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642 · Dec 2017
The Eastern Wendigo
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
Description seems inadequate
To capture Nature’s essence
When life is solely permanent
In momentary prescience

Yet still her eminence unveils
A grim facade exterior
When setting suns, besetting sails
Reveal the realm’s ulterior

Unmotivated inspiration
Morphing into beauty’s beast
A hideous abomination
Come to wage its war of peace

And watch the world dehumanize
Itself in feasts of banquet flesh
Before starvation’s slow demise
Can feast its eyes on Bangladesh

And sink into the Indian
Where karma is the salt in wounds
Samsara born to die again
In Shiva’s doom-impending tombs
640 · Aug 2016
Fake
Michael Marchese Aug 2016
Cheek to cheek
Ear to ear
Fake this smile
Hide my fear

Behind a mask
Of non-revealing
Lies a tomb
Of buried feeling

Deep within
A rotten core
The good has died
There is no more

All that's left
Is pain remaining
Hidden by
The joy I'm feigning

Empty, hopeless
Gaping hole
Wretched, worthless
Blackened soul

Longing for
Illumination
Falling for
The Dark's temptation

Mitigate
My need to die
Perpetuate
Contention's lie

Forget my face
End this charade
Remove this guise
I have portrayed
637 · May 2019
Charity Case
Michael Marchese May 2019
Wishing you were anywhere
But here
Can be
A decent state to be in
If you can still appreciate
The kindnesses you're gifted
Without so much to part with
Or to donate foreign strangers
Who have been on the receiving end
Of their fair share of dangers
When displaced in distant
Destinations
Illuminations
Of the darkest spaces
All too often getting lost
In what I thought
Might find myself again
In Paradise’s cost
Another fortune
Disproportionately
My prerogative
Compared to millions out there like me
Who may have much more to give
Than take away
From every goodness sake
And goodest grace
The human race
Seems willing to embrace me with
Despite the dearth they make
A common trait among the masses
I am still content
To exploitate
629 · Apr 2017
Dragon Slayin'
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
You can't catch me 22 
I'm miles dead ahead of you  
Runnin' circles round' you squares
With lion shares and grizzly bares
Livin' on a cobra's prayer
With taboo turpitude'n tongue
Conundrums that I'm summon'un
The meta-Orpheus has come
Since 21, the chosen one
I'm neo-hippy rebel ****
So ante-uppers, get you some
Eleven seven slurpee sun
Super-soaking supernovas
With a matrix water gun
From vats of hydrochloric
Spillin' Joker on the masses
Turnin' Gotham allegoric
Into clown prince rhymes of passion
Of a blood of Christ fanatic
Jimmy Jones'n as I'm cashin'
In the semi-theocratic
Weapon cache'n checks imbalanced
Chemically unstable attic  
Bat **** crazy poison gases
Spewin' power-trippin' fascist
Cataclysmic autocratic
Devolution clash of classes
Resolution's prehistoric
Meteoric democratic  
So I'm risin' from the ashes
From dismayin' to conveyin'
How I'm goin' super Saiyan
When the treasure hordes of Mordor lords
Corrupt the men of Numenor
For Bard the Bowman heroes
Are the roles that I am playin'
In shadows of the Arkenstone
When I go dragon slayin'
627 · Aug 2021
Crossing Paths
Michael Marchese Aug 2021
Does everyone
Wandering in
My direction
Provide me a reason
For more self-reflection
A lesson,
A reason,
Was this meant to be
Fail to see
How it all happens
Naturally
627 · Jul 2016
Feel My Pain
Michael Marchese Jul 2016
Chop, hack,
  fell, sever
Greedy, vicious
  clawed endeavor

