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Michael Marchese Feb 2018
Look up to the sky
Then close your eyes and see the why
The vivid venal visualities,
As wildest dreams within the heavens
Go to die
In black and white
In yin and yang
In good and evil
Pyongyang
Amidst an endless winter
Dripping red
In Kuomintang
As cherry orchard blossoms wither
In the climates that we change
184 · Dec 2021
New Me’s
Michael Marchese Dec 2021
Struggled to find
My identity
Finally
Had an idea,
An assessment
Decidedly
Knew who I was
So I thought
And proclaimed
Unto others was proud
To be known,
To be named
But ashamed,
Unassured
I too often became
And now every day hence
I am just not the same
Human ego
Or entity
Subject to change
Conscious mind soul
Embodying
Products of influence
Just an ad space
Personhood
Discontinuous
184 · Sep 2021
Fallen Love (part 4)
Michael Marchese Sep 2021
At least I can think about her
All the time
Predecessors
In retrospect
Still on my mind
All the same
Never changes,
Arrives uninvited
The failed
Ever fallen love
Still unrequited
183 · Aug 2023
Writing History
Michael Marchese Aug 2023
Ghosts of my own
Shadows passing
From past mistakes
Drove a stake
Straight
Into remnants of fate
And erased every mark
That I made on this place
Pearly gates
I’ve been pounding on
Just empty space

So it’s back to the study
Of tending to legacy
How and why
Man persists
Writing his history

Down in the rabid
Whole world
Gone to war
Down in dumps
Of lined-pockets
That buy and sell more
Down beneath the extinction
Clockwork
Agent Orange
Down furthermore still
In its cluster bomb
Torrent

So back to the study I go
Tending legacy
Soon I will know
How and why
I write history

Barely an enemy
Faced on the front
But the one in the mirror
Undaunted confront
For we go to our graves
Free to liberate slaves
But we settle
For personal,
Tribal enclaves
Just a trivial anecdote
Lost in dilution
Delusions of
Sought after
Final solution

