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253 · Dec 2017
The Trapper
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
Make yourself at home
In my abode of humble origins
Where I define my peace of mind
With words that rhyme with oranges
And anything but ordinary
Heroism hieroglyphs
Encoded in my incomplete
Non-existential manuscript
Of daily raving lunacies
In patient anger wallowing
In lack of understanding
Why the leaders teach us following
A standard protocol away
From complicated formulas
That normalize us pay to play
Their game of life monopoly
For property and shopping sprees
And dollar trees they’re chopping down
To automate humanities
250 · Jan 2018
Malware
Michael Marchese Jan 2018
Need I remind you
Your country was stolen
Your freedom is treason
Your family was foreign
Before it was welcomed
By Tammany Halls
Before poor, huddled masses
Were kept behind Walls
On Reserves and on drugs
And on time for their shift
Before searches and seizures
Of first to the fifth
When the terror at home
Is the reason you buy
That your right to choose life
Is another’s to die
From consumer protection
So long as your rich
In a broken-dream system
I’m merely a glitch
250 · Jan 2017
Star-Crossed Disguises
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
We could both of us stare
At the same moonlight
And wish upon each shooting star
To make day of the night
And the words that we write
Return us from spaces afar
To find solace again in these arms
And the warmth of the sun in your eyes
But the moon still refuses to show me
What lies 'neath the star-crossed disguise
250 · Aug 2017
The Apeiron
Michael Marchese Aug 2017
The energy is everything
It's what you want, it's what you need
It takes your minds
Invades your brains
It lulls you to the gorgon's veins
Then leaves you hungrier
For more
And more
Of what's in store

But post-apocalyptic shelves
Inhabited by Keebler elves
And then the madness
Dial tone
Alone you are the smartest phone
When data roaming airplane mode
Connects you to the electrode

The power plant
The Tesla coil
In a world that runs on oil
You control the game of thrones
And carbon life forms in the soil
All that's left for you to do
Is figure out which ones are loyal
250 · Aug 2016
Drown in Her
Michael Marchese Aug 2016
Adrift on waves that I compose
A shipwreck life of word and prose
Longing for the shore that shows
How blue my tide of sorrow flows
When her horizon sets and goes
To hide behind her vacant glows
Then pulls me in her undertows
No man could fathom deeper lows
The depths of anchored lovers' woes
Not even Lord Poseidon knows
How far I've sunk to feel her throes
Submerged in frigid voids she chose
Our hearts immersed in shadows froze
Yet like a thawing winter's rose
We still found warmth to melt the snows
So my descension never slows
Nor grants my flooding lungs repose
I'll drown in her 'til my eyes close
Until my dead man's chest implodes
250 · Mar 2017
The Phoenix
Michael Marchese Mar 2017
Soaring away, what could I provide
Do you not perceive
Of my dying inside
Are you so naive
To believe I'm alive
Or that skeleton keys
Could unlock what I hide

In the cellars of cold,
Dark, abysses bereft
Of the soul I have sold
For recompense left
To steal my heart gold
In a present-tense theft
Of the treasures I hold

In troves now discarded
By knightly assails
Of princesses guarded
Beneath my chain mails
In armor regarded
As legendary scales
Of dragons bombarded

By dreadnought regret
In a galleon remorse
Oceanic lament
On my rocking seahorse
Capsizing I've sent
Myself drifting off course
Until I can forget

The lies I have tasted
Seduced by desire
The lives I have wasted
Consumed by the ire
Until I embraced it
My funeral pyre
Reborn to melt faces

With phoenix sun fire
250 · Apr 2022
Unbound
Michael Marchese Apr 2022
Now
You can wait
Find someone to relate
All my letters
And poems
Just incinerate
It’s too late
Been too long
I’ve accepted you’re gone
And wherever you are
I still hear you in song
And for once
Since I met you
I write it for me
Not for you
Not for us
Just for personally
I don’t hate you
I miss you
But tired of trying
And when you don’t answer
I’m tired of dying
So cry me a river
And never respond
We were all but unbreakable
Painstaking bond
250 · Aug 2019
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
248 · Nov 2016
Unbroken
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
My heart has been beaten,
Shattered, crushed, and abused
Ripped out and spat on
Left black and blues'd

My young moral compass
Thrown every which way
In many objections
To lives led astray  