Rip, tear,
  bite, shred
Snarling metal
  teeth I dread

Mother Nature
  my employer
Human nature
  my destroyer

Synthesizing
  life until
They bleed my veins
  of chlorophyll

Grant me breath
  with each exhale
Seal my fate
   with coffin nail

Solar goddess
  lifts me higher
Devils light
  my funeral pyre

To closed minds
  I have no voice
To closed hearts
  I have no choice

But roots grow deep
  into this earth
Hold firm my trunk's
  enduring girth

For I have seen
  all creatures rise
And fall
  before my sleeping eyes

And I will grow
  for eons more
Make green this rock
  you can be sure

I am this world
  this world is me
I am everything
  that's free

So buy and sell
  your plots of land
You'll never own
  what I command

Ancient wisdom
  long renewed
Silent sentry
  solitude

A testament
  to self's release
A symbol of
  organic peace

I've tried to share
  our home in vain
You showed me sawmills
  of disdain
  
So let it fall
  your acid rain
Watch me wither
  in my shame

This cash and burn
  you can't sustain
Your deathbed is
  all you obtain  

A smoggy blanket
  of methane
Global warming  
   your domain

Pollute the skies
  with coal mind stain
You'll suffocate
  on toxic bane

And then you'll lose
  this excess game
And on this day
  you'll feel my pain
622 · Sep 2016
The Swamp
Michael Marchese Sep 2016
I asked the weeping willow tree
   how lonely is this swamp I see?
What dark, primeval, loveless start
   left it with this mired heart?

Why do lamenting ghosts of fog
    in mourning grieve over the bog?
What forked-tongued lies could have been told
   to make its murky blood run cold?

The tears that water fern and frond
   how many fell to fill this pond?
What parasites swell in its brains
   and leech upon its gnarled veins?

Did poor, lost souls who ventured in
   fall victim to its shedding skin?
What deathly wish granted its gloom
   the confines of its living tomb?

Do streams of conscious flood its mind
   with thoughts of shores it left behind?
Be it wise to even dare
   to ask this lonely swamp to share?

For how could loneliness accrue
   where so much green absorbs the blue?
Has it no path to guide it through?
   sobbing, the tree responded true

"To delve into this sad bayou
   impossible it is to do
This loneliness you misconstrue
   is just the swamp