So back to the study we must
Tend to legacy
Soldier on
King and pawn
Written in history
182 · May 2019
Didactic of the Enlightened
Michael Marchese May 2019
Allow the unconscious
To freely express
What the rest of you chooses
To often repress
And expects will be met
With a world of resentment
By those who know not
What it means to be sentient
Be present and gifted
With all of its power
As from their own shadows
They run, hide and cower
Without delving into
The places they've been to
When their state of mind
Couldn't even begin to
Explain or refrain
From still trying in vain
To make sense of the universe
Hurting their brain
But a pain such as this
Of abysses consists
What is merely and nearly
Harmoniously
Reconceiving
History
Where all of you come from
And where you return
Is the same
So for now
Just continue to learn
How to be the best you
Of the highest virtue
And in come what may,
Stay
To that entity true
182 · Aug 2023
“Protect and Serve”
Michael Marchese Aug 2023
Crooked cops
Crop-dusting
Walking dead drops
Set up shop
Cracking rock
The crime lords of the block,
Never stopping
Mass production
Mass incarcerate
Consumption
Just repackaged
And reformed it
Into urban deconstruction
Underfunded housing project
For an upper
Classpiration
Gentrifying
Higher rises
Like a fentanyl
Sedation
Running rampant
Through the streets
And through the flesh and bone
It eats
And as the door comes crashing down
Its execution
Is complete
And so in summary
Impunity
With which it gets away
Has ever been
And ever will be
Making freedmen
Into slaves
Michael Marchese Mar 2024
If this isn’t it
What do words
Really mean
Have I seen it all
Spelled it out
Read in between
The lines blur
The subtext
Nothing left
To infer
Just discursively
Worsen
All hope for a cure
For enduring this illness
Too long
As untreated
Is just peace of mind
To the poet’s
Receded
182 · Apr 2017
Made in America
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
You know not of the loss I speak
You see only the gain you seek
When little there is left to earn
Success is but a thing to burn
A price tag on your self-absorbed
Unhappiness we can't afford
Yet starve ourselves to replicate
And spite our face to imitate
The yacht club, mansion, model life
Is peanut butter's plastic knife
181 · Jan 2018
The Werewolf
Michael Marchese Jan 2018
Something takes hold when moon replaces sun
Its rise above the night heralds the beast I will become
A slave to her beauty, servant to her will
Dehumanizing more and more with every man I ****
Pain can not be measured as the wolf takes its form
By razor sharp claw, the garments are torn
Bone twists, muscle expands, and senses ignite
The transformation ends when I bathe in her light
Between man and beast I have now crossed a border
On all fours I cry out , begging for her order
Carried by the winds, sweet smell of flesh blows
Tantalizing it slithers, just under the nose
I follow the scent through dark-wooded forest
Deep in the distance the howls are chorused
When at long last I come upon a campsite of men
I lick my lips in hunger, and make my move then
After the screaming, the blood and the fear
There is nothing else left, no sign of life here
It’s all over now and I leave this place
But standing before me, in front of my face
Is a beaten, scarred man, taking aim with his gun
He wreaks of sheer terror but still does not run
An instinctive leap precedes a blast of red fire
The silver mass cold, yet hot as a pyre
A bite to his neck is all I can muster
The last thing I see is my maiden’s white luster
This monster inside, to new host is shifted
Released from my torment, the curse is now lifted
181 · Mar 2018
Kids Without Guns
Michael Marchese Mar 2018
There’s rarely any joy
Left in leveling the playing field
**** or be killed
And the world doesn’t want a shield
Only to sleep and to work
For the end
To live by the dollar
And die by the trend
To defend them would be
My existence’s
Honor
But I covet peace
Like a kami wind bomber
Just pondering all of the dreams
That they squander
The people they slaughter
These true men in ruins
Of Frankenstein’s Monster
A Las Vegas concert
A Wild West myth
I pack write lightning heat
Like a Mustafar Sith
But this Vader comes later
To savor the darkness
Within the machine’s
Pax-American carcass
Of ravenous Reagan’s
Who’d let your kids starve
And contain the unsane
To fund wars in the stars
Don’t you see?
It’s the same tricky dixiecrat reaper
Delusional geezer
The neo-Liberial pyramid schemer
Who still thinks illegal is Spanish for dreamer
And trains Contra dogs
For some searches and seizure
Misogyny cowboy
Digs coal in a hole
His cash flowin’ like oil’s
Re-standardized gold  
As the livestock in rot market’s
Shelves gettin’ old
As they waste away youth
With MAD weapons they hold
Convincing us greed
Is salvation of soul
Until even the “good” neighborhood’s
Hooked on Cold
Where the story unfolds yet again in my favor
Just penned in the blood of the winning side’s slavers
180 · Jul 2023
Silicon Valley
Michael Marchese Jul 2023
Living in
Transition years
Converting to
Transmission gears
I fear we are
Becoming death
Becoming
Less
Autonomous
Peacekeeping mess
Intent
To save
Content
With content’s
Shallow grave
Amassing
Mass extinction
Wealth
Relapse
Environmental health
Collapsing edifices
Fall
Behind the mask
Broadcasts
A pall
And after all we’ve built
To last
Somewhere along
The system crashed
So now we either
Disconnect
Entirely
Or redirect
The tech,
The mecha-
Intellect
Unto a course-corrected
Flesh
180 · May 2019
Buna Dhugi
Michael Marchese May 2019
Don't drink it often
But when I do,
Wow!
I forget how it hits me
With such a jolt
Pow!
Like a shock to the system
A bolt to the brain
Enervated no more
All day long can sustain
An activity level
Atypical for
The reciprocal
Proximate cause
Proxy war
Splitting me at the seams
So fatigued
By the need
To feed on more salubrious
Gardens of greens
And tonight if I sleep
Will be with
An outpacing
Evasive maneuver
From thoughts are still racing
Through multitudes of
The senescence depression
Without it
Decelerating
My momentum
Abstention from
Communication pretension
With one sip is shifted
And lifted
From trenches
To crestfallen peaks
Of surprise I could even
Remain on my feet
Long enough to reprieve in
Revitalization
Of small conversation
A chat over coffee cups
Stirred, never shaken
180 · Jun 11
The Anti-Natalist
Cast your spells
Ring your bells
I draw
The parallels
Back to the basics
Of human equations
Mentation
Illuminates
Merely gestations
Are not quite the squirming
The learning
The earning
The born to
A bullet storm
Mourning
World burning
180 · Feb 2023
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
179 · Jul 2017
Let the Night Go
Michael Marchese Jul 2017
Lost in a flurry of thoughts
And disorders
The chaos of conscious
Enraptures the room
And she interludes often
The nail to my coffin
The anti-depressant
Of purple haze gloom
And a shot of suppressant
To lighten the mood
With a wit of without
Any life left to live
And a cold, steely heart
With no love left to give
I have axes to grind
I have bones to ice pick
A chip on my shoulder
A scratch I can't itch
When it crawls in my skin
Still forgetting to care
Unless my next fix
Is the wind in my hair
179 · Apr 2017
Relationtrips
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
Coincidence laughed
When I asked of her name
The fates were amused
Though they couldn't explain

