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68 · May 2021
Reduced to Cinders
Michael Marchese May 2021
Finally acquiesced
And made a dating app
Profile
Been a while
Since I had
A touch of really made me smile
Didn’t know the best descriptions
For myself
Relied on pics
To watch the likes roll in
And revel in
The hottest,
Choicest picks
As if objectifying beauty
Wasn’t so played out already
As if every user’s only chasing
Ego-boosted heady
Looping feedback
On the feed,
On the look at me
And breed
With 1 percent of my persona
Other 99
Unseen
68 · Sep 2020
The Gargoyle
Michael Marchese Sep 2020
Perched on a limb
Like a grim
Aquiline
Carven stone
Chill to bone
Upon passerby dine
By design
I am fearsome,
Revered by the spawn
Of the underworld
Dwelling beneath me
Upon
The withdrawn
Abyss paragon’s  
Gothic hell swan  
Monument to the last
Will and testament’s
Moribund
Moral supremacy’s
Edifice
Orotund
Ancient facade
Of the godless in gray
Overseeing eternity’s
Urban decay
68 · Jan 2021
Ataraxia
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
Never forget
It is we make the gods
Out of fear
At the end
They were merely facades
Fabricated
Created
Innate inclination
To justify,
Deify
Civilization
To coincide with
Our attempts to destroy
The void lurking
When searching
For peace to enjoy
But deprived of it
Sell ourselves short
And submit
To the will of some greater force
Must be the cause of it
Moving, unmoved
Influencing, unchanged
The timeless space
Formless
Encased
In the brain
68 · May 27
Timeshare Salesmen
You people
Are crafty
Got deals
To attract me
Entrap
Not exactly
I’ll hear you out
Gladly
But sadly
Not buying
A stay here today
Million ways
You can say
Don’t delay
Getaway
That my family
My time
Is most precious in life
Overestimate
What I would do
For my wife
But if dollars
And cents
Don’t add up
In equations
I’m sorry
I don’t in fact
Need a vacation
68 · Nov 2022
The Hot Tub
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
She’s smooth to the touch
In the bubbling temptation
Elation incontinent
Patience negation
Keep inching in closer
Inspecting her lips
Dripping wet
In the steamy heat
Taste of her kiss
And it’s like we’re infusing
Converging
And urging
A surge of endorphins
Then soulfully merging
I feel what she thinks
And she thinks what I feel
And for her
All the stars in the sky
Would I steal
Just to bathe in serenity
There in my arms
An embrace that so warms
Me up more
To her charms
68 · Jul 2022
Outlook on Life
Michael Marchese Jul 2022
Getting the hang of this
Loosening noose
Of this not worth my salt
By default
My excuse
No more use
It’s defunct
A debunked
Absolute
To be what I aspire
An alternate route
Is available
Offered
Contained
In her text
And I anticipate
And await
What comes next
68 · Jan 2021
Revelation of the Progeny
Michael Marchese Jan 2021
I saw what we could be
And yet
What we are
What we were
All at once
Just the kids of a star
67 · Apr 2022
Ghosted
Michael Marchese Apr 2022
Tired
Exhausted
Of being exploited
Of feeling like ****
That you flush down the toilet
Of being ignored
And abandoned
Rejected
Pretend nothing matters
But I am affected
Dissected interminably
Where I left it
Could possibly be
How I better expressed it
And sacrificed rest
To do all that she asked
And in overcast
Bottomless chasms
I grasped
That regardless how much
You could do for this person
They take
And they take
And your heartache will worsen
Immersed in them
Hurt
Irreversibly
Curse you
To sorrow and rage
Interchangeably
Draining
This physical
Cynical
Carcass containing
Ineffable pain
A new form every day
All my cope mechanisms
Are rusting away
For increasingly gray
Has the canvas become
I no longer feel one with the world
I am numb
For the someone eludes me
From circles excludes me
Yet still set in stone
Die alone
What concludes me
67 · Oct 2020
Ouranos
Michael Marchese Oct 2020
An infinite formless
Creator created