Inside of you"
Michael Marchese Mar 2019
Waiting around
I converse with myself
Climbed a tree today
Picked some bananas to sell
Or to barter
With shopkeepers
Down at the market
Compartmentalizing
The extra
To part with
Or keep to eat freely
As soon as they ripen
In but a few days
More of boring old life in
My site
Took a hike
To seek quiet,
Imagined these hills
Fulminating
In riot
If I were inciting
Rebellions
Contriving
An artifice to
See the fires
Igniting
But as the day ends
And the sun vanishes
From the scene
My passivity banishes
Any a notion
Of causing commotion
And looking for trouble
Where nothing is broken
Evoking instead
Of promoting bloodshed
In its stoking the furnace
Forged steel in my head
609 · Jul 2022
Hunter-Gatherers
Michael Marchese Jul 2022
We get up
We work
We in darknesses
Lurk
We of earth
We forget
We were stars
Before birth
We revert to
Desert
One another
In peril
We civilized people
Prefer to be feral
And where all the wild things go
We reload
And we bode
Of extinction
Instinctively
Sown
We are harvesters
Harbingers
Of the undoing
Pollutants,
Intoxicants,
Blood debts accruing
Our own bitter end
Our untimely demise
We are all
That the known universe
Can surmise
And perhaps we are fallen,
Condemned,
Walking dead
But in fight for our life
We are thee
Watershed
606 · Jan 2023
Nuclear Winter
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Yea yea
Can barely feel my hands
Yea
Not feeling so well
But I can’t even
Stand
Yea
Still rolling around
Head in the ground
Nowhere to go
No
Can’t think for myself
I need someone else
For I am the foe
Woah
Don’t want to go there,
Can barely repair,
What I did to myself
Thinking lost and alone
Was the progeny flow
And I learned how to turn it
Up into aglow
602 · Sep 2017
Birds of Passage
Michael Marchese Sep 2017
Thoughts of her often
Fall prey to the tigress
Dimensions apart
And still I slip lucidly back to her world
The one we created
Such random conception, precise of design
The product of a ballerina
And a poet
Silent composers of thunderstorm songs
Brewing within a melodic monsoon
Seldom shared
By two antithetical empaths converging
One of the swan
The other, of eagle
But all their attempts to hatch plans
Proven feeble
599 · Nov 2017
Mother Ganga
Michael Marchese Nov 2017
Her muses are rather bazaar
From afar
To an Akbar they are
Saraswati’s sitar
For the river is vivid expressions of life
In a culture as distant
As discordant strife
When the songs are of mango trees
Sweet as can be
And her temples of riches
Are fertile and free
But still poverty seen
Inundating the banks
So much so in fact
That the monkey gods pray
Where the rhinos once drank
And I must bear witness to all the existence
Persistence resisting the suffering tone
For mine is so om that unknown is my home
But the homeless who roam like Dalits in the streets, still need places to sleep
And a harvest to reap
From the zamindar’s farm, could feed all of Uttar
Which is still so bazaar from afar to Akbar
That I wander the Thar as I wonder who are, All the bearers of Blue Star and Amritsar scars
Still polluting and looting
And shooting their brothers
And turning the tears of the Mother the Color
Of coal ash despair from unfair lady lovers
Still Partitioning them against one another
578 · Mar 2017
Night at the Museum
Michael Marchese Mar 2017
Abandon all hope
Ye who enter my domain
For once you go in
There's no leaving my brain
A relic of the darkest age
Gothic bells of Notre Dame
My atheistic serenade
My faithless roaring lion cage
My phantom of the opera stage
Masked and cloaked
In acid soaked
Smoke and mirror soul stockade
No Houdini escapade
Could escape artist my pain
From haunted houses locked away
Museums of natural mystery
Exhibiting my guilt and shame
From buried ancient history
Priceless are these artifacts
Of worthless self-discovery
Yet still displayed for all to see
As a suit of armor
Or a tomb of Tutankhamen
Where I have bested Rama
To be born again as Brahmin
Where you find me now at play
In nightmares of my new dream caste
Alone in every way
One can be stuck inside the past
578 · May 2023
The Ubiquity of Madness
Michael Marchese May 2023
More beside
The shadows
Lull
Than where resides
Therein
The skull
Aware,
Ensnared
Enlightens
Glare
Determines one
Last love affair
One lost,
Aberrant
Hole
To bare it
One more squawking harp
To parrot
Just in finding time
To see
No clearer
Sheer
Uncertainty
Pervading through
Distortion’s view
Through every sentient
Inch of you
577 · Dec 2016
Two Songbirds
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
Again they both are calling
  to a tune of nightingale
Despite how much I chase the sun
  I still so crave the pale
Moonlight, stars and choruses
  that serenaded my first love
Then cast the shadows of my doubt
  upon a different kind of dove
Now buried in the depths am I
  and locked within a tomb
These melodies are faint at best
  neither dispels the gloom
Yet still they resonate throughout
  my clipped-wing chamber halls
And echo through my corridors
  and repaint all my walls
With colors of assurance
  that these cages have no ceiling
Even if I'm still unsure
  which song is more appealing
574 · Feb 2017
The Monochrome Poem
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
573 · Sep 2023
Calculators
Michael Marchese Sep 2023
We are every bit as worthless
As the dirt is
But it grows
We just impose
And peddle
Influential
Genocidal droves
Is all we ever will accomplish
From the reaping
That we sow
Our own destruction seeds
Implanted
In enchantments of a scene
With ease
Entranced
By what askance
Dehumanizes us,
Machines
558 · Jul 2023
The Plebeian
Michael Marchese Jul 2023
Can’t get no
Status faction
Satisfaction guaranteed
Just parakeets
A pair of beats
Commodifying
Cost of need
The price of greed
Inflates like ego
Gives you power over me
Or so you’ve seen
The dream machine
Forever justifies
The means
But in the hands again
Of people
Breaking equal
Treatises
We feed the treachery
The fallacies
Of drama queen decrees
557 · May 2018
No Trespassing
Michael Marchese May 2018
Chlorophyll day dreams
In evergreen scenes
The resplendence of life
Is of light summer leaves
In the park as I circle
Tranquility lake
In anxiety mind
Racing heart is painstakingly
Pounding

