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Michael Marchese Jan 2020
In what dispelled reveries
Do we still dwell
Of what hells
Have we not yet escaped
To tales tell
Of the fell seeds awaiting
The turning and tossing
To forcefully waken
From paramours crossing
Diverging path hearts
And upon them embossing
The marks that remain
Ever fading away
To what we couldn’t say
As it resonates on
Across vast silences
Afraid
So I ask what
Forlorn warnings
Reject
Next attempts
To add more
To the discordant mess
And explore
Further out
Past the love
We’re without
At last casting
Out shadows
Of those that we lost
In doubt
That we could ever
Be floating about
Serendipity’s nebulous
Vacuous
Bliss abyss
And by some happenstance
Of most fortuitous
Feel like this
For someone else
Even more
Upon stars we could wish
Michael Marchese Nov 2018
It takes so much effort,
All my mental faculty
To see them equal
And deem it veracity,
Their brain capacity
Actually seems
To be emptier than
The most vacuous dreams
And my intellect screams
At the sky in defiance
But I can't deny
They are so absent-minded
At least in the ways
Of the sociopath
Who has grasped civilized
By the throat as its gasped
In the clutches of what is
Its ultimate form
I became
What it could be
An apex new norm,
But to them
I am just
Foreign ****,
Over-privileged
A money tree grown
In a garden of riches
Which just goes to show
How so little they know
Of the world as a whole
As they waste away
Playing their chattering role
Their ambition consists of
A ball and a goal
They aspire to be
What they're told
And accept
That in death they will pass into
God's divine breadth
Every breath they draw
Gnawing
On better addictions
Their language has less than
A dozen descriptions
No gifted musicians
Inspire their craft
All essentially cultural elements
Lack
And the fact is
They are just so different from me
Too condemned to this poverty graveyard
To see
That despite such a site
To behold
I am free
To be living among them
Harmoniously
Michael Marchese May 2019
You know it when you feel it
An ailment afflicting you
Slowly its symptoms,
Conditions take hold of you
Worsening sooner
Than ever gets better
Until you're a popsicle
Wrapped in a sweater
And weathering feverish chills,
Poppin' pills
As you're counting the minutes
To medical bills
Panacea prescriptions
That just makes me sicker
Than over the counter drugs
Killing me quicker
Than stuff off the streets
Uninsured of what health
Itself
Is just a privilege
Of wealth
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
It will still always be there
The sorrow incarnate
Explaining it would take
As long,
Disregard it
Forget it
Just let it
Come to its conclusion
The you and me
Romanticizing
Illusion
Or mostly me
Selfishly
Leading to ruin
What good ever happens
To dare I say love
Reveal itself to be
Still not quite enough
Michael Marchese Mar 2022
Becoming the madness incarnate
Unvarnished
I harness
The darkness
Undaunted
Still haunted
By tremors
Of traumas and dramas
Depicting my manifold
Soul-crushing ache
And I do
Like you feel it
And feel it
And break
Momentarily
Sorrow devours
Empowers my muse
Then depravity’s
Desolate desert
Ensues
And too long has its wanderlust
Rendered me
Barren
Refined and enriched
As a crude oil baron
No care in the world
My compassion is spent
Because every last love
Soon enough
Is lament
To extents only writing
Can offer reprieve
And with this
Elegy
Dead to me
Her I grieve
Michael Marchese Aug 2021
Bury it now
After nights of conversing
The warning signs
Clearly laid out
In immersing
Yourself
In a cyclical
Mute repetition
Refute only what
Is unjustly
Contrition  
For we in our outpouring
White guilt and shame
Cannot take anymore
But still buy it the same
Michael Marchese Dec 2021
If only she knew
What I went through
To find her
Fortuitously
Nonetheless
Then remind her
Each day I seek only her smile,
Her laugh
To say something worthwhile
Crossover her path
Before my epitaph
Crosses over
Unknown
And all that I have written her
Not set in stone
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
Like a crippled ballerina
Her beauty was impossible  
Yet still taught me how to dance
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
If only retention
Had no imperfection
If hindsight was really
A hundred percent
And if memory served
With unswerving fidelity
I’d interact with linguistic celerity
Articulate
With impeccable eloquence
Confidence in what I say
With intelligence
Read back a book
In verbatim synopsis
I got this
Before
Any public speech topics
And not just
To ego boost
Boast of my genius
I’d merely make strengths
Of my know nothing weakness
Michael Marchese Jan 2022
Patience
Wait
Don’t ruminate
Too long
Worst case
Scenario
Her ghost inside the stereo
Stuck in my head
Nowhere to go
It makes decisions
For me
Woah
Possessed
Abstract
Still ill-expressed
She resonates
Elates me stressed
For now wherever she may be
In part always controlling me
No rest
But not for wickedness
Her curse was laid upon me
Kissed
Michael Marchese Nov 2020
Try to be better
About being worse
Off alone,
Predisposed
To around the world roam
To be homeless sometimes
To remind me it’s real
The inherent strife
Clinging to life
As I feel
Like succumbing to numbness
To turn it all off
Shut it out
And in doubt
At your faithfulness scoff
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
How liberating it would be
To drift across a careless sea
No more to wallow in concerns
For finding shores that set us free

