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God is just
Your shame
Your insecurity’s
To blame
Not everyone is out to get you
Not a reason to complain
So stop deflecting
And diverting
Only hurting
Your pretension
With each mention
Of the overwhelming
Trauma
You’ve endured
In no dimension
Left conceivable
Will you be reassured
You’re not a victim
Not a target
Just entitlement
Incarnate
But your followers,
Subscribers,
All the eyes on you
Desires
Are made fleeting
And enfeebled
When you’re asked a simple question
Can you really live without it
But a moment’s
Inattention?
Michael Marchese Mar 2018
Bury belief in a tomb of unreal
Just admit you know nothing
Except what you feel
Michael Marchese May 2019
Suppose I Should have warned you
We're impossible to ****
Composed of paragraphs
Our bodies are
The pages that we fill
And will precede us
For eternity
Preserve a lucid legacy
Remember us
If merely
In the dreams
Of our posterity
To follow free
As avidly
As writers on the storm
Of what we couldn't keep inside
Another captive minute more
and so in paroxysms
Scripted
Extrication from
The norm
An insurrection on
Existence
Indomitable
Resistance
And refused to come with quietly
A voice-suppression system
Raising volumes
Of our voluble
So much to say
But taciturn
Temperament
Defenses
Of the peace
For which we yearn
When turning tides of war within
To galvanize their inspiration
Often sought
But seldom found
Without an inkling's
Inclination
To encrypt it in
Eclipses
Of the cosmic joke's
Ellipsis
And persist in our struggle
To give life
To the unwritten
Michael Marchese Mar 2022
I still pen the end
In elusive conclusions
Await to be mated
To lovely illusions
Entombed in her absence
Submerged in the flows
But exhumed from sepulchers
Too grim to expose
So diverged from the path
She prefers it to go
And when she doesn’t answer
No more I need know
Just proceed to my ritual
Silence forlorn
Like she’s already dead
And I can
Never mourn
Just lament the unsaid
Full of dread
She cares not
All these songs in my head
But to play them
Forgot
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Yearn to be back
In the vast expanse
Questing
Adventure still beckons
But more second guessing
The longer I stay
In this place of stagnation
That keeps me at pay
Levels meager
But somewhat acceptable
More than I’d make
As a vagabond spectacle
Cast my dominions
To somber
Oblivions
Long to return
To macabre  
Conditions
My patience
Is wearing thin
Yet I keep
Waiting
But counting the seconds
Is so
Aggravating
When you’ve made your peace
Suspend your
Disbelief
Just a little bit longer
You made it
Attained it
A life once elusive
Now you must sustain it
Without overcoming
Your darkest desires
In any way
Sating
Their grave of empires
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Always the hero
In my own story
I craft greater states
Just to bask in the glory
Of having fed millions
Or starved them the same
I enslave nations just
To preserve my surname
For I came, saw and conquered
Laid claim with a stroke
Of the sword or the pen
Lesser men I have smote
From the history
Victory mine
For all time  
With my sickle, the tithe
I deflower your bride
With my hammer
Devise
Revolutions worldwide

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

In your progeny
Serving me
My private property
Simply livestock market
Panic posterity
Feeding my Titanic
Furnace of industry
Making my products,
My profits, my brand
Stamped upon its collection
Of serfs I command,
Posted signs propagating
Updated newsstand
Bought and sold
By my no more gold standard
Stronghold
Growing old
I suppose
But foreclosing
Still now
So submit to
Depend on me,
Bend the knee,
Bow
Brought my bastion
Packing
With me
Half a world away
No need to build
It over
Better
All attempts
To start
Delayed
No minds remain
Have I not swayed,
No feeble brains
Left to invade
My best endeavoring
To memory,
Eventually
Will fade
For I have made
My bed
My home
My place
On earth
Out of
The grave
And from the cradle
To its breaking
Shell
My body can be laid
Michael Marchese Feb 2017
The leader will stand
For all into one
The sum of his fears
Is a product of none

He has learned to fight fair
On this life battlefield
With a sword of ideals
And a virtuous shield

He will rise over mountains
Cross river and stream
As he carries the world
While upholding his team

He will sink to the depths
Of the loneliest ocean
A man-of-war captain
On seas of emotion

Beating back pain
Like a ram against waves
His sails painted black
By his treasure horde caves

Where desire was buried
And locked in a chest
When at the world's end
A most selfless behest

Then summoned him from
A Laurentian abyss
Reborn as a dreadnought  
Of true nothingness