The meaning of life
Is nothing but time
She was but a wrinkle
In fabrics of mine

I always want more
Than I ever should
My heart knows me better
Than I ever could

Perhaps there was room
Not yet locked away
Where she could be free
To shade in the gray

But all her fling's horses
And all her string's men
Couldn't put me
Back together again

Another betrayal
Beyond all repair
Infidelity cracks
In my ego affair

Dwarfed in the shadow
Of my universe
She would shrink to the size
Of the things we converse

Tethered and bound
To each other in not
But the fear of without
One another we rot
179 · Nov 2017
Samsara
Michael Marchese Nov 2017
Spread hatred from your pointless blame
Make the whole world dread your name
Tell them that they all should bow
Before the one who shows them how
To paint the godless skies in gray
To answer prayer despair dismay
Inside the empty palms and psalms
Still ringing in your ears like bombs
That you scream dagger shards of glass
And spill it with a vicious slash
Then fade into the numb expanse
Of Navaraj’s fateful dance
Feel free to fear the great unknown
All judgments are but stick and stone
And time presents the only truth
As decomposing flesh and bone
Back to the Earth we all call home
We live to die, and die alone
                                                    alone
                                                                ­alone
*And then we roam...
179 · Oct 2016
Puzzle Pieces
Michael Marchese Oct 2016
All awry

                                                              I must admit
 
            To having never

                                            Cared to try

      And make them fit

                                                 Or come together

                               Save for her and I
Michael Marchese Feb 2018
This country’s just a neoliberal economic
Republic imperial fitty-state hill
Where the rebels take shots ‘atch’yuh
Heavens on top uh yuh
Fox Ford Fiesta’s
Sell freedom to swastikas
Then let ‘em know
Where the Pokémon go
That the Zilla God rose
From the frozen shadows
178 · Jul 8
Palantir
Look at me
Look at me
Narcissistic
Tendency
Enemies
Nemeses
Everywhere
Dependency
Unfriending
Distant memories
Becoming
Penitentiaries  
To place the blame
In block chain cages
Gamify
The dread AI
Then manufacture
Your outrages
Cheap
From its
All-seeing eye
178 · Nov 2019
Washington’s Tomb
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Unheeded the warning
To not take to leading
An empire fleeting
Succeeded in meeting
A global trade quota
In breeding consumers
Like coca and cola
Place orders for new world
Disorderlies
Bordering
Neighbors in anger
Like free-raiding slavers
The ones who engrave
Condemnations
On strangers
Enflaming the tensions
Like Union secessions
Reclaiming your pensions
Like dispossessed peasants
Then pleasantly selling you
Greater Depressions
Inflating the price
Of each stock
Market crashed
As they’re harkening back
To the Gilded Age past
Mistakes made
By the master class
Fascist gas mask
Clasping racist ace cards
In their draft-dodging grasp
And enrapturing masses
Like pastors on acid
As faster the natural disasters
Leave gasping
The aftermath zeros
To sift through the trash heap
As scraps keep providing them
Something to eat
And that “just so it” psyche
No shoes on their feet
To compete in a race
To the top
Of the bottom
To watch it all topple
Like Hillary Rodham
Back down to this limitless growth
Swinging rope
And a hope and change slogan
In some brighter future
Where data-brain-drainers
Collude with polluters
And looters
To root out the suitable
Next active shooter
As losers keep playing
To win
Movin’ in
To the city
Of opportune sin
Get some skin in the game
Make a name
For your lack of fame
Minimum wage
And escape from the cage
That was sub-standard living
Conditions before
The New World Bank
Salvation
Uplifted the poor
With more freedom to choose
Than a grocery store
How to rot the core
Of this for-prophet war
Against forces that still
“Have-not”
Settled the score
178 · Apr 2018
The Creators
Michael Marchese Apr 2018
Now cackle and crackle
Cold space is my castle
Enrapture me Violet
And Amber my brides
My crimson allure
To their talons as knives
To the woods in my eyes
To my sovereign command
Of the dark lullabies