No more to form these promised lands
Convictions built with faithless hands
Only to watch them wash away
Like castles made of forlorn sands

No more to help these people rise
And share my ego's selfless prize
Only to sink in greedy tides
And choke to death on poisoned skies

No more to fight for each ideal
With cutlass made of stainless steel
Only to rust in salted wounds
From oceanic depths we feel

No more to lie awake at night
Higher than a boundless kite
Only to ponder what is life
But constant setting of sun light

No more to swim above depressed
Treading along with all the rest
Only to crash in waves that drown
My broken, plundered dead man's chest

No more to search for meaning in
A carapace of worthless skin
When so much hides submerged beneath
The surfacing leviathan

Yes easy it would simply be
To float through life in apathy
But I know I must lead this ship
Adorning helms of captaincy
Michael Marchese Feb 2019
Funny how trivial
Seems the dispute
That has kept us suspended
In disconnect, mute
In a silence, protracted
Extended, no ending
Exacted
But impact is felt
In the months moving on
From the years I have dwelt
In a sweltering cauldron
Of angst-brewing enmity
Condemning me
To a spartan solemnity
Tempting me with
The tirade
Hurricane
And a rain pouring only
On my head in shame
For in vain
Have I tried
To express it to you
And instead I've sustained
The charade of untrue
But not lying
Per say
Silly me's I withdrew
Like a caricature
Reassured
You'd be there
To be laughing with at me
And actually care
To comment and critique
On the facets and features,
That needed a tweak
To be squeaky clean sneakers
Or just so to speak
Of the torments
Enormous
Afflicting me so
Lying dormant in
More I learn
Less that I know
Michael Marchese Apr 2023
Heedless of warning signs
Beckoning risk
Building up
Expectations
Apart
Not adrift
Taking heart
In her dubious
Drawn to conclusions
Lugubrious
Gloom
Should the tomb
Come to ruins
A room growing old,
Fading out,
Fall away
If I go with you,
Run,
Or just ask you to stay
You would have to say no
For your future is brighter
Tonight though
It’s mine
That begins with a lighter
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
No sun today awakes me
To a country I don't know
No solace in the overcast
Shadows you impose
Upon the dreams of old
Only nightmares now unfold
Disguised as flags of patriotic
Stories never told
By your tongue of solid gold
Your wealth piled by the load
When all the soldiers had to go
Did you humble your abode?
No, you left us in the cold
And only got us fired
On a ******* tv show

While you sat upon your throne
And thought your little thoughts,
Licked your little fingers dry
Of all the wars we've fought
In the streets you've never sought
To help rebuild the crumbling structures
Just the ones you'd bought
And only sold your soul
To the devils you hath wrought
Deep inside you're black as coal
The gaping hole within this plot
Americans that you see not
In a mind so closed and rotten
To the shallows of its core
Lies these faces all forgotten