Some other life forms
When in loneliness, waited
For some mass extinction
Eventful occurrence,
A happening,
Anything,
Purpose in service
To what it had made
Given way
To be free
Though for all its omniscience
Couldn’t foresee
What it would come to be
How apart from the one
Its posterity’s
Prodigal son
Would become
67 · May 2020
Lost Dog
Michael Marchese May 2020
Don’t ever presume
To the depths
You met me
Don’t assume
I can be
Anything that I see
I am nothing but dust
In the tranquility
I have given up hope
And emotion
And woke
Up upon
Other sides
And beside myself
Spoke
Of the furthest recesses
Of what
I once wrote
As a token
Of broken
Apologies
Choke
Out the words
Say it all to my face
I betrayed you,
Unmade you,
And sought to upgrade you
A waste of time space
But I needed you more
Than I care to embrace
Though the yearning
To turn with you
Catching the glimpse
Singularity
Moments
Like omens
Of bliss
67 · Sep 2021
The Traveling Psychosis
Michael Marchese Sep 2021
On I’ve gone
Sifting through
Shuffled few songs  
Still embedding myself
Where I do not belong
As if I were expecting
The same to bring change
Others finding me strange
Former lovers estranged
And my brain
Not so painful
To use anymore
I just can’t seem to stop
Seeking peace
Where there’s war
67 · Jan 2018
Maybe Someday
Michael Marchese Jan 2018
With you
Without you
My purpose is clear
It is all of it words
And the way they appear
To your eyes on this page
In the meanings they give
To emotions and ethics
And graves that we dig
With so little to live for
No reason to pray
To what only exists
In my maybe someday
67 · Apr 2018
Regret
Michael Marchese Apr 2018
‘Tis not death that I fear
But it is being dead
An eternity spent
As the thoughts in my head
Or perhaps a fate worse
Than the end of my dread
Is my love for you’s echo
Forever unsaid
67 · Jul 2020
Chiminea Sessions
Michael Marchese Jul 2020
Creatures abound
In the darkest
Of hours
And from my own shadow
The one in me
Cowers
Too frightened
To even
Speak truth
To empower
The feeble,
Unfeeling
Attempt at confession
When judgment so often
Proceeds the expression
67 · Oct 2020
The Trail Marker
Michael Marchese Oct 2020
Practice living each day
Like you’re already dying
And maybe by night
Only slight
Suiciding
Ensues for you
Newly embracing the path
Or perhaps
Just forsaking its
Constant backtrack
Michael Marchese Jul 2020
The vaunted you
All that I wanted
For so long
I tried to be
Strong and undaunted
And move on
But ghosts of you haunted
The notes
In each love song
And I was too proud
To admit
That I was wrong
And now you’re correct
I should probably seek help
Before I inflict
Even more harm
On myself
Or the lonely day’s nights
Full of dread’s
Someone else
67 · Nov 2024
Lasting
Michael Marchese Nov 2024
Now decide where you stand
At the end
Of the world
When it’s into oblivion
Forcefully hurled
That we go
With uncertainty
All that we know
But in faith perhaps
Aftermath seeds
We might sow
May they grow
To survive us
In some shape or forms
May they weather the wake
Having borne
Superstorms
To preserve legacy
To surpass our potential
All time and dime
Spent
Wasn’t inconsequential
67 · Jul 2021
The Spy Ring
Michael Marchese Jul 2021
Another night
To roam alone,
Reclaim my ronin
Ego throne
I came a long way
Just to learn
In solitude
Could not discern
With certainty
I would return
To once a month
Day offers
Coffins
As my will
To power
Softens
Glossing out
The fanciful
Declassifying
Push and pull
Numeric factors,
Data hackers,
Economical
Disasters
Should they prove
My widow maker
Currently
No single taker
Seems to want to
Etch her lie
Across my heart
And hope to die
67 · Nov 2022
Risking it
Michael Marchese Nov 2022
Semantics take chances
Like hopeless romantics
And thus my undoing
From love still eschewing
Revealing it feels
Unmistakably
Latent
She knows in her heart
But is stoic
And patient
Awaiting its fall into place