My spirit's been cleansed
In acid rain showers
Then withered without them
Like unwatered flowers

My mind's cuckoo clock
Is just one poison bite
And death wish upon stars
From striking midnight

My jaw has been loosened
By torments outspoken
But each part of me
Remains ever unbroken
248 · Dec 2017
Welfare State of Mind
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
The blood on the blade
The bullet, the bomb
The bank and the ballot
The book of Islam
Is my common man struggle
My herbicide’s noose
My ******’s masses
Producing like Zeus
The poor, huddled refuse
Of consumerist culture’s
Impoverished and hungry
Insatiable vulture’s
Malnourishment wage
In your minimum cage
Cold World War snow blanket’s
Free love hippy plague

Ragin’ back from the Dead
To bring Down the whole System
With stock market fallout zone’s
Mushroom cloud prism
The re-meducation
Ghost-mortem disorders
The doomsday rock addict
The crack in your borders
The anti-establishment
Savior to none
I am merely the plug
You should pull when you’re done
Lest I overload brainwaves
With overlord plans
Till your empires fall
Into my beggar’s hands
247 · Sep 2016
My Cup of Tea
Michael Marchese Sep 2016
There are few things that conquer me
But none more than serenity
Surrender to simplicity
My cup of tea and poetry
247 · Apr 2017
The Drifter
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
And back into the world I go
To tread this path alone
Though often one of shadows
With the pharaohs I enthrone
My mortal soul has seen the glow
Of Horus, chosen sun
Of Isis and Osiris
I was bred to be as one
To learn these lands
To lend these hands
As but a grain
Of shifting sands  
Until my time is done
247 · Mar 2021
The Progressive
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
Becoming the writer
I dreamt I could be
I just never imagined
It’d be poetry
Not some novelty
Story
Compelling me on
To renown and acclaim
And conclusions foregone
No delusions of fame
Just a roof for the rain
And enough sustenance
To existence maintain
And if it’s supplemented
In wages or pages
I pledge to persist
To rephrase it in phases
Develop my craft
Indigent
Or affluent
And offer the movement
Consistent improvement
246 · May 2017
Aphrodite
Michael Marchese May 2017
The open sky still hides behind
An overcast uncertainty
The looming blue is all I need
To make each note a symphony
Then she appears at high noon's rise
My maiden frees the ocean breeze
And parts the solemn clouds with ease
Until the sun, it seems am I
And inhibition flees
From the shores of no tomorrow
And the sinking of my ships
In a galleon of my sorrow
Are her deep, desirous lips
246 · Nov 2017
The Great Leap Forward
Michael Marchese Nov 2017
Slavish is lavish, just add the s
To the heaps of your Hedonist hordes of excess
So obsessed with the best that the West has to offer
Democracy scales are just nails to the coffer
Just Madoffs and Adolfs still claiming a stake
In banana republics, so let them eat cake
We can wait as we make a land full of their waste
And with fake as **** smiles we’ll spit in the face
Of their race to the bottom of fortune and fame
Where Satan and Jesus are one and the same
When morals are numbers, and justice is banks
And peace is for profit, compulsory tanks
But without them your life is a third world of grief
And your paycheck is merely a futile lord’s fief
Just a thief would I be, with the speech of a beggar
But I’d own these streets with a cloak and a dagger
As you learn to suffer the absence of self
Dematerializing your hunger for wealth
In a union of monkey gods breeding the seeds
Of the gardens of green this earth actually needs
245 · May 2021
Ex’n out O’s
Michael Marchese May 2021
Dearest one
Wasn’t one
Single mistaken
Heart breaking
Before
It was even us
Making
It up as we went along
Somehow connected
Unbound
And unburdened
Affections
Defected
From system schismatics
Too ******-frenetic
Forget it
It’s better off
Dead and regretted
245 · May 2022
Dating TrAPPed
Michael Marchese May 2022
Edge of depravity
Habits
Are forming
I’m working
In circles
My night
Is the morning
And more
Appeals only
To substance abuse
My ambition
Is solely
Not yet to the noose
For tomorrow
Might see her
Appear on my screen
In some semblance
Of my
Serendipity dream
245 · Dec 2016
I, Dante
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
The first pit is of meaningless
Corridors of faithlessness
Through lonely caverns wandering
A labyrinth of pondering