I’m the 10th of the 9
I’m the Morgoth of mind
And my equals and I
Have long darkened the sky
With the engines of war-
Profiteering skewed boar
With the pride of our kin
And the roar of the shore

We want more out of life
For we’ve seen how it grows
We think first human, write
And then teach me your prose
But we know such a tale
Needs a villain to turn
Every page this kid’s
Teaching itself how to learn
How to best the dread dragon
With money to burn
178 · Jun 2021
Extinction
Michael Marchese Jun 2021
Didn’t get
To speak my mind
The rest of life
Left me behind
Forgotten
By its innovation
Adaptation
Conflagration
No more home remains
To thrive
Survival, my last right
Denied,
Captivity’s
No place to hide
My species deemed
Undignified
And all I asked
Was peace and plenty
Not so different
From the many
Extirpated
Population
Biospheric
Degradation
Dust within a vacuum
Void
Of even empathy
Destroyed
Barbarians behaving thus
As civilized
As not enough
Consumption stuff
Could bring them back
In tact
Forever
Gone in fact
And never, ever
Coming back
177 · Jun 2023
The Breaking-up of Society
Michael Marchese Jun 2023
Apparatus
Against us
It wickedly
Works
From worthlessness
Into a purchase
Converts
Any currency
Currently
Rotting in vaults
Any hapless
Homemakers
Estranged in their faults
So deranged
In their stranger things
Bingeing
Addictions
Adrift
In the rifts
That still shatter the kitchens
177 · Sep 2017
Angmar
Michael Marchese Sep 2017
When even a day comes to pass
And you see
That the sun does not set
Upon your vanity
And the moon upon full
In the wolves of the blue
Does not crawl in your spine
And awake you anew
Then the pride of the one
Who has risen in time
As oblivion's king
Is the lord of the nine
176 · Jan 2018
Divisive Rhetoric
Michael Marchese Jan 2018
United used to mean something man
Used to mean you could hate me
And still lend a hand
Or just dap it
Just knuckles
Or give that good “later”
But now I’ve moved on
And you think I’m a hater
For trippin’ on truth
In this counter-act culture
Then mastering peaces  
Of liberal art sculpture
And finding my roots
In a planet earth nation
A biologistic
Creation equation
Empowering forms
Of expression reflective
With lessons I’ve learned
From this human collective