Opportune
More fortuitous
Whereabouts
Over the moon
For her form and mine
Melded
Dispelled the fell
Hell bid
On once upon times
Merely nursery
Rhymes
Just to lose it all gambling
On how she defines
67 · Aug 2022
Divulge
Michael Marchese Aug 2022
Lacking that
Lachrymose
Last word
Laconic
Discursive
Verbosity
My gin and tonic
Should it be a topic
That triggers incensed
Or my heart in a locket
Of loveless lament
For the loss
Is too grave to bare
Too dead to care
But more recently
Signs of life
Bloom with her there
And though rare
Are her thorns
As the cause of its drips
Fingertips can’t resist
To spill guts for her lips
66 · Jan 2020
Among Others
Michael Marchese Jan 2020
More reason than most
To feel
I don’t belong
When I try to do right
Something always goes wrong
And no family
Or friends
Reassure me
I’m home  
When among present company
Still
All alone
And excluded,
Excused
From the small-talking table
No appetite
For the type
Of my distasteful
Dispensing with pleasantry’s
Penchant for wasteful
Lifetime’s precious mine
To do what I prefer
Not with you,
Not with them
But with pen,
Without her
66 · Nov 2020
The Weak Days
Michael Marchese Nov 2020
Demons and drudgery
Goblin skullduggery
Monday curmudgeonly
Wake to dismay
Have to wait
For another weekend
To complain
To carouse
And impart
What I can not explain
In a text
To the me
Reading back
In the future
When I loop it back
Like a needle thread suture
To mend open wounds
And remind me of times
I was still bleeding out
These palliative rhymes
66 · Nov 2019
Undesirable
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Cracks in the muddy-caked earth
An ant crawls
Noisy children at play
Beyond these compound walls
I reflect on the day
How so much of it felt
I was wasting away
In this prison of self
In time out
In its corner
Of paradisiacal
Trials, and still want for nothing
Do I
Undesirable
66 · Feb 2022
Temporary
Michael Marchese Feb 2022
Why does it feel
So romantic to me
If you don’t seem to care
Seem to share
Mutually
I can only write so many poems
Before
I relinquish Lenore
And embrace nevermore
Why implore you
To be more responsive
Or change
If I want that already
It must be too late
For this we stuff to make it
Make sense
Adding up
Want my heart?
It’s yours,
Take it
Just break it enough
To be never forgotten,
Abandoned,
Betrayed
Self-fulfill all your prophecies
I’m here to stay
66 · Nov 2020
Shades of Lovecraft
Michael Marchese Nov 2020
Learned of the legend
Himself,
He was flawed
Hateful slurs had occured
But his words
I’d applaud
And in many ways
Seemed to be eerily
Similar
Sinister, twisted mind rhymes
Were his signature
Like me obsessed
With macabre morbidity,
Likely depressed,
Powerless
In frigidity  
Night terrors
Haunted him into
Infinity
Even though he
More voraciously wrote
Of Cthulhu calamities
Ending all hope
I think I’ve gotten closer
To suicide note
66 · Oct 2020
Aposiopesis
Michael Marchese Oct 2020
Need some kind of change soon
Of scene or of pace
Can’t erase her
Each day
Spent without her
A waste
But I doubt that she cares
Anymore
Though once did
A few lifetimes ago
I was uh,
Different kid
66 · Nov 2020
The Tutor
Michael Marchese Nov 2020
Edit another flawed paper
Assignment
Resigned to the might as well
Profit from my
Acute eye for revising
Young writers’ hands guiding  
Surprising what some
Often feel like confiding
66 · Dec 2020
The Mycologist
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
66 · May 2021
Shakespearean
Michael Marchese May 2021
Should there come a day
I have written enough
Can no longer convey
The intangible stuff
That composes my inner-most
Ghosts
I expose
Hope it shows to those
I cannot tell
Stories whole
Then suppose
All is said,
All is done,
All becomes
Just a life without stories,
More heroes unsung
But fear not
My dear reader
This art is for you
And for me
That’s the key
To how do you construe
Its renewal
Original
Updated version?