Then desire gathers squalls
Through restless halls and chamber walls
A tempest surge of carnal lust
Eroding true love's kiss to dust

I hunger for her poison bite
Insatiable my appetite
My penance now an icy rain
Frost-blighting teeth consume my pain

So I seek shelter from the cold
In hollow warmth of things I hold
Possessed by tangibility
Expended in a gilded sea

Poured as rivers fraught with anger
Selfish souls in warring clangor
Smote hath I, the ego lord
Now my wrath confronts the horde

As fires still rage disbelief
For lies that fuel my hellish grief
Let flames of truth incinerate
This cross of nails that seals my fate

An image dripping violent red
From severed head and children dead
So Christ's blood my sword will taste
Just one more body left disgraced

By holy water snake oils
Corrupted wretches reaping spoils
Countless lives they have destroyed
Such excess sin must share the void

But not with I, the pulse of Death
No treacheries could freeze my breath
Past Satan's frozen form descends  
My consciousness to far worse ends

A tenth circle e'er to enclose
My wilting rose in starlit glows
No depths Dante would dare to go
Existence is my inferno
245 · Jun 2017
The Beauty of Banos
Michael Marchese Jun 2017
I'm back in the world
Where nothing makes sense
Except this existence
In past/future tense
In utopian Andes
I see ancient temples
The Inka my children
Move mountains to meet you
Build cities to greet you
Like Yavin 4 Rivendell
Fairy tales come true
For Shangri La lenses
Through which I have seen through
Become the cascading
And fuego throat truth spew
Of my stoic peaks
Where too much green to see blue
Is wild and thriving
In time is the essence
The stench of surviving
The sweet effervescence
My love evanescent
All relative bliss
In a world luminescent
A powerful cleansing
Of flowerful jungles
And showers replenishing
Buzzing bee bumbles
Who ride like the winds
As they uplift my wings
In a chorus of eagles
To harpyist strings
Yes indeed we're a breed
That is rare and in need
Of a high elevation
To teach and to lead
To share and to spread
Every bountiful seed
We are young and incredibly gifted and freed
By the journeys we take
To mortality's edge
Then we leap from the faith
Of a bungee jump ledge
For these trips into falls
Are immortal in dreams
So sublime and surreal
In our consciousness streams
As we turn up the offspring
The life here it teems
And we are the Mother Earth's
Ends to the means
The rust in the gears
Of deforest machines
Who dare cut us down
From the summits we've reached
When transcending the limits
Of Heavens we've breached
245 · May 2018
Hush Money
Michael Marchese May 2018
But they got’chu quiet
They program your voice
Automate your decisions
And tell you it’s choice
You can go to the store
Or just one click away
But it’s they who decide
Whose to die on D-Day
And it’s war that they want
So the fear sells consent
Then they bury your rights
In 4 walls of demented cemented lament
With their power, their privilege
Their laws they’re above
So I write like a hawk
And I speak like a dove
In service to causes
Too hard to believe
For a thoughtless prayer nation
Still bending the knee
244 · Jun 2017
Espe
Michael Marchese Jun 2017
Lonely orchid in the tree
Such individuality
Amidst the green, it's everywhere
Though envy takes more than its share
And greed assumes control of Earth
No lust bouquet defines your worth
As all the chlorophyll in you
Defiantly changes its hue
To seamless streaks of salmon streams
And lips I've tasted in my dreams
244 · Nov 2016
Post-Mortem Musings
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
By Night's silent tumult enraptured
   My soul hath the empty pervaded
Its whispered sweet nothings hath captured
  The black symphonies I've created
To echo the nightmares of daybreak
  To mirror the demons reveling
To sing of the sorrow and heartache
  To write of the end times foretelling
Mine a thorn of oblivion's rose
  Drawing blood to my lips I conclude
'Tis but her mental ****** of crows
  That to my suicide do allude
244 · Jan 2022
When She Doesn’t Respond
Michael Marchese Jan 2022
Then she disappears
And I’m here
Barely speaking
My friends are disputing
But I am just seeking
A way to get back to
Her doorstep and wait
For my turn
To return her
When it’s getting late
And for now
Say goodbye
Never sure she’d reply
In the morning
Should I be
The first to confide
244 · May 2017
Canoa
Michael Marchese May 2017
The waves are my kingdom
The sun is my throne
Yet my sand castles melt
In the sea all alone