The sweat of my brow
Wiping hands
As the echo resounding
The public park lands
Privacies are confounding
But could it be shared?
I prefer it alone
All of earth my domain
You should all just go home
556 · Sep 2018
Obituary of a Reverie
Michael Marchese Sep 2018
I wonder like thunder
Storms in the night sky
How it all came to form
Above mountaintops high
How the jungle has lungs
And with each breath it thrives
Teeming life in its infinite
Strive to survive
And as I pass it by
And it passes me by
I think only of what
A sublime place to die
Despite how much I try
To describe my goodbye
And believe there are gods
Who would ever reply
To my doubtful decries
Only to be shown why
I am here, I’m alive!
At least...
Most of the time
556 · Oct 2018
Acid Brain
Michael Marchese Oct 2018
My acid brain drizzles
And sizzles with riddles
Of trickle down sickles
That tickle my fancy
To take it all
Make it my own
'Till I fall
But exuberant peace-keeping
Missions are all
I desire
My fuel to the fire
Is never tell me
Not to gods to aspire
To be, more than anything
I ever dreamed
Ever schemed
Could be possible, plausible
Fathomably
Comprehensible
Nah! Inconceivably so,
Inexplicable is
Where I let my mind go
554 · Mar 2017
Lysergic Shockwaves
Michael Marchese Mar 2017
Exuding supernova suns
Through sensory explosions
Otherworldly forms of fun
When the Mother Earth has chosen
Pheonix forces I become
As I'm making moves like Gambit
Checking Bishop's loaded gun

For I am gods and I am mortals
I am everything and nothing
I am trans-dimension portals
Into realms of onto something
More than human paranormals
By detaching from possessions
To an equinox of vernals

I am blissful blossoms blooming
Unabashful beaming brilliance
Blithe brain blasts of bold babooning
Big Bang bomb bursts blowin' billions
Burning bourgeoisies by booming  
Bolshevism boiling blood's
Broke-bank Bane of bat-cave brooding

Jedi masterful mind trips
Skywalkin' Bespin nonchalant
'Cuz no force-choking Vader grips
Can bring me down to Coruscant
And no Death Star apocalypse
Can stop the peace I'm keepin' in
My rogue one rebel leader-ships  

Fearless with my laser sword
And selfless Star Trek Enterprise
To defeat the Klingon horde
The ego of Galactus dies
Upon my Silver Surfer board
Still Samwise to my Frodo quest
To sonicdoom the Mordor Lord
551 · Dec 2016
War and Peace
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
I spend so much time
At war in my head
I often forget
To bury the dead
Join forces with yours
To end the bloodshed
No need to bear arms
When there's peace to be spread
539 · Jan 2017
Detachments
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
Worshipping the finer things
You glorify your gods

On your knees you look to clouds  
Instead of to the stars
Lost inside your paradise
Forsaking life on Mars

Arrogance and selfishness
The center of your universe

Inward thoughts implode
Upon the death of your sunlight  
Salvation from the black hole lies
Alone in endless night

No shadow of a doubt it seems
Can change the fear of dark

The constant time and empty space
Though desolate and cold
Is still the only peace to find
Detached from all we hold
538 · Dec 2021
Impermanence
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
536 · Aug 2017
Join Me America
Michael Marchese Aug 2017
Each day I rise higher
But what is my tune
I feel like I'm sinking
In blues of the moon
And the sunlit tomorrow
Still dreaming of peace
But the gargoyle grey
That prevents this release
Just deceases my hopes
To a blistering frost
Of the wars of mankind
And the children we've lost

All the prices it's cost
All the ads that they sell
All the drugs that they push
As they drag me to hell
So lay siege to my kingdom
My castle of time
My throne of the future
You won't take my mind
With this fake dollar sign
Or this plastic perfection
Just phony expressions

I am the infection
To swine influenza
To pandemic greed
I'm the pile of refuse
Of liberty's breed
I'm the proud single mother
Of Taino suns
I'm the conquistadores
That shot us with guns
I'm the guy on the line
I'm the hungry kid's dog
I'm the choking wage slave
Still inhaling the smog
I'm the cold-blooded bayou
The wilderness soul
I'm the Chesapeake Bay
I'm the diamond in coal
I'm the homeless elitist
The debt degree ride
I'm illusions of choice
Like the heroes who died