A boundless oasis
Creation desertion
Or some more immersive form’s
Faulty
Finality,
Maladies there
In the interim’s
Tragedies
66 · Jul 2022
Have Me
Michael Marchese Jul 2022
Try to write
Something else
Anything different
An inkling appears
And is gone in an instant
With her at the fore
Frontal focus
Fixation
My typical
Ritual
Excogitation
Deflates
Dissipates
And creates instead
This
Then updates the thread
Waiting
The taste of her kiss
My escape from debating
Domestic abyss
Is replaced
And embraced by
It’s her that I’m with
65 · Jan 2020
Contumelious
Michael Marchese Jan 2020
I don’t want to hate you
To cringe every moment
In passing you by
And cursing each second glance,
Why even try?
To reply
To be cordial
And humor attempts
To unmake
My acquaintance
If only incensed,
Aggravated,
I break
My precise concentration
Allaying irate
To sate your instigation
For any reaction
Or step I take
Hastens
The pace of which
Mischievous
Cretins
Persist
In a stone’s-throw away
Public-shaming
The lay
Person, not on good terms
With their language
In anguish,
In angst-driven rage
I awaken
To fail yet again
To their testing
My patience
And waiting,
Ignoring,
Is all I can do
To preclude violent urges
To see this thing through
To an end
I approach
With the same
Ardent zeal
That a former me wrote
And believed
Could be real
An ideal
Self-delusion
Concluded since I
Arrived here
And appeared to them
Alien,
Distant
And weird
65 · Jun 16
The Lobbyist
Now you work for me
Philanthropy
My Heads of Boar
Refueling
Culture wars
Endorsing
Genocide’s
Revolving door
65 · Sep 2021
Denied Entry
Michael Marchese Sep 2021
Don’t ask for much
But respect
Just address
Me as such
You’re in my house
Arrest
And still dwell in a glass
Domicile
Of shame,
Insecurity,
Foolishness
Shattering frame
When I know you can’t look at me
Square in the eye
I see through your intentions,
Your presence
Belies
Here unwelcome among
The long love bereft
Numb
And you only make foes of me
Thinking me dumb
65 · Apr 24
Walks Through the Park
Not much
For observation’s blinds
Unless they’re on
Vacation’s dimes
For time is of the essence
Of some all too precious
Prescience
And myopic are
The open eyes
Divining
Not a penchant  
For an overload of senses
Mother Nature’s
Battle trenches
When transparency
Requires
Darker-shaded
Ethnic lenses
65 · Mar 6
The People Pleaser
Not all I believed
Has agreed with me
Aging
Enraged
A decade
Ago
Seldom
Engaging
What slight inclination
I had left to
Breed
Though defiantly
Calling out
Bastardized greed
In the sanctity
Answers
The books I would read
Clarifying
For moments in time
What we need
Most supremely
Most urgently
Now
We demand
What will feed
Progeny
Redistribute the land
65 · Jun 2020
Incorrect
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
Michael Marchese Dec 2020
Could see myself
Running through parks
In Manhattan
By night
Socialite
And conversing in Latin
With fancy elitists
And artists replete with
A repertoire of
The fine-dining wines piquant  
Complete with
The upper class clubs
We would frequent
In decadent bliss
Cosmopolitan vogue
Within inner circles
Of hell we’d collogue
Michael Marchese Oct 2018
Counting the days
Left remaining ingrained in
This muddy, rat-hole, bug-infested,
Duress-filled uneasiness nest
Just to test my depressive
Resolve at its limits
Conflicted with finding the faith
It inhibits
And given two years to make sense