To recklessly check titan industry profits
Who pass their class judgments
On what’s in my pockets
When we make the products
So their wars are waged
And we foot the bills
That still keep us encaged
To the ideal enslavement
Too big to fail theft
In a toxic metropolice
State strain of ****
In the brains of the free market harpin’
On fear
In the news, in the useless
Fake **** that you choose
To buy into the system’s
Fourth ***** kinda ruse
An arms race into space
So they win and we lose
Their defense, our expense
Hired guns are hardwired
And trained like dog tags
To cut deals with “your fired”
A job on the line kind of guy I suppose
In a tax evade tower
When factories close
Authority breeds influence but it is not the only way to command it
-An active citizen of the omniverse
176 · Dec 2017
Guerilla Tactics
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
We’ve all embarked on Shining Paths
As Puka Inti’s chosen suns
When chains are all that we had left
We offered jobs and guns and theft,
Then conquered us a new frontier
Where once we saw empires golden
Burning in decline like all
The fields of green we’ve stolen
Still we’re wondering why so much red
Still treads on tyranny that shed
These trails of tears and severed heads
For loaves of bread we’ve overFed
To make this nation great agains
And voiceless votes invoking violent
Revolution never ends
Until the dead see not of war
Until the pigs fly in their planes
Until the rich become the poor
Until the honest Abe exclaims
That we’re all slaves, not worth our graves
The only way we hope to change
This broken record history
This cyclical hypocrisy
Democracy dividing us
To love thy neighbor hatreds
In our churches, states and other stuff
Is seeing all we need to be
Is our instinctive liberty
United in a common cause
Against the freedom industry
176 · Nov 2017
Anymore
Michael Marchese Nov 2017
I’m done with your rules
And your laws and your orders
Your half-empty pride
In a country of borders
That spits in the faces
Of dreamers who built it
And re-elects nightmares
Who tortured and killed it
Enslaved it and sold it
For hollow ideals
Then chained it and told it
To swallow the pills
Pay your bills, go to work
Shut your mouth, cast your vote
Buy a gun, beat your wife
Go to jail, end your life
It’s not right, it’s not fair
No one cares to be clear
What you hear are the lies
Hispering in your ear
If it’s real, it’s still fake
It’s not news, it’s a joke
And we laugh or we cry
‘Cuz the system is broke
And the banks rob us blind
And the stock markets crash
And we get so depressed
Since we can’t eat our cash
Just swipe it and like it
And hashtag it lit
Burn it all mother *******  
I don’t give ****
Anymore
Today I had the misfortune of reading that the Trump administration plans to revoke laws that have criminalized the importation of illegal ivory into our great nation. This makes me sick, embarrased and ashamed to call myself an American citizen and I can only hope there are some out there who share my contempt and disdain for a nation of united people that tolerates such loathsome, cowardly, and pathetic abuses of power by its so called leaders, without taking more extreme measures against them, for their crimes against Nature. Thank you.
176 · Dec 2017
Emotionull
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
My sociopathy displays
The same old gray haze every daze
This nothing and I don’t know why
I try and try and try and try
To make myself feel just like you
But rain drops fall, the sky is blue
Not some symbolic shade of sad
I don’t get mad, I don’t get glad
I just exist, persist, repeat
I add, subtract and then delete
The joyous moment mental notes
And transcendental anecdotes
A host of ghosts that walk beside
My shadow unbeknownst in stride
Such lovely, lonely, little people
Nurturing their inner peaceful
Living out their lucid dreams
But take a look behind the scenes
Of melodrama entities
And masquerade identities
Pretending to be happy so
This suffering we need not show
To those who sing their caged songbirds
Without emotion in their words
175 · Mar 2024
The Spirit World
Michael Marchese Mar 2024
True sides of yourself
See them broken
Misshapen
Concealed
Then revealed
Then what’s real
Is mistaken
Such fear,
Such despair
Your whole life
Disrepair
And if someone once loved you
They no longer care
175 · Mar 2021
The Underachiever
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
I can do more
I just choose not to
Watched it sink
Like Vanuatu
Never claimed
To frame perfection,
Can not blame me
For oppression
I just did
The best I could
A little evil
Greater good
Is how I justify
My silence,
Tolerate  
A little violence
Now and then,
Determine when
The free will leads you
To the end
So judge me,
Criticize,
Deny
Resent me,
Curse me,
Question why
Some wants and needs
Remain unmet
How loving
Is my epithet
If all I give and take
Is kept
Within the mortal me mindset
And swept away
Someday decay
Without a second thought’s
Delay
Based on the Leibniz justification for the existence of a God
175 · Jun 2022
Exit Elysium
Michael Marchese Jun 2022
Was there in a former life
Mighty,
Exalted
Convictions
Ambitions
To pantheons vaulted
Me up to ascending
Empyrean visions
But lost my place
Somehow
To squalid conditions
Returned to the soil
To toil
And labor
And sharpened my edge
Of depravity’s razor
Sharp intellect
Circumspect
To be applied
For it only would yield
Fallow earth
Deified
175 · Jun 2017
Magna Carta, Rum and Coke
Michael Marchese Jun 2017
It creeps in like a spider
Lays eggs in my head
Which hatch into serpents
Whose venom will spread

Like a bubonic plague
And a leprous affliction
An ugly and sickening
Black Death addiction

For only one sip
Makes my smile a frown
But to level with peasants
I set down my crown

Let them challenge my reign
Over freedom's dominion
But they prefer chains
Of pre-programmed opinion

And offer no tribute
To my divine mission
Just warp my perceptions
And blur up my vision

Until I spill guts
And I spit razor blades
Indulging in blood lust
Unholy crusades

At these God-fearing heathens
Carnivorous sheep
Political prisoners
To my sickle's reap