To bring you this flag
Painted red with their blood
So that all of god's sheep
Would but drown in the flood
Of the unfiltered Flint
Social media trap
And the classist caste system
Increasing the gap
Of the health to the wealthy
Instead of the sick
Of the weak and the tired
Of getting last licks
So don't think I don't notice
This **** isn't fair
I'm just also exhausted
From thinking you'd care
535 · Sep 2016
A Wrinkle in Rhyme
Michael Marchese Sep 2016
My pen is always free
To find
When most sublime
My mind
Is still so bound
By rhyme
Each word and sound
Left undefined
By rhyme
I find
Abrasively
Will grind
In teeth
Distastefully
Bequeath
Each line
That chimes
Pervasively
In ears
And fears
Begrime
Invasively
My head
To dread
Implacably
This crime
Of rhyme
As if it were a wrinkle
In the fabric
Of all time
535 · Oct 2021
Comes with the Times
Michael Marchese Oct 2021
Not getting younger
Just aging
Engaging
Increasingly less
With a rapidly changing
World climate
This virus
Has taken its toll
I can see the night sky
Through the atmosphere hole
533 · Jan 2023
Tactile
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
See you more frequently
Speaking in person
In total immersion
Within our best
Version
Is all I desire
But patiently wait
To biweekly
Engage you
And impulses sate
It’s so crazy
My lust for you
Can’t be expressed,
Or repressed,
Just addressed
Keep my hands to myself
Is impossible
Not optional
In the slightest
Unless it’s too much
Or my touch
Was of Midas
532 · Jan 2017
S.O.S.
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
My messages in bottles
Never find their way back home
Or seem to reach her brainwaves' hands
These caravans of letters roam
The ocean forests made of sand
And roads of words I walk alone

Just notes composed in laundromats
Spin-cycling in my mind
Unfolded from back-pockets drenched
In thoughts that bleed sublime
Colors kept too long entrenched
Inside the whitewashed line

Will once again be painted black
Despite my vain attempt
To express the master peace
On which myself was spent
Illustrating this release
In ink blots of lament
531 · Jan 2018
The Tryst with Destiny
Michael Marchese Jan 2018
I’ve seen signs of life grow
As they dance within fallout zones
Hunger’s war-waged
Ravaged plains where no Jesus goes
Shopping for happy
And shinier things
A bazaar kind of market
Where real freedom rings
Over cannons crowns used to blow babies to bits
But now lion kings bow in the tigress’ midst
And in piles of ****’s where they let the pigs squeal
But the monkeys as gods still respect what they feel
By the river, the nurturing mother, the giver
Created by Brahma, the people, the mirror
As clear as the lotus blooms Saraswati
With the grace of a swan in my speech therapy
Where the wisdom of elephants steps to progress
And the mercy for mice carries it to success
And the cobra don’t strike lest the mongoose is stressed
For Surya sent his very best from the West
As it sets in a sapphire mango mirage
And it adds to this human collective collage
With monsoonal communal’s resurgent potential
To never change climates on what is essential
529 · Nov 2017
The Guru
Michael Marchese Nov 2017
The children of Agni
Still tend to the fields
But they yield to what Shiva’s
Deals hope to conceal
By the bushels of bullets, pork barrels of grease
In the crease of the fingers
And trigger’s release
Of the anger, the rage of this Bengali cage
Made of famines of war
And the textile slaves
With the wage loomin’ over
Their shoulders in pain
From the Kashmiri soldiers
Still diggin’ their graves
And in chains are the children who bear the unfair distribution of loot
Still polluting the air
And I try and I try, and they stare and they stare
But I’m running in circles and getting nowhere

Just making a stand for this Hindustan sand
A mere man of unplanned patrilineal clans
Tryna’ offer a hand to the paving of roads
Without hellish intentions for humble abodes
‘Cuz I know, I’ve been shown where the wild things are
And now my state of mind is the state of Uttar
When I still see the zamindars driving in cars
And the Amritsar crimson Blue Stars from afar
People burning but still full of love and a spirit
That sings of the Ganges, each night you can hear it
It’s clear, without fear and sincere in its praise
For the guru I am, come to learn of their ways
529 · Jan 2017
Patriot Act
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
Though I lead a new tomorrow
With a pioneer's resolve
I find that Someday I still follow
In its footsteps of the settler's
Beaten paths of sorrow

Tread upon by kings of old
Who tear my flag to tatters
As they colonize my soul
Then rip my constitutions up  
In favor fortunes stoled