Imbued with the force
Of a righteous typhoon
Commanding the tide
With his purpose-full moon

To glow as a beacon
A lighthouse of hope
For the stars yet to see
Through his telescope

Beyond space and time
Past nuclear fusions
Celestial beings
And cosmic illusions

To find that within
Is the energy source
To channel this power
And rewrite its course

For the leader has done this
He's doing it now
Tasked with the honor
Of showing them how
Senescence in dissonance
Vanishing empathy
Shadow peripheries
Routine
Is sanctity
Memory
Failing me
Try as I might
To prevail
Something ailing me
Veiled
In impermanence
Desperate to last
As if rest of our lives
Before eyes
Hasn’t flashed
Past already
It’s heavy
The burden of knowing
The growing pain
Slows
When you cease
Undergoing
Imperative change
To the honeymoon
Phase
And with one simple phrase
Until death’s
How it stays
Michael Marchese Sep 2020
September skies
My eye belies
As everything seems more alive
When surely this
Capricious season’s
Mild nature’s
Rhyme and reason
Here can be
All far too fleeting
Leaving us
In winter’s thralls
Of sentimental
Deck the halls
As cold and gray
As any day
Of existentialist decay
Michael Marchese Nov 2023
Always wallow
Ever wither
I am underneath
The Winter
Soldiering
Like lonely snowmen
Thinking of the graves
Below them
Frozen in
How long I’ve known this
Predisposed to cold
Immersed
My killer instinct
Nature lurks
How hard to keep repressed
It works
To seal within
An icy fortress
My most
Predatory
Portraits
Michael Marchese Mar 2022
The seconds are wasting
And here I am chasing
A date with desire
So seldom embracing
At once what I felt
For the hand I’d been dealt
In her hand
I can’t handle
The heat
As I melt
Turn back shadow
Now go
Be away with you
No more coercing
My gaze
I’m afraid of you
Beckon me over
No longer
You siren,
For I am
Tonight’s
Disengage from this
Tyrant
And I will still staunchly oppose
The compliers
And tally the taking of tongues
Of the liars  
So hold yours
And head for
The way you came in
Anything you could say
Unoriginal sin
And much to my
Still grinning
Chagrin
****** bin
I know I
Cannot finish
What you can’t begin
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
Of sheep there are many
Of shepherds too few
Of wolves there are plenty
Of lions a slew  
Yet still only one
Whose pride rock is true
The prodigal sun
All creatures look to
For their chance to see
The earth from his view
So they can be free
From this cage in a zoo
The longest goodbye
The most longing to die
I have ever considered
The flowers have withered
And soon enough die
Upon hitherto
No more embrace
We can trust
We just give in
Forgive
And just feel the love
Rust
And like that
She is gone
I keep trying
I fail
Can’t avail
Me enough
And whatever becomes of us
I will still
Wanderlust
Wondering why
Does it hurt
To alive
And return to eternity’s
Longest goodbye…
Michael Marchese Aug 2022
Makeshift machines
Making me
Out of touch
With a touchscreen reality
In my palm’s clutch
In a hot button second
I rattle my cage
Unsurprisingly
I’m not surprised
I’m enraged
Been engaged
Now I’m married
Been martyred
With cause
As I fell from the top
Of my most
Tragic flaws
And I’ve lawlessly
Toyed
With the thought
Of amoral
But lost the pursuit
Of my power mad
Quarrel
My grappling
With justice
And vengeance
Is best
Served a frigid
Despondent wasteland
Of unrest
Having wrested my claim
From the jaws of defeat
Battle tested my truth
In the tongues of deceit
To be wielding the weapon
Of painless infliction
Through words
Your inaction
Just fuels my addiction
To burning facades
Reimagining gods
To keep moving
In unison
One with the cogs
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
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
Amusement
Sport
And profit
No unconquered kings
Could stop it
It was something
In the water
In the wind
And in the trees
A sort of sorrow
That could lift you
Swiftly
Take your soul with ease
Though it is not
Until she leaves
Can you imagine
How she grieves
And claim the same innate
Despondency
Through all the fated
Weaves
Michael Marchese Sep 2023
In bastions
Of Athens
In bathos
Unmentioned
We learned of my most
Civilizing
Pretension…
But miasma in the streets
The prices spike for gas and eats
And aisles full of the deserted
Still put ***** in the seats
Armada fleets
Exacting trade
By any force
Of commerce mightier
Than people it extorts
And it aborts its own last rites
To feed the richest
Their reports
And still under my aegis
My supremacy elitist
Representing staunch
And solely
No conviction
More egregious
Than my appetite
For sleight of hand
Subliminal starvation
My addiction to
The revenue’s
Casino reservation
To the totem
Status hierarchy
Token virtue’s
Price,
So tag the flag
Like body bags
And watch me wage a war
On rights
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
Feels like there’s almost
No road left to go
But much further along it
She’s out there, I know
And though doubtful
Convinced
That persisting at this
Will eventually see me
Back there in her midst
Or at best
Wishing wistfully
Wilting will cease
And some semblance of blooming
Vitality peace
Will release me,
Return me
Into the empyrean
Fearing no more
Like a free at last Syrian
Michael Marchese Jun 2018
Do as they say
Walk and talk just like them
In their images think yourselves
Gods amongst men
They have money and cars
Fancy clothes and success
All the power
They keep making more
And we,
Less
Michael Marchese Oct 2021
Now check the black code
Secret message
Embedded
Explicit content
Even Disney regretted
But only express it
When woke
Is the token
The singalong signaling
Virtue
Invoking
Nostalgic
Desensitized
Feasts for the eyes
The objectified princess
Is one of the guys
So best get with the program
Before the pogrom
Seeks to cleanse
The agenda
And cancel the prom
And instead impose masks
Of the master class act
Still determining
What the truth is
That’s a fact
This city
The world
All the rest of it
Looms
Overbearing
Without me
Expelling its fumes
Into some atmospheric
Calamitous ends
Into globalist visions
Dystopian trends
A greenwashing campaign
A whitewashing the stain
A robotic performance
Of hypnotic fame
But society
Beckons me
Back to bemuse
In its melody
Maladies
Fallacy news
Except now it’s infused
With a glut of my
Truths
And whatever you like  
All subscribe to my views
I write the narrative 🤫
Michael Marchese Apr 2021
These minimizing labels
There be pirates on these seas
And arming social revolution
Is in love with lunacies
Come in with tyrants,
Preaching violence
And enriching lesser clients
Privateers to privatizing
Water fronts to spread the virus
Be it powder wigs and kegs
Or kids with squids for their sea legs
It all submits before the rising
Of the bottom-feeding plebs
So call me leftist,
Call me liberal
I was born in the imperial
Ethereal imprisonment
The cargo hold’s
Bloodlust for gold’s
Dehumanized
Equivalent
A righty, if you write me
In genetics and supremacy
The strong, the weak
The idolized
And deified
Celebrity
But never on authority’s
Minority report
But indivisible as any individual
At court
And so I see the tribal fighting,
The internecine delighting
In the other side’s
Speechless demise
And stoke the reuniting
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
A step ahead of Hermes
I rival the wind
And Pheidippides cried,
Herculean my stride
When no Nemean lions
Could swallow my pride