As the shores that I tread
Come to life as I flow
Like the tide in the wake
Of today's undertow

As the mermaid horizons
Still glimmer and swim
Through my slipstreaming eels
Of electrified whim

Yet none of them sing
Of my shipwreck lament
Just lull me like sirens
Of impure intent

With bellies of plastic
And coral reef bleach
Just piña coladas
And daiquiri speech

As I'm fed to the sharks
And Laurentian Abysses
To drown in the shallows
Of ignorant blisses

To one of Poseidon's
Atlantean blood
I ride hurricane steeds
And I rise with the flood

For my bottled up message
Was hers all along
The ocean my muse
Is my blue and grey song

And onward it drifts
To a tune of the breeze
Inside is a tempest
Of her symphonies

I compose in the skies
With the calm of a storm
So come take a dip
'Cuz the water is warm
241 · Feb 2019
What Becomes of us?
Michael Marchese Feb 2019
Don't know what I said
What I did
To deserve
Your disdain
Can't explain
Such ineffable
Pain
Upon seeing you clearly
No longer the same
Seem to feel
How you felt
Underneath the moon's wane
Beneath stars in the city light
Night sky
Aflame
With the feigning
Romancing, entrancing
Pretense
Of portentous affections
Just lust I suppose
Just a fickle slight ripple
Effect on our clothes
And our hands, and our skin,
And our lips, and our tongues,
And our ears to mellifluous
Pounding heart drums
Not the one of course
Just the first one
Whom I sung
Of in ages
My serenade marked
By the notes on these pages
And gave them all to you
In genuine tune
With the irony wry,
Hung to dry kind of mood
That you choose to undo
To eschew from embracing
I'm wasting away now
My steps, I'm retracing
To make sense of where
Apart paths got diverted
And blurted out, drunken confessions
Converted
You into this empathy-lacking
Remorseless
Contortionist
Bending my form maladies
To amorphousness
Black abyss, back to the bottle
Forgetting this
Ever occurred
In rejection emmured
Where I still do not know
What I did to deserve
Your disdain
Can't explain it
In words except pain
240 · Aug 2016
From My Perspective
Michael Marchese Aug 2016
What lost souls
They all must be
Upon that rock
Do they not see?

Each one of them
No more than dust
Than greed, than wrath
Than sin and lust

From nothingness
They were conceived
And by the void
They'll be received

Granted life
They beg for more
Show them peace
They offer war

Run and hide
Fear and fight
Hate and ****
Wrong what's right

Tantrum child
Throw your fit
Silly monkey
Fling your ****

Filthy rats
They **** around
Vermin offspring
Plague this ground

Brainless sheep
Thoughtless hive
Zombie mind
Barely alive

Fill the skies
With poison plumes
Condemn their home
To toxic tombs

Drain the Mother's
Heart bereft
Spill her blood
'Til nothing's left

Watch their time
Die with their dreams
Then curse my name
With hopeless screams

So now my choice
Becoming clear
To save this Earth
To cleanse this sphere

Mountains burst
Oceans boil
Forests burn
To ashen soil

All will feel
My doomsday grips
All will know
Apocalypse

Return this world
To brighter days
Before they spawned
Their darker ways

End this species
Leave no trace
This same old rerun
Human race
240 · Oct 2016
Oblivion
Michael Marchese Oct 2016
There is no void
Of space and time
More empty than
This soul of mine