Profiting from trails we blaze
Through fields of labor slaves
Which begs the question arms to raise
And manifests my destiny
In fifty shades of Shay's

No more to pave the streets I've seen
All walks of life share brave and free
Dead-ended by the God machine
Whose forked-road tongues divide these signs
To boulevards of broken dreams

Yes this is where we will declare
The carnage of the despot's sword
To common man's, can not compare
The power of the people's word
Is any tyrant's worst nightmare

So wall us up in torture cells
You can't contain our minds  
Abort the right to wedding bells
Love, like truth, can not be killed
By pockets full of shells

Unloaded in a hail of liar
Mass control of information
Molotov cocktails conspire
To stockpile human lives
To serve the evil empire

As storm troopers deployed
To combat the invasion
Of the aliens employed
By the Death Star super weapons
That will leave all worlds destroyed

When the facts are sold as fictions
That the junkies overdose on
As they pay for these afflictions
No one covers in this system
They just feed zombie addictions

That divide us into factions
In this race of arming fear and hate
With masterful distractions
Misconstruing civil wars
With patriotic actions
529 · Oct 2016
Siren Songs
Michael Marchese Oct 2016
Oh, her sad siren songs
How they take me away

To the vast loneliness
Ocean blues I convey
Through the words that I write
Just to keep her at bay
Only cast me asunder
'Neath storm clouds of gray

As her sad siren songs'
Melancholic array

Resonates in my veins
Serenades me astray
Remolding my heart
To this misshapen clay
Distorted blood vessel
Sets course for dismay
When my solitude sails
So reluctantly sway

In her sad siren songs
That still seem to outweigh

My anchor left rusting
In sunken decay
And bottomless depths
Of awaiting someday
I'll drift back to her shores
Once more to fall prey

To her sad siren songs
How they steal me away
528 · Jul 2024
The Provocateur
Michael Marchese Jul 2024
Out of sync lately
Mistakes have been
Gravely
Impacting
Exacting
More making us angry
But strangely
As yet
Undeserving as I
Of forgiveness
She still seems to find it
Inside
Amidst dissonance
Distance
Disdain
And decay
But there’s no one
I’d still rather see
Every day
I just have to preempt
And preclude
Provocation
Not merely accept
It as my
Inclination
523 · Mar 2017
Finding Neverland
Michael Marchese Mar 2017
Given a century
Just to die slowly
Withering daily
In those who don't know me

A ghost to the world
An anonymous letter
A ripple in time
In a river's forever

Ephemeral instants
Momentous occasions
Hourglass sands
Of existence abrasions

Weathering down
My infinity stones
With oblivious kingdoms
And Oedipus thrones

Of the edifice Rex
Of tyrannical things
Pulling marionettes
With Pinocchio strings

For reality's lie
Is a Captain Hook hand
To a boy who has flown  
To the Peter Pan land

Where losing yourself
Is to never grow old
When you're lions, and tigers
And bear stories told

A wizard of great
And powerful words
Foretelling the future
Of emerald absurds

Removing the curtains
From blinds of perception
Revealing the face
Of the master deception