A thread of Arachnes'
Recalcitrant spin
Athena be bested
By webs I have vested
With powers I've woven
From gods I've contested

On Helios journeys
Apollo rescind
Narcissus reflection
Of Echo's complexion
And Oedipus kingdoms
Of blinded subjection
Michael Marchese Mar 2023
Can’t even boast
Of accomplishment’s ghost
When the sum
Of my parts
Washes up
On the coast
And I’ve been back and forth
All around
The rotation
Condemned,
Welcomed in
To an alien
Nation
To factor me into
The quantum equation
When numbers and value
Induces objection
But tethers and links
This hormonal connection
A balance
No palace
Could render
Distinct
If the masters we serve
All subservient
Sync
To the blink
We inhabit
This minuscule space
And the rate
We proceed
To extinction’s
Embrace
Michael Marchese Sep 2023
Don’t think you can sell me
On more than needs-based
I don’t think you can tell me
I’m wrong
To my face
That the price justifies
What the world lost to make it
To take it to market
For product replacement
Of nary apparently
Valueless cogs
With the e-commerce
Metrics
Of new money gods
Michael Marchese May 2020
Kid stays on his feet
All the live long day
Doesn’t care to take seat
Never bows,
Never prays
But offer
Refreshment
And you can expect
To make friends with him
Won’t be too
Farther away
From the moment
The genuine courtesy
Flows
And the mutual human
Befriends
Former foes
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
Pick a cause,
Any cause
Then traduce it
Down to flaws
Not justified
To drive its message
Sloganeering
Its progressive
True intention
Buried in
The factory wreckage
Manufactured
Discontent,
Last vestige of
The dissident
Michael Marchese Feb 2017
The dusk is my maker
  My cradle, my keeper  
The dawn, my destroyer
  My coffin, my reaper
The night is my maiden
  My goddess, my muse
The day is my widow
  My black and my blues
The dark is my armor
  My sword and my shield
The light, my crusade
  My faith battlefield
The moon is my wolf
  My loner, my guide
The sun is my lion
  My tyrant, my pride
Casting these shadows
  In which I will hide
From the blinding egos
  That I'm still trapped inside
Enraptured
Contraptions
Devices
Newfangled
As circuits and wires
In conflicts entangled
Move closer to further
From peace
Global order
To tech hubs and giants
Securing the border
With job loss creation
Dehumanized
States
And robotic connections
That make better mates
Than reciprocates
Costly emotion
Is worth
An economy
Planned
Obsolescence’s
Earth
In control
Of a streamlined objective
Uploaded
To all the collective mind’s
Function outmoded
Michael Marchese Sep 2020
They made it seem like
Love was more than enough
Like two people who fall in it
Never rebuff
All the time
Perhaps even
Forever
Believe in
Wholeheartedly that
It just wasn’t a scene in
Another romantic
False narrative
Standard,
The find you,
Consign you
To all questions
Answered