*All these words are nothing more
Michael Marchese Jun 2020
There is racial hate
I just learned it too late
And now unlearning ethno-states  
How we equate
Where we could have
Created  
A sameness
In difference
A listen first
Understand,
Then your opinion
Can freely be given
And your peace of mind,
Be released
From its prison
Michael Marchese Dec 2021
Spelled it out
All on the line
Crystal clear
I was not quite the same
Person changed
With you here
But who didn’t
Or doesn’t
Or wasn’t
Enough
For the person they loved,
Were unworthy to touch
And behold
And adore
And amuse
And delight
In the simple,
Sincere
Sentimental goodnight
And like each of the hundreds
Before were for her
If she’s even still reading
I cannot be sure
Michael Marchese May 2021
Long lost
Tired toil feeling
Hard work seldom
More appealing
Sore on every corner
Poor
In every way
You can’t ignore
Just let me make some money
Daily
Maybe meet
A pretty lady
Lately that seems
Nigh unlikely
Half my bed is empty
Nightly
Only slightly
Fear the worst
That gifted girl
Left me accursed
Whole world reversed
And snapped me back
On track to death
By heart attack
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
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Feel like each one of these
Spells it out perfectly,
But I was seldom so down with this,
Living it up
In my basement,
Encased in
The still giving up
We were barely embraced
And yet here I am
Wasted
So spaced in
The depths
And because you
Still searching
Their infinite breadth
For the rhyme
That brings genuine
Heat
To this house
Or the one to clutch closer
Despondent in doubt
I was cold,
Very distant,
A strange
Estranged lover
The same way I am
As a son
And a brother
Alone
You must know
But I want everyone
To be similar, no?
Michael Marchese Jun 2020
Doubting what I thought I knew
It’s true
The sky is not just blue
Sometimes a pink or purple
Hue
Appears to be
What I construe
Perhaps its aging
Seems to make me
Question
Everything I say
And hear
As I just drift away
Perplexity
Vexing
Confounding as ever
Attraction not only
I see us together
And romance is not
What you think
What you want
Is a love letter
Penned
In illegible font
Michael Marchese May 2019
If I could be any known
Creature on Earth
I'd still choose to remain
The same human since birth
Have I been, and am currently
Will be for more
Of the time, only I
Can decide what it's for
What's in store
What awaits
To embrace
Me with only what we
Higher apes
Could lay waste
To rapacious,
Voraciously
Taking a taste
Of forbidden fruits ripe
With the sins we have chaste
For what other such beast
Could destroy and create
A feast for the gods
That we make
As we mate
Procreating the future
And sealing its fate
In a consequence drenched
In a floodwater's rise
Of the actions we take
And the plans we devise
To ascend to the skies
We can rationalize
The absurdest demise
And as chaos enraptures us,
Captures us, caged
We unleash feral rage
And bring order from chains
But are bound only by
An instinctual drive
To not merely survive
But as civilized, thrive
On our own two feet striding
To the other side
Of the lives of the billion
And counting
Supreme
Zoological,
Often illogical
Beings
With fallings as graceful
As "death do us part"
And with hearts that beat just
As abstractly as art
Can we render it all
With a sentient perception
A meaningless void
In a sea of depression
Or be overjoyed
By our manic expression
Of what makes us same
Makes us tame the insane
Makes us whole
Makes us all people, equal
Indivisible
Michael Marchese Nov 2020
Just saying my friends and I
Were the first virus
Still plaguing empires
And toppling tyrants,
You don’t want us here
We don’t care
We’re the highest
First contact-race
Social contract rippin’ state
Nature acculturated
To status update
And we bring the fierce left
Intellect
And checkmate
With the room spinning,
Keep winning
Any debate
Acclimate to invasive species
And evolve
To make us more diverse
And complex
Problems solve
Or just ponder
And wonder
How it could be better
Together
And weather the storm
Surging pressure
Unfettered
Intercepting their spies
Therein enemy lies
Still romanticize ways
We can say
Our goodbyes
Despite actively having
Familiar relations
More intimate moments
Distorting equations
Of perfectly
Planned
Unforeseen
Consequences
When we’re in the business
Of breaching defenses
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
When the sun and the moon
Have vacated the sky
And each moment in time
Has since long passed us by
And the earth and the seas
Have been all but destroyed
And the dust in the wind
Is reclaimed by the void
And the stars all alone
Fade to black on this scene
And all that we are
Is an alien's dream
Forever expanding
One thing remains true
My infinite love
Still revolves around you
Michael Marchese Dec 2021
Altering actions,
Projections,
Directions
Trajectories take
To deliver their lessons
Impose inquisition
Through force
And charisma
Convince you to
Lie, cheat and steal
An enigma
Required
To masterfully wield
The exertion of pressure
Agendas fulfilled
But it doesn’t take geniuses
For me to be
In control of the outcomes
Unanimously
Michael Marchese Apr 2020
Sometimes
When I’m reading through
Old history
Messages that I sent to you