Sharing the vision
Of peace I have seen
By awaking you all
To a lucid sky dream

Symphonic fantasia
Euphoric design
All figments of your own
Imagining mind

So before you put down
The brush and the pen
Come take a trip
Through these pages again
521 · May 2019
Solitary Confinement
Michael Marchese May 2019
Stalling,
Protracting
Procrastination
To its limits before
I put pen to the pages
Engage with the latest
Of sapien traits
To sate its **** Deus
Ex Machina milieu
Of acculturated
Anti-natalist ends
Without means or wherewithal
The journey expends
A final destination
Where it can reside
Free of incarcerations
I've sealed it inside
Thinking mine
Is a mind
Of exceptional kind
And I must keep it safe
From the dumb, deaf and blind
But I see what they see
What they hear
What they feel
When I make these
Insanity
Fantasies
Real
514 · Oct 2018
Freak off the Leash
Michael Marchese Oct 2018
You drown your potential
I swim with the sharks
You get sentimental
I break broken hearts
When you lie to yourself
I'm the serpentine grin
When you count all your wealth
I'm the ghost of Chi Minh
When you fail to confess
I'm the guilt in your chest
Where you see the oppressed
I'm the civil unrest
You regret nothing? Oh, is that so?
Well I do
I lament every moment
And know you do too
You are scared to be what
I release from its cage
Just an unmuzzled mutt
Layin' waste to this page
513 · Nov 2018
Despairity
Michael Marchese Nov 2018
The difference between us
Is seen as
What keeps us
Divided, united
And trying to hide it
With notions of sameness
Partitioned in races
And paychecks to rub it in
Spite-her-nose faces
Despite whether on
The excesses of luxury
Porcelain thrones
Do we trickle down waste
Upon those without homes
Or we find ourselves
One of the billion
Have nots
Minding only our businesses,
Tending our crops
We depend on it always to be there
To make
Livings off of
These lands,
As their claimants we stake
And it takes us a lifetime
Of filling it with
Any worth we convert
To devaluing it
But in each of us lies
An identical pit
Of despair in disparity's
Wealthy abyss
512 · Aug 2019
To Write or not to Write?
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
It shouldn’t be something
Just to get through
But a skill to take pride in
As one of the few
With a craft to be reveled in,
Relished, enjoyed
And on rarest occasion
A weapon employed
Should a dire most need
For a war of words waged
Upon those who prefer
The more literal graves
For their victims and enemies,
Childhood reveries
I bury mine
In descriptive serenities
Remedies curing me
Of morose maladies
Banal, mundane
Every day
Gray realities
Splitting dualities
Self-contradiction
Cognitive dissonant
Lawless conviction
A chaotic orderly
Misanthrope humanist
Spiritual atheist
Radical pacifist
Gifted with empathy
And equanimity
Equally balanced
In stoic disharmony
So alive
Dead inside
Cynic sanguinity
Outspoken introvert
Mortal divinity
Half full of doubt
And half empty of faith
Powerless to bring change
But I try all the same
And when shamed by a world
Torn apart
Just like me
I am wholly at peace
As I write poetry
509 · Feb 2017
Atlantiversary
Michael Marchese Feb 2017
Where are we now
One year to this day
How far have we come
Since I asked you to stay  

I find I'm no closer
To spanning the sea
Or bridging the oceans
That keep you from me

Just drifting across them
And casting asunder
The fleeting resistance
To being pulled under

Then asking myself
How do I still drown
In a love that was anchored
And dragging me down

Could it be that your warmth
Was the sand in my toes
Or that you felt at home
In my rock bottom woes

Be they sheltering monsters
Devoid of all light
Or shipwreck sunrises
From dreadnoughts at night

We still plotted a course
With no sense of direction
Searching for shores
At each sign of depression

Guided by hope
That Northern stars fading
Would never burn out
Should they just keep on waiting

For bottles of empty
To fill with each note
Containing the words
That could save our lifeboat

But dear Aphrodite
The hole in this plot
Was the bluest of vessels
Poseidon forgot
505 · Nov 2016
Liberal Hearts
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
We're often called the dreamers

For seeing coexistence
Where you perceive division
Where you would split the difference
We conceive a common vision

For this one cohesive-conscious home
Each vow of silent thinking tree
Each lichen-minded stone
Every deep blue secret mystery
All creatures free to roam
Brewed into a cup of mushroom tea
Perhaps a drop of honeycomb
Will sweeten your reality
Drink in this splendid biodome
And taste the earth in harmony

So brand us as the seemers

For seeking first to understand
That there is more than good and evil
Warring within fellow man
Not so black and white upheaval

We the people must unite
A liberated human nation
Under godless in this fight
Release the cure's incarceration
From the cells of civil blight
Xenophobic hate contagion
And regressive, taxing plight
Impoverishing our education
Systems righting wrong from write
De-race-ing ignorant's foundation

Radical extremers now

For turning up the volume loud
Since we ain't down with social class
We pledge allegiance to the shroud
By burning one to puff, puff pass

Tsunami vibes and tidal raves
To flood the streets in flow-test signs
Insurance for the waging slaves
When drone strikes keep on blowin' mines
And diggin' them their shallow caves
But really we're all droppin' dimes
To keep our heads above the waves
So thin blue lines can take their fines
Straight to glock-bottom feeding graves
As we keep livin' off these crimes