When they meet again
To rejoice in some end
But the real thing
To less happy ones
Often tend
Though I must say
The theme
That they get
Most correct
Is in its nothing left
All you’re left
Is regret
But of course
No one heeds
Universal guidelines
Just continue to wait
For the stars to align
Michael Marchese Jun 2017
It wanders restlessly released
In tombs of recently deceased
And surreptitiously it seeks
Just to be mortal once again
Sarcophagus of sinful skin

To hide the scarab-swarming flesh
An all-consuming nothingness
Falling to the floor and crawling
From a skulking skeleton
A rotting corpse of blending in

With those who see no form of pharoah
Decomposing in its marrow
Just disgust accruing dust
As time embalms its bones within
These pyramids they've never seen
Ravenous gluttons
It’s rather
Disgusting
Discussing this subject
Another taboo
Never mind
We’ve more wealth
Than we know what to do
And get used to
Consuming
Confusing
Desire
With need
As the greed
Transfers now
Through a wire
Continuous
Bickering
Makes us both
Sickening
Slipping right back
Into silences
Listening
Only to sounds
Of our own
Reassurance
The other can’t possibly
Get this occurrence
I’m hurt
And you just
Carry on
Unperturbed
And it worsens
Two persons’
Attempts to be heard
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
But I just consume them
Not sure of the science
Behind it
Just know
That they offer me
Spiritual guidance
Reliance
I can’t say
Upon them depend
I just like how it feels
To my ego
Suspend
And upending
The preconceived notions is fun
My ineptitudes
Most uncouth
Weirdness
Becomes
An invaluable asset
A tingling sensation,
A spree
Of the glee
I am me
Revelation
Michael Marchese Aug 2020
We laid there together
But couldn’t quite seem
To forget that the world
Wasn’t living the dream
Or at least wasn’t seeing
What we were conceiving
As of the ethereal
Garden of Eden
Michael Marchese Mar 2018
You know I’m the vengeance
Directing
The reckless
Infestive
Obstructive destructive
Despondent injection
Obsessively restin’
Asleep at night
Sextin’
With demons
Of order and chaos
Aggression
Next lesson. They tell you they’re vegan while un-salad dressin’
Testin’ and testin’ and Bespin your friendship
And readin’ your story
Awaiting to end it
The hatchets we bury
To Hades we send it
The western elite of the borderlands wolves
In the north but there’s so much more northern to go
To the arctic we bask
And then drown in the glow
Cuz we flow with the snow
And we stroll with the wave of the LSD
slideshow
Rock and we roll
And we let the world know
There ain’t nothin’ this Latin American don’t
Consider before resorting to violence
Trust me my people were peasants and pirates
We’ve made a new world with some Holy Cross virus
We burned down the fields till the babies grew quiet
We built all your cities for ours were of gold
Then we ripped out your heart and we watched you grow old
In the cold
Jungle heavens
Where 6’s 8 7’s
Pollutants and mutants
And magic illusions
My gods are the marvelous magnetic humans
A core brotherhood
Left A F, but not rude
We bump night in the dark
And swing noose on the mood
Like the Musso de’ Lini
Yea Mikey says hi
Let him cry like the grito de lares
Inside
A reminder I claim his Malinche,
My bride
And I show her the world
From a whole other side
Where united as one
We keep mixing perspective
Until all the colors of wind
Are reflected
I draw peace across the cavern walls
Michael Marchese Jul 2022
Who fathoms
Such fell
Otherworldly
Monstrosities
Pray tell the master
Of cosmic
Hypotheses
Inter-dimensional
Overlords  
Reigning
Unyielding,
Unbound
By these pages containing
The secret to death
And its infinite ominous
Dominance
Bottomless
Is the oblivion
Marking my provenance
Summon calamity gods
In my godlessness
Vaunted to prominence
In the abstract
Science-fiction
Addiction
Dark matters
Of fact
Michael Marchese Feb 2022
Fluttering
Hovering
Into the evening
To delve deeper in
A most hedonist Eden
Still shy
Beyond reckoning
Recklessly beckoning
Her to appear
Disappear
From my fear
From the mere
Insincere
Steering clear
Of my view
Then renew like a library book
Overdue
For a fuming
Subsuming
The room kind of gloom
As she channels the solace
Like tides to the moon
But in howling
She hears
Only words to ignore
And in floating through space
She is ready for war
And she tore me to shreds
For my feeble submission
Selection of lesser muse
Radio friction
Just listen
And learn
She will spin you a web
As her siren songs shriek
In the back of your head
Michael Marchese May 2023
Blank me out
Stare
At my pair of
Disguise
Wipe me out
Like a drought
When you answer
The whys
The goodbyes
Must ensue
Seem to always
Come true
Never quite
Empathize
What we really go through
Just conclude
Only ends
No escape
No return
The wound mends
The mind bends
Ever love
Never learn
There is no perfect union
Just fragments
Of whole
Optimistic
Endeavor’s
Unreachable goal
So forget’er
World nether
Embrace
The amnesia
Induced by my
Loosening
Trip synesthesia
Michael Marchese Apr 2023
Still slaves to Apple
But they treat us nice
For their only demand
Is a brand new device