For now I am Grim
From the dragon's I duel
Just to rise from the ashes
Of kingdoms they rule

And distribute the wealth
To these common man vassals
For treasure-filled chests
Are but crumbling sand castles

To one who is both
Lord of paper and pen
Power-drunk on my throne
Made of oblivion
174 · Oct 2017
Metaphysics
Michael Marchese Oct 2017
You think he could ever see you with my vision?
Divine works of art that I sculpt in your image

My lust for you knew not the guiltiest pleasure
Just all of the cosmos I'd give you forever

No matter the chaos and eons between us
Regardless of my exploration of Venus

Her sanctity's  songs do not war in my mind
Without you to fight for the peace I've enshrined

In the labyrinth puzzles I'm trying to solve
Create minotaur rage without you to evolve

Me from moral's abnormal reality portal
To Brahma Samsara's omniscient immortal
"Now I am become Death. The Destroyer of Worlds."
-J. Robert Oppenheimer by way of the "Bhagavad Gita"
174 · May 2022
Deeper Cut
Michael Marchese May 2022
Cadaver on the shoreline
All I’ll ever be
Decaying
All I ever wanted
With you
Was my former love
Betraying
And it’s weighing
Like an anchor
Of the memories
Forgotten
But we’ll always have the pier
And moonlight beach
To tie the knot in
But it’s not in some
Delusion funeral
Where people wed
It shall remain within
The hanging
From the days
For which we bled
Michael Marchese Oct 2018
Life is a flash
Before self-deceit eyes
Promises that we keep
To ourselves, are all lies
We know constantly changing
Is how we evolve
Yet resist it whenever
There's problems to solve
Making more in the process
Of progress to test
Human limits and nature
Beyond what is best
But sometimes I feel like
Only I realize
Through my own pair of so-often
Self-deceit eyes
That attempts to glimpse truth
Behind layers of fallacy
Seldom if ever
Elucidates how to be
No longer searching
For answers to who
Am I? What am I?
What should I do?
173 · May 2023
Hubris of the Imperialist
Michael Marchese May 2023
Home to some
Back in
The sun never sets
So just let me succumb
To the burden
Of glory
Then let me write only
My side of the story
172 · Feb 2019
Past, Future, Now
Michael Marchese Feb 2019
Continue to study
The past
And its masters
And clashes they had
With its renegade actors
Maligned in the headlines
Of yellow newscasters
And lost in the Holocaust
Broadcasted after
In spectacles spangled
In spider silk road
2.0's you're entangled
In propagate pussygate's
War on the truth
On the facts
The tax breaks
For the rich
Follow suit
But the lawsuit is null
In the void
Of tabloid
Deployed battle droids
Seek and destroy
Unemployed
All a ploy
Of the toiling
Well-oiled machine
The despotic
Robotic
American Dream
172 · Jun 2023
Adopted/The Claimant
Michael Marchese Jun 2023
Well where will we
Wallow
When weathering
Woe
If the one who weeps
With us
Won’t drag us below
Will we find
Sanctuary
In various others
Go run to
Succumb to
The some of them
Lovers
Asunder I’d sooner tore,
Bore out my soul
Before treading the sand
Without your hand to hold
So behold
But a testament
Fragment
A statement
My orphan heart
Lost and found
You are its claimant
172 · Sep 2023
Absent Serenity
Michael Marchese Sep 2023
The last words I’ll ever write
Her
Unobscured
For each day spent without her
To with ‘er inured
Rest assured
My finality
For her  
Undoubted
My feelings no longer
Illogically
Shrouded
Confounded she’d so much
As suffer
To take me
Unbounded
Awaiting
Her heart
To erase me
Or dare I hope
Soulfully,
Solely,
Embrace me
Again as she ever has
Tried to escape me
So let again lonely
Consume and unmake me
Replace me eventually
Fading from memory
Mine left to rot
In her absent
Serenity
171 · Nov 2018
What's Left of Me
Michael Marchese Nov 2018
Oh how I thrive
In depression
Repression
In stressing each second
I feign this pretension
Anxiety, angst-driven
Dreading the selfless
Reflection
Is merely delusion
Of past intervention
Divine of some being-
Perhaps, beyond seeing
The infinite universe
Into it freeing
The essence of meaning
When all of it ceases
Materializing
Into the time creases
And all realizing
Ideally reprises
Its role as the sole
Individual guises
Unmaking me whole
Again,
Then, I describe it
171 · Apr 2019
My Issue With Meditation
Michael Marchese Apr 2019
Never made
Much sense to me
To sit and think
Subconsciously
Allow autonomy
Of mind
To find
The guide it hides
Behind
And reassign it
To the fore
Without a presence
To assure
Its resonance
In sync endures
The onslaught of
Controlled despair
The inundation
Of nightmare
Resurging as it purges
Out
The sounds of peace
With bouts of doubt
Tumultuous,
Unmoored
In a frenetic
Clangor ringing
Desiccating ear canals
With streams of conscious
Sirens singing
Ineluctable refrains
That beckon me
To stray
So far away
Reclaim my brain again
Never again
Let it convey
The end
171 · Aug 2017
The Wanderer
Michael Marchese Aug 2017
What is home anymore
To the dust in the wind
How can I come back
From the places I've been
I tumble through deserts
And cross empty streets
As they carry my streams
To a sea of deceits
I'm adrifting in time
As I thirst to learn how
I can distance myself
From the one I am now
Just some kid on a quest
To be more than a man
At the dead end of job
And retirement plan
But what destination
Could finally free
My spirit imprisoned
In reality
171 · Nov 2017
PPES
Michael Marchese Nov 2017
The lives of great people all remind us
We can make our lives sublime
And departing leave behind us
Footprints in the sands of time
171 · Dec 2017
Dances With Indians
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
Welcomed as a stranger to a wedding
I’m an honored guest
The best the west has yet to offer
Teaching my revision quest
In current jolts of culture shock
The darshan vibes arise and I’m
resigned and off the gridlock clock
As she projects an astral sign
Windchiming through my opened mind
Yet still too shy to meet her eyes
And wonder how and why she would see mine and find attraction deep inside
Residing there to kindly spirit guide
Her soul to be my bride in time
171 · Sep 2021
The Drifting
Michael Marchese Sep 2021
Friends moving on
They don’t want me around
They’d prefer not to live
With who won’t make a sound
Barely speak
But to mention
Behaviors we’d tweak
For the other
Old friend
We know so well already
Don’t want to end up
As unsteady as Freddy
For far, few between
The right words
Aren’t lost
And now seldom moreover
Our paths even cross
Anymore
Separate ways
We are going in
Hasn’t been,
Merely a phase
171 · Mar 2018
The Natives
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
170 · May 2019
When I Can't Seem to Sleep
Michael Marchese May 2019
Sometimes
When I can't seem to sleep
I can write
Like a maniac raving
In slavish delight
To the barking mad
Lunacies
Loneliest night
Where I moonlight as me
And upstage other parts
That I keep under wraps
And entombed in the dark
Like a heart in a jar
On display in a bleak
Show museum
When I can't seem to sleep