Once filled with stars
And galaxies
A universe
Of energies

Supernova
Solar fusions
Nebulous  
Gas cloud delusions

Streaking comet
Paths revealed
Burned out in
An asteroid field

With no escape
From gravity
This planet of
Depravity

On which no sign
Of life exists
A barren rock
Where death persists

As hunger reigns
With thirsty storms
And plagues infect
In global swarms

A stranger to
This ravaged home
An alien
To all I've known  

My milky ways
Of cosmic bliss
Devoured by
My truth's abyss

A changing climate
Heart imploding
In my blackest
Hole foreboding
239 · Sep 2018
The Inhabitant
Michael Marchese Sep 2018
Surrender your claims
Or give in to the thirst
Then relinquish your bearings
For I was here first
And I’ve parted the skies
With a dauntless ascendance
And opened third eyes
With enlightened resplendence
In ages now gone
And unknown to us all
I gave rise to each new breed
Of species to fall
One by one
To the one
I so foolishly gifted
With intellect
Then how the paradigm shifted
We make the gods
239 · Sep 2016
The Crashed
Michael Marchese Sep 2016
Stock cars crashed
Driving debt thrashed
Our urban decaying
Poor middle class
Left to rot
By Goldman Sachs
An evil plot
Inflation stacks
Gouged and slashed
By price whip cracks
That lashed
A housing bubble
Popped and cashed
In manufactured  
Congress acts
Only fractured
Breaks in tax
For the matador contacts
Bail out the stashed
Credit attacks
Even though they swung the axe
Of industry
Complex contracts
And bills are passed
Just as fast  
As their demands
Supply no dime of wealth
Back to our hands
No time for health
Or jobs
Or dreams
Or any of the in-betweens
Put all that last
Kick back, relax
Atop your new world order caste
Yet at the bottom of a gap
So vast
Is where we gather now
Amassed
Asking how
We are
The Crashed
239 · Jan 2017
Asking for Directions
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
North can't seem to let me go
South I've seen enough
East I'd go all in for you
But West you call my bluff
239 · Dec 2017
The Empiricist
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
Embrace the mass diversity
At microscopic levels
And in doing so you find
We’re not so different, you and I
We’re just some questions posed to ponderers
Who try to measure time
And in conceiving of our godliness
We clip the wings of pride
Instead of welcoming the Icarus
Ascending from inside
We’re just some science and some fiction
And some matter we create
Like all the value we assign
This dollar *******-state
And in believing in our vision
We intuit how we feel
And with these words we form together
We make sense of the unreal
238 · Dec 2016
Bullshit
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
******* heaps drop at your feet
Then spew into the skies
Steaming, noxious garbage mounds
Piling up before your eyes
How does such blatant, excess waste
Leave just denial's aftertaste
You drink it in your water
Breathe its poisonous smokescreens
Stuff your face with so much crap
It pours from out your mouth in streams
237 · Apr 2017
Reinforcements
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
Not writing tonight
Leaves tomorrow deprived
Of chemical changes
In moments sublime
Through valleys of shadow
And mountains I climb
Of ripples in rivers
Wrinkles in time
Heartbreaks in waves
And passionate rhyme

Of my guiltiest prints
At the scene of a crime
And the trail of bread crumbs
That they all leave behind
As clues to emotions
I've yet to define
Like the love I have made
To a goddess divine
Or the hate I have seen
Where her sun doesn't shine

Like my lone shooting star
With the planets aligned
In illusion defusions
Of water to wine
When I shed the skins
That malign the benign
With vivid prescriptions
Of drugs I've combined
Into altered egos
Of complex design

For a world I could save
With my Spider-Man mind
But the webs that I spin
Become so intertwined
With the fates and the furies
To which we're confined
To a Hundred Years' War
Against all of mankind
So a new piece a night
Is a peace treaty signed
237 · Jun 2018
Addis Skyline
Michael Marchese Jun 2018
Laced with historic allusion
Confusion
Don’t know what to speak of
Or how to exude it
A presence relentless
In its mystifying
Perplexities tantalus
Solace undying
Engaged in the way
I fall prey
To her spell
When I’m under the cover
Of darkness
I dwell in
236 · Apr 2021
Finding our Way
Michael Marchese Apr 2021
Old ways with old friends
Perched upon
The earth’s top
Wildlife,
Wilderness,
Politics
Are some topics
How goes it so far
Is the story’s synopsis
Arriving at this
Commencement
In harmonic
Convergence with culmination
Of causation
Lament and euphoria’s
Balanced equation
Decisions amounting
Combined
To the sum
Of our fears
That the world
To our suffering
Numb
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
235 · Oct 2017
Leto
Michael Marchese Oct 2017
There will come a day
When you wake to her sleeping
In solace enrapturing
Silence of mourning
All of her elegance muted in slumber
Appearing to you in its muses no longer
For furies at war in your head are the thunder
Of Zeus' insatiable ravishment hunger
Now tearing asunder your hearts in the void
As the distance impending consumes you, destroyed
Is the union you knew to be true in its love
But the one you feel isn't yet with you
Above
235 · Aug 2016
Used To...
Michael Marchese Aug 2016
I used to believe
There could be something more
At the end of this life
That was worth striving for