Still we're labeled schemers

For nurturing our future's seed
To grow into a garden's peace
Which blossoms as our children breed
An atmospheric love increase

To passion fruitful harvest skies
Of astronomic musing
As their iridescent voices rise
Embracing every body's choosing
In a selfless enterprise
Across the universe infusing
Time and space to minimize
Desire's nebulous illusion
Quasar egos vaporized
In star-trips of their light speed cruising

They'd become redeemers

For this misanthropocene
Rerunning for the walking dead  
Newsfeeding on an empty screen
That eats the brains out of their head

And makes this orb of abstract arts
A stupid rock that you've condemned
To more prosaic, Dark Age starts
No world of imagery could end
The bags of bones in shopping carts
When no idealist sense transcend
Robotic corporate profit smarts
All dollar signs of life expend
On oil, coal and carbon parts
Per million broken souls we'd mend

With teachings of our *liberal hearts
502 · Jun 2023
The History Bluff
Michael Marchese Jun 2023
You can read
Whatever you want
In any font
You write your name
May it contain
The pages waiting
On the narrative to change
Upon the ways
Its flags are waving
Over battlefields of graves,
Beneath its shades
Belies the aisles
Mercantile
Sails of slaves
And if we wanted
To improve it
We would have to let them choose,
Even if it means
The winners
Would have nothing left to lose
494 · Jul 2017
The Oracle
Michael Marchese Jul 2017
A Midas touch will fade to dust
All heroes turn to sand
For nothing means a thing
Without a price tag on a man
So River Styx becomes my flow
And Tartarus my tone
I fly my pride like Icarus
Then fall from grace alone
Into Aegeans inundated
By a flood of trepidations
Odysseys to spread my spark's
Promethean creations
Aphrodite unrequited
In soliloquies of rain
In an Amazon catharsis
I dance naked in the pain
Of the Erebus within me
As my Gaia tears convey
The retribution of Olympus
Couldn't keep my muse at bay
For in these hands of fate
All forms of living art display
Cassandra's eyes clairvoyant  
To foresee a brighter day
When all will share divinity
Yet none need bow and pray
For all will feel my master peace
From half a world away
485 · Oct 2016
Why the Beard?
Michael Marchese Oct 2016
Disheveled grim face
Reflecting disgust within
Unkempt ugly soul
482 · Jun 2016
Fading Light
Michael Marchese Jun 2016
If fading light
From her sad eyes
Could shine like stars of white
This vast abyss
This chaos mind
This endless wall of night
Would soon ignite
Amidst the glow
Of burning suns so bright
This loveless void
This shadow soul
This darkened veil of sight
Would ne'er benight
My pulse and pen
Nor blacken words I write
Again
482 · Nov 2017
Turkey
Michael Marchese Nov 2017
My brain hurts again, there is merely the end
Giving thanks to a lord who is more foe than friend
For the food on my table
A plentiful harvest
Stuffing me full of the hunger for Marxist
Some people don’t eat
And I’m stuffing my face
As these butchers eat sheep
And then landfill the waste
Of consumerist cultures
And corporate success
Turning sentiment into
Black Friday excess
I digress in distress
Is this meal not enough?
Is this appetite real,
Or just craving a puff?
Of New Delhi gas chambers
A means to a trends
Of the climate denial truths
Ethnical cleanse
481 · Mar 2023
The Econo-mIS TAKEN
Michael Marchese Mar 2023
The war  
The war
It’s always the war
Determines how the map
Gets redrawn
By the board
So reform it all
Storm the hall
Normalize gore
And procure its
Pervasive
Inflation’s
Reward
480 · Aug 2017
Gladiator
Michael Marchese Aug 2017
I will endure to be burned
To be bound
To be beaten
And to be killed by the sword
476 · May 2023
Self-Harmony
Michael Marchese May 2023
My soul is now shaded
More aquamarine
To have lived by the sea
Caught adrift in a dream
But I merely mean
Too good
For truth to compare
To be barely
Still clinging to life
But aware
There is no sweet release,
Sugar-coated deceased
That prepares us for
Gone
Is just resting in peace
That allays
Waking days
Of its cognizance craze
Liberates us,
Or saves us,
Or aids our escape
Better than
The departure
Revolves around me
To the part where
I’m suffering
Simply to be
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