And what secrets I keep Are all leaked to the public
But no one one among them
Would durst to be cursed
By my hex of depressive
Confessions immersed
In abysmal residual
Remnants of past
Strewn and scattered memories
Shatter like glass
From a cracked-mirror fist
Of what does it all mean
Still attempting to piece back
Together a dream
Just as broken as ever
Awoken to greet
The deceit I delete
When I can't seem to sleep

Merely reach for the pen
And allow it to speak
For the creature contained
In this well-mannered freak
Where by day it maintains
An illusion defusing
Conflictual bombs
All around me before
They explode into qualms
That I have with a world
In despair,
Disarray
Disrepair
And dismay once again
My disguise will betray
The real self
I withheld
But I'd like you to meet
The complete version counting
The seconds like sheep
In my true nature form
When I can't seem to sleep
170 · Dec 2018
Invasive Species
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
170 · Mar 2018
Learning Disabilities
Michael Marchese Mar 2018
Could never sit still in a class
For five minutes
Now I teach English
Like nobody’s business
It’s vivid, expressive
My content explicit
Colloquial linguistic
Rhymes are sadistic
Prolific retellings
Of history written
Like one death is tragic
But millions? Statistics
Like lyrics as liquid
As Ludacris livid
Ferociously phosphorous
Fury I spit it
As rising sun dragons
To Asia I pivot
But I bury fascists
At level 10’s limit
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