To live for each day
Despite all of the pain
My body could rot
By my soul would remain

I imagined a force
Of omnipotent grace
Vast kingdom of clouds
Would be my resting place

Earth drifts through the void
Time never to slow
Yet consciousness seeds
Would continue to grow

To see so much hate
Tear people apart
Yet still think that love
Could mend each broken heart

I knew not of greed
Of wrath, envy and lust
In the good of mankind
I could still place my trust

I kissed the sun's rising
Embraced the dawn's light
Until the sun's setting
Consumed me in night

Then darkness seeped in
Through the pores of my skin
And flowed through each vein
Like a sickness within

Now I live for each day
But feel only the pain
As this corpse slowly rots
From my blackened soul stain

The truths that I knew
Were serpent-tongued lies
My idols and angels
Fell dead from the skies

Reality's anchors
Dragged me to the depths
Eternity's oceans
Flooded my breaths

Disaster and death
Plague, famine and woe
I questioned how God
Could torture us so

Heaven's gates locked
My paradise lost
The price of my sins
Was too high a cost

Condemned without faith
All hope to conceive
Of the salvation dreams
That I used to believe
233 · Apr 2021
Run Diagnostic
Michael Marchese Apr 2021
Recent evaluations
Evolution
All systems in order
Yet still revolution
Solutions ****** me
Reducing intake
Introduce me to ruin
As critics partake
In my processor fails
To retain
What the day’s
Most essential details
At the time
Seem important
But vanish in stress
Nonetheless,
What I make
Or what happens to face my
Circuitous break
With the linear
Rapid progression
Upgrade
As sobriety renders me
Solemn and staid
To refrain
Or indulge
In the dizziness of
Freedom comes to fruition
Within lack of love
232 · Sep 2018
Abida
Michael Marchese Sep 2018
Out of nothing came something
It must have, it had to
And in its destructive
Rebirth I’d be glad to
Ignite the incipient embers
Of change
And watch as it smolders
Again in the flames
Of interminable
Labyrinthian corridors
Sentient prison walls
Trapped in my nevermores
I didn’t ask to be gifted
Nor cursed
With the revelatory
Epiphany thirst
For an arid and barren
Deserted desire
The moisture eluding
My lips in the fire
231 · Jun 2016
Runaway
Michael Marchese Jun 2016
Looking forward, thinking back
She was here, now she’s gone
My soul painted black
I’m a night without dawn

Circling round
Again and again
I feel so unbound
Though imprisoned within

She left me in darkness
This loveless, cold shell
This rotting man carcass
Perpetual hell

In love, out of time
I knew this would come
All that's left is this rhyme
And my heart’s beating drum

The pain is unreal
Not seeing her face
To no longer feel
What quickened your pace

Still the tune of my end
Serenading my stride
Your will can not bend
When you’ve already died

Now with nothing left
No spark to diminish
Of love I’m bereft
So I race towards the finish

To sprint through this life
With her memory near
To remember this strife
But forget this fear