I can’t believe
That you’d ever amuse,
Humor me
In my lunacy
Barely coherent
On tangents
I’m off again
Just to sound smart,
Win your heart
And be off again
On some unyielding
Crusade to make sense of you
Next to
The rest of the world
And all I could do
With or without you
Within it
Provide for you
Constant adventure’s
Amenity
Pleasantry,
Wisdom
And insight
I felt
Kept you next to me
When anywhere
Else but my side
Would be
What I think would be best
For the you
And the me
Michael Marchese Feb 2021
Throw away forever
In favor of eternal
Lay to rest
The mortal soul
In deathless pages
Of this journal
Join me now
In disembarking
From compassion’s hesitance
Your empathy is not a weakness
But a conduit to this
Commiseration
Correlation
Know you feel me
Just afraid
To ever deign
To stand before me
And confess you feel the same
Late
When I think of you
Solely
In writing
And solemn
Reflect on what
Causes us fighting
Goodnight
After night
Against odds
We prevail
Against God’s
Predetermined
We’re destined
To fail
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
If each one was a masterpiece
Maybe they’d remedy
My lack of lover
And others would envy me
But this inherent
Connection to writing
Is not some poetic
Endeavor I’m trying
To dominate,
Propagate
Sell out and leave
To the plagiarists to
Pretend they
Can conceive
Michael Marchese Aug 2022
Acknowledge
Confront it
Then bare its hide
Vanquished
Showcase
Its disgrace
And deliver its anguish
Unto
Any would be
Assailants
Make safe
Its estate
With a state
Of surveillance
Invest in its fear
Appears deep
Insincere
And then watch as
Its dissidents  
All disappear
By enabling
Its boastful,
Accomplished
Facade
Like the dread of death
Feels itself
Closer to God
That’s what I call it
Alone
Through the night
When sedation
Persuasions
Still fail me
Despite
What I write
Weary eyes
Concentrate
On the page
How to lay it to rest
From the rest
Disengage
From this cage
Of fixation
Obsession
Incessant
Clock ticks
In the midst
Of my listless
Depressant
Michael Marchese May 2019
Is it just me
Or have things gotten better?
Returning to site
And they're friendly as never
Before have they treated me
With such respect
I find even most children
No longer reject
My innocuous presence
And patience it seems
To be even expressed
By erstwhile relentless
Antagonists testing
My patience each day
Prior to this surprise
Pleasant as it may be
I still can not surmise
If they finally welcome me,
One of the people
And learned to accept me
As different
But equal
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
In these pages
I’ll awaken
What the world
Has long forsaken
I will mourn the loss
Of nature
In these pages
I’ll engrave it
I will tell her that I love her
Bear my soul
For all to share
And I will cover
In these pages
Reasons readers
Should beware
Of when too long
Bereft of pages
To engage in
My catharsis
I become instead
The words
Never preserved
Except in darkness
Michael Marchese Aug 2022
I’ve wandered more wastelands
Than care to admit
For to her
Omnipresence
I couldn’t commit
Just submit
To mirages
A hajj
Without faith
In messianic
Guidance
I can’t imitate
Like a wraith
Neither living
Nor dead
I remain
But a remnant
A mendicant
Staking his claim
Michael Marchese Jul 2018
Big plans for the world
Guess you have to start small
And in doubt default setting mode
Question it all
I think god itself lives here
Just can’t seem to care
Know the devil is listening
But he wouldn’t dare
Show his face in these parts
Be so bold as to send
His archangels who speak
In the tongues I have penned
In my feuding, conflicting
Immutable selves
The supreme being me
Into nothingness delves
Michael Marchese Feb 2019
What haven't I added yet
To my collection
What shapes have I not taken
Form of a question?
Incarnate my presence
Needs none to acknowledge
And far from the world
And its wars
I seek solace
To soldier along
To a song of disharmony
Weapons continue to prosper
Disarming me
Warming the globe
To a strobe-litter grave
That my cosmic illogical
Alien probe
Does not know
How to save
Droves of people
Enslaved
Driven on to
A critical
Mass-approach grave
Such a craving to sate
For what we automate
To replace us, supplant
And depose
So it goes
And what grows
From the dust
And the ashes
Disowns
Any trace of us lost to
The space in between
What is you?
What is me?
What is life?
But a dream
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
They call me Tyrant
The gypsy warlock
I’m a poetry raven
Tick tocking the debt clock
An equinox battle ox
Socialist loner
A criminal guru
A Holy Ghost stoner
An ironclad nightshade
The wind in the trees
A stoic centurion
Freedom disease
A pondering star
A bazaaro safari
A strategy master
An ancient Atari
A Godzilla movie
The wall on the fly
I’m a riot on acid
A really fungi
Michael Marchese Mar 2019
I am Jupiter storms
Unabounded by time
Raging on
And eons
Can not hope to confine me
To unstable matter
And mass
Rearranging
My molecules morphing
To liquefied jewels
And my surface
A canvas
Of unrefined fuels
Like an abstract mosaic
Of swirling
Unfurling
Tempests of archaic
As constellations
And the ages I've waited
And slumbered and spun
Into memories
Faded
And taken the names of your gods
As my payment
Inflating my ego's
Mesmeric rotations