Still beholden to Google
But they see it all
And they only expect
I continue to call

Still an Amazon serf
But to work for them worse
Is their presents
More peasants

A gift or a curse?
Michael Marchese Oct 2022
Nightling
In the quiet rapture
Soon to take you out
To pasture
Casting shadows
On the wall
As in and out
Of love
I fall
And scrawled a codex
On the floor
Rosetta ******
In Nevermore
Eternally
Nocturnal
Wake
Forsaken son
Of goodness sake
I’ll break into
Your safest space
And bank on black
You’ll never find me
See you at
My not-so timely
Unassuming
Doom and gloom
Just feed me to the void
In bloom
Michael Marchese Mar 2019
I guess I could smile
Pretend I'm a friend
And exude the illusion
That they can depend
On my purest intentions
To cleanse filthy hands
Of the innocent guilt,
Smite it dead where it stands
Because there is no counting
The crimes I've committed
Or those they have yet to try
Thee unforgiven
Transgressions unspoken
The word of God
Covenant
Binding chains broken
And to higher powers
Influence awaken
Not those a savior
Or those of a Satan
Could stop them
Control them
Or answer their prayers
When they find
Only they
Overcome the travails
Set before them
By not
A didactic instructor
Parental mentor
Just the world
And its suffering
Life to endure
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
Lost in deserts thirsting for  
Oasis destinations
These mirages passing through
Like the kings of old who drew
Their course from constellations

Drifting through the wanderdust
Across Sahara's dunes
No Ra to guide me through the day
Khonshu himself could not convey
My weary traveler moons

A pharaoh needs no resting place
When he becomes the Nile
And watches pyramids of sand
Slip right through each clenching hand
The tombs of his divine exile
Michael Marchese Jun 2022
Don’t settle just yet
For the easy way out
The perfunctory effort’s
Diminished amount
Of concerted
Reverted to
Just getting by
Such a welcoming trap
To succumb to and die
Having never affirmed
Your invalid credentials
To still go unlearned
Your holistic potential
With no differential
To make you unique
Clocking in again
Out again
9-5 sheep
Michael Marchese Feb 2022
Have all these images
Who we’re supposed to be
He and she norms
I romanticize
Hopelessly
Lovelessness graves
I’m contained
In her ghosting me
Spirits and vapors
Erase recollection
And she disconnects
Into astral projection
As digital,
Pivotal
Message subliminals
Steal her attention away,
I’m invisible
Can’t be more tangible
Still though untouched
Like a hand-held device
Is more worthy of trust
Though I’ve clutched her frail digits
And kissed her eclipses
I’m still overshadowed
By sideshow exhibits
And live in this
Freak on a leash
Other world
Where no fakes
Can heartbreak
Such a nothing’s real girl
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