The future awaits
Each step will ensure
What two tested fates
Can truly endure

Still I run far away
To distance my mind
To chase down the day
I might leave her behind
231 · May 2019
I See Dead MEeple
Michael Marchese May 2019
What nobody else sees
Or can know about me
I divulge to the shadows
Unreservedly
An unvarnished self-portrait
Devoid of redactions
An honest account
Of my crooked transactions
A pact with the demons
To spare me from their
Maledictive libations
And impish fanfare
That befall me
Involuntary
When I try
To ask god why we die
And receive no reply
Only silence do I
Spy with my little eye
When I lie awake
Counting the ghosts
I descry
231 · Mar 2019
Back in America
Michael Marchese Mar 2019
To be back in America
Comfort and solace
I'd find in amenities,
Pleasantries,
Remedies
For my deprived of joy blues
My relinquishing of
All the foods I could choose
To indulge in
To bring
Satisfaction
Contention
But still such an emptiness
Failure
To mention
What eats me
And haunts
Such a gaunt
Figure, frail
When this sinister skeleton's
Soul is for sale
Everyday I'm a part
Of the whole status quo
That no matter where I
Seem to go
Goes to show
There is no extrication
No true liberation,
Release
From the grip
From the clutches'
Injustice
For all we submit
To mentality mobs
And the slave-driver's whip
Ever am I the servant
Out here
Or back home
Ever pushing uphill
My infinity stone
But the masters
I find
I could be
Seldom times
Simple rhymes
Are my land of the free
231 · May 2017
Tenochtitlan
Michael Marchese May 2017
I wish I had a rhythm
So to set these words in motion
For my flow is as a river
But the dissonance, an ocean
In the ignorance outspoken
From the crashing angel tears
As sky sanctuary cityscapes
Bemuse my ringing ears
With a symphony of fears
Towards celestial ascensions
Too divine to comprehend
My God ethereal dimensions
Where the clouds are my inventions
When I'm feeling so azul
But my mind is Montezuma
My Mexica heart to rule
For the sun is my crown-jewel
And though adorned am I in gold
The power of my sacrifice
Comes from this pen I hold
231 · Feb 2018
A Brief History of Money
Michael Marchese Feb 2018
You dug your own graves
With a silver spoon Mita
Then traded away
Chattel slaves for paprika
To feed and to fund
Private armies and states
To invest in your pearly white
Collar bill gates
And keep everyone out
Who had less or made more
Then you capitalized
Off of for-profit war
Like the Western grand dragons
And lion’s share kings
Who demand from us tribute
Of paperweight things
Be it standardized oil
Or genocide gold
It’s all backed by the blood
On this weapon they hold
230 · May 2023
The Maestro of Discord
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
230 · Aug 2022
The Illest Kid
Michael Marchese Aug 2022
Still finding my medicine
Feasting on sediment
Scratching a living
Off urban development
Much to the detriment
Of my convictions
When my ideals reap
The for-profit afflictions
Infecting my sturdy
Immunity to
The contagion of aging
A dying world view
Stays alive instead not
For more logical ends
But to bend to my will
What the future impends
230 · Jun 2016
Blue and Grey
Michael Marchese Jun 2016
Blue and Grey
The ocean and sky
The saddest display
Of life passing by

All secrets kept
Deep down within
All dreams of hope swept
Away with the wind

To ceaseless tides flow
All pain I bequeath
Yet seldom I show
The monsters beneath

In the wake I confide
My cold-blooded chill
Like a nimbus I’ve cried
As I let my guts spill

Darkness at heart
Lonely shore sorrow
A black abyss art
A tempest tomorrow

Drowned in this thinking
Storm clouds have shrouded
Further I'm sinking
To depths I once doubted

Adrift in lost love
As horizons beseech
The heavens above
Always just out of reach
230 · Feb 2018
Freelance Journalism
Michael Marchese Feb 2018
Like Upton on fungal brain Jungles, I speak it
The deepest state secret, like Snowden I leak it
On Wikis more tricky than Dicky’s fiat
Money bloodied, tick tock the livestock market rot
As the eagle lie nester’s internment investors
Drop freedom on chemical weapons-grade testers
These A. Smith’n westers who don’t lift a finger
To hijack your minds with it itchin’ the trigger
Then burning cross names off of Madoff Hit lists
To redistrict restrictions like cuffs around wrists...

As 3/5th ye Old Hicks still insist that it’s fixed
By the millions of ALIEN votes that exist
The same gips enlist Contras to slaughter the poor
Till this livin’ Hell Salvador’s dyin’ for more
Of that Hindu Kush ghoul so azul in Kabul
The brown jewel that digs crowns Abu Ghraibyards to rule
Where brave hero in shooters survive all a lone
Like a drone, without home,
For some Chairman Dow’s throne
Gets us cheaper white collar depictions of good
Guys with guns who run colorful, bad neighborhoods...

Where the pyramid schemers cell nightmares to dreamers
And deal ‘em in doses of “just say no” *******
Allowed in their Aryan race tractor pull
Bible Bull Connor full metal jackets of wool
Clothing wolves upon little red silenced and shamed
Ad some Hunger bowl Games, ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?
Well then I’ll end with this sort of "alternate" fact
There’s a Desert Storm post-truthin’ nukes in Iraq
Where you won’t see ‘em comin’ from Russia with love
Such a villain be chillin’ like Putin.gov
228 · May 2018
Kamar-Taj
Michael Marchese May 2018
With you or without
I still revel in doubt
And uncertainty’s angst
I just wish I could smile
Again, see your face
One more time and embrace
You like children at play
Run away with you
How do you do this to me
Everyday
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