most broken
Dismayed
When you’re lost and alone,
Can’t go home,
Feel afraid
Of revisiting
Past-induced trauma
Familial
When no interlocutors
Ever so willful
A partner
To listen,
Advise,
Recognize
When the silence
Is best
What you choose to confide
Dec 2022 · 102
Stage Fright
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
Performance anxiety
In the description
The job entails
Failing
The best self depiction
And multiple takes
Multitudinous breaks
From reality
Raising
The trust-falling stakes
For the part to be played
Can be made from organic
Emotions
Inspired
But sync
In Titanic
Romantic delusions
Dramatic displays
And cliff-hanging conclusions
Assuming the love
On a true story based
What its face value
Close up
Maintains when embraced
In its shadowy,
Naked,
Most vulnerable form
Just the same
As in costumes
And make-up
Adorned
Dec 2022 · 91
The Cryptic Keeper
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
I am the dungeon-est
Crab
Random bag
That you grab
When indifference
To existence
Is a hit,
A pull,
A drag
We can’t be all
Devoid of meaning
Surely reason
In believing
Am I wrong?
But what is right?
Who is to say?
I merely write
Dec 2022 · 144
Losing It
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
Look upon you
And see failure
See a scale
Unbalanced
Jailor
Of his own potential
Paler
Than a ghost
Of mostly jokes
To cover up
The drowning hopes
But when you cross the line
The rope’s
Self-deprecation
Is what chokes
You in these notes
Like puffs of smoke
And should you sleight my love again
You’re just another
End I wrote
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
We need conditions
We need decisions
We need delusions
We need tall tales we tell ourselves
When we walk
So much aimless
Conversing in brief
A line here
A word there
Let’s just go back to sleep
Dec 2022 · 129
Blots
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
Fill it with objects
Material wealth
With success
On a spectrum
We measure oneself
But the empty remains
Missing link in the chains
And it marks us
Unfinished,
Unnoticed as stains
Dec 2022 · 268
Finding Yourself
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
Not much else to it
Just have to undo it
The former conception
Of what defines good
Reservation’s reluctance
Prevents what it could
In some ultimate form
Really mean to another
Or better still
Even you
Yet to uncover
Dec 2022 · 130
Svengali
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
I no longer care
What I think of myself
Insecure in my
Glass house
Of cards I’ve been dealt
But can make of them
Victory
Seamlessly
Scheme with me
Banish dissent
To invent
More machinery
War economics
Is my peace of mind
By design
Histrionics
Employed in my rhyme
Non-aligned to the pact,
The accord,
Nor the treaty
Just break it like bread
Promises
To the needy,
A greedy,
Lascivious
Megalomanic
Discordant purveyor,
Soothsayer
Of panic
Promoter of voter
Fraud
Laud the fine people
On both sides of I’ll
Convince them we’re equal
But we know the truth
There can only be one
Absolute
Who so ruthlessly
Rivals the sun
And when done
With remembrance
Remains in the pages,
Parades and crusades
And the subsequent stages
Prophetic
Magnetic
Charisma
Engages
The masses again
And the muses by pen
Yet the mask
Shall be cast
From my face in the end
Dec 2022 · 124
And yet Still I Write
Michael Marchese Dec 2022
And yet still I write
When I’ve nothing else left
When of last shreds
And shards
Of discarded love
Swept
Up away with the fragmented
Memories
Waning
Bereft years ago
Of my life forces
Draining
In vain have my valiant attempts
To be brave
End in ruin
With few more
Befitting the grave
We tried saving each other
One sinks
And one cries
We tried changing each other
One drinks
And one lies
Or we both fall apart
More in unison
Fading
And yet still I write
The pain
Can’t overstating
Nov 2022 · 112
The Unruly
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
More Anarchic
Antarctic
Cold War games ensue
As around us
The one at home’s
Losses accrue
And the rest of you
Care more
If Kanye’s a Jew
While impunity reigns
For the fascist charade
We just all play a roll
In the FIFA slave trade
So now show me the binding law
Bent till it’s broken
No free market CAPS
On non-fungible token
Black comedy actors
Miscast
At the back
Of a lack
Of real color
Code switch
Hit of crack
And so let it persist
Mischievous
Can’t resist
If the rights
Don’t apply
To imperiousness
Fortresses of the rich
Sickened kids
In a school
Shooting upper class
Privilege is...
Fool’s Golden Rule
Nov 2022 · 79
LycanthrOPTIC
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
Though haven’t sung yet
Of finality’s
Salary
I am in debt
To its etch-a-sketch
Malady
Turn a few knobs
And we think ourselves
Free
To redraw the line,
Palestine,
Voter ID
But the ballot’s
A salad,
The word
Is a stake
In the heart of my
Blood-*******
Enemy’s fate
Nov 2022 · 71
Vow to the Eternal
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
Working on
Working you in
To my life
So ineffably grateful
For you in my night
Come alight
The way forward
Evoke me bemused
You’ve renewed
My tomorrow
And heightened the mood
Still I brood
In the belfries,
The gallows,
The hole
And I barren wasteland
What remains of my soul
But I told you
You meant to me
More than goodbye,
Than the most divine
Acid high
Shapes in the sky
More than birds without wings
Could aspire to fly
It’s a little bit more like
Could happily die
Nov 2022 · 116
Echo Chambers
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
Needless to
So much as state
Your biases
Reverberate
Articulate
The puppet parrot’s
Preference
Prejudicial carrot
Deep in darkness
Dare to dread
An audience
Beyond your head
Just reaffirm
The self-assured,
The certitude
Whole truth secured
From extant
Inclinations,
Leanings
To whatever sounds  
Appeasing
Then repeat it back
Again,
Once more until
The journey’s end
Arriving where
You feel at ease
In how we seamlessly
Deceive
Ourselves of answers
Pre-ordained
Instinctive
Linked-in
Lizard brain
Creates the same
Survival mech
Fictitious facts
We’re left to check
Should only ever need arise
To validate the winning side
Of argument’s
Legit disclaimer
Ever will its
Fortunes favor
Me within
No doubt correct
Of answers that I
Architect
Nov 2022 · 120
The Archetypal Trickster
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
Don’t remember
All details
Only how it ends
In fails
Have such profound
Epiphanies
More than a few
Deficiencies
Like some innate
Impulse
To pull
Over their eyes
The veil of wool
Nov 2022 · 65
The Hot Tub
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
She’s smooth to the touch
In the bubbling temptation
Elation incontinent
Patience negation
Keep inching in closer
Inspecting her lips
Dripping wet
In the steamy heat
Taste of her kiss
And it’s like we’re infusing
Converging
And urging
A surge of endorphins
Then soulfully merging
I feel what she thinks
And she thinks what I feel
And for her
All the stars in the sky
Would I steal
Just to bathe in serenity
There in my arms
An embrace that so warms
Me up more
To her charms
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