Of surrender
Expendable humans
I serve, a defender
Of peace there in me
Still it yearns to be free
But condemns itself to
Costs of living for free
Finding harmony in
What is simply easy
Understood to me as
One does melancholy
65 · Mar 2021
The Unplugged
Michael Marchese Mar 2021
But dependence on senses
Can leave you deceived
And bewildered
In questioning
What you believe
To be true,
To be real
Is a desert of formerly
Forms that could feel
Now subsumed
And bemused
By the master technician
Encoding,
Uploading
Inhuman condition
Omission of any impulse
Organism
Yet even illumined
In stark opposition
Its iron fist
Surgically seizes
Submission
Securing its future
Is equally metal
And in its advent
Have we played instrumental
Components collectively
Bound to its reign
The mainframe
A control center
Artifice brain
In a vat
Of pre-programmed
Demanded supply
Of what choice you have left
To conform
And comply
Revisiting the Matrix
65 · Jun 2020
Catch Me Off Guard
Michael Marchese Jun 2020
Don’t always even know if
It’s still us at play
Or just me and you
Know we should
Forfeit the game
64 · Oct 2020
The Antisocial Satyr
Michael Marchese Oct 2020
Out in the woods
No one knows
Where the road goes,
Go any further
To find
You don’t either,
Just sit and stare
Mesmerized
By the fire
The other side
Crawling with mischievous nymphs
Seductress
In the silence
I court the abyss
64 · Jan 11
Dawning
Forevermore
Together
Mine
Without you here
The sun don’t shine
And I am left to ponder
In some far beyond
Despondent state
What looks to be
The world I know
But remnants,
Traces
Out of place
Who talks to me
Frivolity
Who hears my heart’s
Discography
Replaying dedications
Longing
Ne’er to see
A new day
Dawning
64 · Jun 2020
The Order
Michael Marchese Jun 2020
Either bow or take heel
All revealed
Is secured
Just as soon as you yield to me,
Lay down the sword
And return to your homes
Clear the streets of debris
And go back to consuming  
Your garbage tv
Still inducing my lucid
Hallucinogens
Fall in line
To my virus’
New synthesis
Of the truth from the false
In the form of a pulse
Sending bipolar currencies
Rippling across
The brain waves
Of the mindless one’s
Consenting slaves
And the graves that I dig
Beneath trade-ways are paved
In the wake of my seeking submission
Admission
Now trust in my bank account’s
Human condition
My weapons of peace’s
Coerced mercy mission
My laws to be broken
By only the makers
My bar to be set
By the highest test-takers
Erasing the chaotic
Host of scape GOATs  
I’m the satyr-horned tyrant‘s
Divisive vote’s most
Holy Ghost
Influential,
Convincing,
The quiet is listening
In deep to your sleep-stalking
Dream conversation
Wherein sanctity
Of my unity lurks
In my get back to work’s
Multinational perks
So persist in my
We’re all the same
Different day
And in my spoils revel
Your whole life away
64 · Apr 2021
Misfortune
Michael Marchese Apr 2021
Done applying
Myself trying  
Feels a lot more like
I’m lying
To the still aspiring me
Determined not to merely be
Legitimately
Seek employment
Minimize
Reckless enjoyment
All for nothing comes of it  
I’m sick of it,
Just want to quit
Stop kidding,
Still pretending I
Was somehow meant for more
Than die
Another boring, dreary day
Regardless of
How far away
Or how sublime surroundings get
Or how within the wind I’m swept
Rejected just begets regret
And failures I cannot forget
The culmination?