So quick to claim hearts
Of Europa's amidst
My seductive, enchanting
Illusory bliss
Venture into my centrifuge
Fumy abyss
I have pressed up my lips
Of a frigid, wet steel
And then sealed
With a kiss
What ‘nary
A planetary
Can resist

And as she revolves
Around me
And gives life
Io dances about me,
Callisto my wife
Ganymede my seed
And the rest of my progeny breed
Future needs
What the Earthlings will need
To make up for their greed
All will see
Look to me
In my enormity
As my reservoirs
Fill them
With infinity
Michael Marchese Aug 2020
I sensed a disturbance
I haven’t felt since
We were younger
But she
Was the same
Seductress
And though welcome advances,
Enchantments,
Romance me
I can’t entrust her
Conjecture  
All I’ve heard
But she’s cute
And she’s cool
When my vision is blurred
And my speeches are slurred
I would guess or assume
I was blacked out before
The mushrooms
We consumed
Michael Marchese Mar 2023
I am
Inside the mind
Death do us Valentine
No more words left
To expressively
Redefine
Guided like
Heat-seeking
Mischievous
Myth
To the nuclear winter
Sea depths
I adrift
When the one I am with
Can’t commune with me
Frequent
And not even shadows
Malinger
To speak with
My Ill-fated omen,
Portentous
Lament
My immense
Commence writing
The next
Common Sense
Michael Marchese Dec 2018
They come out of nowhere
To find their next meal
From indigenous creatures
The sustenance, steal
Until they who are thriving
Off Earth's degradation
Leave leveled and fell
The native vegetation
And generations
Subsequently
Succumb
To the drumming of war
Over scrap-scrounging slum
For a chance to get some
Of what's needed to breed
Or be out-competed
And never plant seed
In the soil, eroded
Corroded foreboding
Anomalous storm-surging skies
Like an omen
Sent to undo
The mistakes
To erase this invasive
Humanity race
Michael Marchese May 2022
Just leave me some other
Lifeline
In decline
I don’t care about money
Just keeping what’s mine
Since I know that I earned it,
I burned it
And spurned it
Rejected inheritance
Merits
And turned it
All into
A big
Ashen pile
Of cash
And then patched it all up
When I needed it back
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
Michael Marchese Jun 2020
I see you still
Right?
As I sit here
And write
Mirror images of
Can I kiss you?
Goodnight
Michael Marchese Aug 2017
I call upon their harmony
They honor me with artistry
The pupils of Apollo's
Lyre resonant inside of me
Calliope adventurous,
Intrepid in her recklessness
Emboldening my will to lead
The unenlightened on this quest
Through Clio's scrolls of history
My oracle clairvoyant
She has graced me with the vision
Of the future sky chatoyant
And a buoyant sea of Euterpe
All floating through the lyricist
That synchronizes all of this
Into a metamorphosis
Evolving as Erato's love
A heart as soft as silk
A dove, tabula rasa thirsting for
The Mother Gaea's milk
To rise from Melpomene
Masks of tragic flaws of Icarus
For I divine the comedies
Thalia simply can't resist
Polyhymnia, Terpsichore
My rarest of expressions
Still reveal themselves in forms
Of spirit guide possessions
When Urania in cosmic bliss
Transports me to the stars
Reborn again to join them
As Mnemosyne's memoirs
Michael Marchese Aug 2017
How do we retain
The immortal decay
The immoral array
Of the weapons of men
Who were molded from clay
Michael Marchese Aug 2018
Been gone from the pen
For too long in the dark
Off to start on the trials
That keep me apart
From illusory luxury
Lunacies haunting me
Self-loathing tendency
Tyranny taunting me
Flaunting its alter-ego
Need to know
Basis, secrets I’ve kept
In a bottle of woe
At the bottom of low
Where I count the rats crawling
Mites feast on my flesh
And the story is simply
Forgetting the rest
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