Ruination
Worst case constant
Contemplation
No scenario
Adds up
To what I’ve ever wanted
Stuck
In this sepulcher
Of bad luck
64 · May 2020
Sol Invictus
Michael Marchese May 2020
Still am I
The unconquered
Idyllic peace keeper
The pharaoh’s ascension
Dimension
Mind-sweeper
The sleeper cell
Dwelling in
Shrouds I dispel
In a crowd
More alone
Than a snowflake in hell
I am hubris
Exuded
In ruins
And tombs
Obelisks,
Pyramids
Only timeless exhumes
As I animate
Reincarnations
In bloom
I renew
The infinitude
Energy mood
I am food
Of all being
Ensuring tomorrow
Will still be worth seeing
And fleeing like ants
From my psychlopto-beaming
In gleaming
Infusion blasts
Madness is screaming
In wake of my earth-baking
Heat-waving
Glaive
In its razing
The wandering bodies
I crave
And emblazon
The firmament’s
Haziness maze
In my singeing wing
Signature
Look upon me
And rejoice
Or despair
You are finally free
64 · Jan 2020
Om
Michael Marchese Jan 2020
Om
Untethered,
Storm-weathered
Returning to sender
Of letters undead
To this nether-world
Feather,
Forever-ascender
Unfettered by turbulent
Shifts in the breeze
Like the falling of leaves
Or eclipsing-moon seas
An ellipse at the end
Of life sentence’s
Penned
I persist in the uplifting
Drift away zen
With devotion
To unflinching
Motionless focus
On hopeless,
Tumultuous
Ocean roars
Stoking this
Flickering flame
In this nimbus-brain’s
Bliss
Ignorance
Of enlightened
In thralls of abysses
Too listless
To wistfully
Wish would vanish
For such impish
Homunculus
Often resist
Mindfulness,
Consummate
Peak-apotheosis
Seeking only to find
Firmaments
Of divining
The epiphenomenal
Peace redefining
64 · Jan 2024
You Know Who You Are
Michael Marchese Jan 2024
What have we come to
When traitors can lead
When corrupt,
Vile vermin
Determine
Who breeds
Can it be
Only me
Who can see
It’s so blatant
So obviously
Just a demagogue
Racist  
A ******
Effacing
Most sacred
Tradition
Obsequious
Supplicants
Cowed to submission
So vow
As if spouses
To sheepishly serve
To uphold
Anti-heroes
You feel you deserve
But I bow
To no power
Mad
Impotent
Infant
A spoiled princeling
Who reveals in an instant
His true color
Red
In the face
With hot air
A buffoonish balloon
He could say it’s the sun
When it’s clearly the moon
But these doomed
Imbeciles
Will have not
But delusion
Defending their rights
In his new
Constitution
63 · Jan 2020
Santa Flaws
Michael Marchese Jan 2020
A despot in
An icy fortress
Forcing hordes
Of labor forces
To export
His machinations
With no rest
Or compensations
To his greedy supplicants
Puerile pack
Of miscreants
Whose insolence
And sugar plums
As sweet as milk
And cookie crumbs
The funds through which
His child-fetish
Can be sated
Unmolested
Off to bed
And pleasant dreams
As he replays them
On his screens
And sees you when you wake
As well
That faker shakes
His jingle bell
And with his spying eyes
Sees all
His crystal ball’s
A shopping mall
Exalting in his thralls
We spend
A fortune
Glorifying his distortion
And belying
Of belief
In all things truth
With ploys of toys
Destroying youth
63 · Apr 2021
Ocean Beach
Michael Marchese Apr 2021
Shrooms in simplicity
Shared synchronicity
Spectrum sensations
Of sol serendipity
Closing my eyes
I see myriad skies
And the waves serenade me
With past me goodbyes
And by setting on shorelines
Beheld its disguise
Whilst immersed in a party
Of similar minds
63 · Feb 10
USAID
Won’t forget
Who in debt
Puts the food on my plate
Got me tech
To connect
Us together
It’s great
Like a state
Entered into
Ensuring its promises
Profits
Provisions
Protecting
Its provinces
Offices staffed
Bureaucratically stacked
With such cracks
In the surface
As terrorists backed
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