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345 · Jan 2017
Epicurus
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
For all my wisdom I must ask

What compels a man to fear
His shadow passing in the night
The tunnels at the end of light
Perhaps he's yet to see things clear
His hands may yet have more to write

Yet death still punctuates his life

So why must he then go to war
To understand the blood he's shed
And why he bought the lies he's fed
When only truth knocks on his door
And turns the switch off in his head

Did he not kiss the wife he'd wed

Before forever meant forever
After love split at it seams
And ripped apart their broken dreams
To build it all back up together
Stronger than it's ever been

But then it all fell down again

Somewhere along the way I guess
For nothing made him feel at home
Inside this man still felt alone
No lullabies could bring him rest
From cradle to the graven stone

Entombed beneath this biodome

All things return to soil
As my rotting flesh eternity
No more than maggots eating me
Until my bones are drops of oil
Spilling in the deep blue sea

Is this all that we're meant to be?

Who can say or really know
These gods and mortals can't compare
To dimensions far out there
The places we all long to go
Though only few discover where

To find their peace on earth to share
343 · Oct 2016
White Winter's Lament
Michael Marchese Oct 2016
Of pale moon ghosts I reminisce
  on how I've froze
  in powdered woes  
And nothing good can come of this
  struck by love's
  snow lightning doves
And Lady Winter's frigid kiss
   like icebergs loosening my lips
   and sinking my relationships
In blizzards of cold-blooded bliss
  fearless should the pulsing stanch
  invincible my avalanche
All need for warmth I could dismiss
  when old King Candy cuts it clean
  in palaces of Queen Frostine
Pure wonderlands of happiness
  melt into my slippery streets
  than soon the Santa's sleigh retreats
Face down on pavements of abyss
  the black becomes all I can see
  come take this white away from me
Forget this ******* emptiness
342 · Jan 2018
Hanuman
Michael Marchese Jan 2018
Save them all if I could
Feed them three squares a day
Then we’d celebrate the union
Of the monkey gods at play
342 · Mar 2017
Tree-Huggers
Michael Marchese Mar 2017
We have risen from dirt
To be stewards of earth
To account for all life
Free of value or worth

Evergreen in our growth
To divine suns of truth
Chlorophylling our minds
With a fountain of youth

Still losing ourselves
In an arboreality
Nurturing seeds
Of an elementality  

One of sequoias
Who weep with the willows
And make their leafbeds
Out of solid rock pillows

So spill your coal ash
In our wildest streams
You can't stop the flow
Of our lucid sea dreams

Repainting the blue
Iridescent with reefs
Transcending horizons
Of vision's motifs

Where Shamu think tanks
Dive deeper than whales
Exploring the depths
Of serpent shale scales

Who drill to our cores
As we quake with the force
Of Pompeiian eruptions
And wars of resource
339 · Dec 2016
The Lion's Share
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
337 · Sep 2016
Godless Symphonies
Michael Marchese Sep 2016
Immune to your infectious pleas
As we prescribe the cured disease
Amped on plagues to praying knees
Drunk on the blood of Pharisees
Composing godless symphonies

The paths that cowards fear to tread
The truths that serpents fear to spread
The hatred that your fear has bred
The dark enlightenment you dread
These musing voices in our head

We'll grind the thrones of grace to dust
Our acid reign leads faith to rust
And as you watch your world combust
You'll feel the sounds of our disgust
Roar horsemen of tumultuous

The wretches writhing in the wombs
The banshees wailing in the glooms
The shadows bumping in their rooms
The corpses screaming in their tombs
These melodies impend our dooms

So demonize the slit wrist shows
Aborted fetus cries we chose
Cacophonies of ****** crows
In walls of death these songs enclose
Our crucified unholy prose

The sons of fathers' sinful seed
The victims of indulgent greed
The slaves kept bound in chains you read
Imbued with all their pain we've freed
Crescendos silenced by false creed

Now liberated we shall seize
You by your preaching throat and squeeze
And snap your spineless neck with ease
Crushing religious fallacies
With godless breakdown symphonies
336 · Jul 2022
Rebuild
Michael Marchese Jul 2022
World is imploding
I’m stuck in it droning
Unknown to it still
In this quest
Of disowning  
So long ago
Left
Dispossessed
Was my message
Until homelessness
Was my lonely
Last vestige
Of clinging to
Abnormally
Non-conformity  
Lost in the scale, scope and skies
Of enormity
Mourning my
Torn in two
Unification
The love that once lived
To rue days of forsaken
Awakening
Sum of my fear
Contemplation
And dwelling no further
In its ruination
335 · Mar 2018
Diogenes
Michael Marchese Mar 2018
Live for the moment
Each day to disown this
Existence is merely
A meaningless omen
And death is a heartbeat away
Win or lose
Inescapable, so don’t allow it
To choose
Your decisions, discussions
And reasons to care
For some better world waiting
To save you out there
It is yours, it is mine
It is all of us time
And with or without us
The sun will still shine
So please pardon me young king
You’re blocking the glow
I have offered my wisdom
And now you must go
Michael Marchese May 2018
Fresh off the the boat to rock the vote
Like Lenin off the iron horse
This Wild Western Manifested destiny
Has run its course
And yet am I, the winning side, still spillin’ it in genocide
And civilizin’ savages supply-sidin’ Apartheid pride
To trigger happies harpin’ on their stolen country muses
Christian views as skewed as what their news refuses to include in
Whose excluded from this private privilege history alluded to
In commandante economic sticks and stones I sling at’chu
But what you gunna do but leave another man behind
Keep marchin’ to the slums of war, we’re all complicit in the crime
But you and I, the difference is, I am the Royal’s fear to wed
For I am prone to widow-making
Inter webs within your head
Like Debs ensnarin’ robber barons in a pit of wealth disparity
And Jobs’ cogs who took’er jahbs, achieving singularity
335 · Nov 2016
Birthday Cake
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
Were you to look beneath the beard
   Into relation ships I've steered
Straight to a last horizon grave
   Of passiongers I couldn't save
Perhaps you'd sea this dark blue face
   Reflects my grotesque happy place
Where I do my deepest sinking
   Trenched in Marianas thinking
Ever tied to lament blocks
   From crashing on existence rocks

The anchors of my ego's gold
   That monstrous me creatures hath sold
Charybdis maelstrom consciousness
   Leviathans of meaningless
Release the kraken to reveal
   The siren songs she made me feel
My sails surrendered to her kiss
   But plundered too much black abyss
A pirate's life of *** and coke
    Not worth its weight in cannon smoke  

Left me adriftwood wandering
   The lonely shorelines pondering
Why does the faithful sun still rise
   Aware that it just sets and dies
Surely there must be some dry lands
   With castles of the whitest sands
Such constructs will essentially
   Just wash away eventually
Remembered not by some divine
   Forgotten in the wake of time

No marks I've made can drown out death
   No words I write return the breath
That Aphrodite set in foam
   And then shipwrecking me to roam
My cargo hold of loveless cells
   To piece back broken-hearted shells
Consider this next time you ask
   What lies submerged beneath this mask
A dead man's chest that finds its peace
   In nothing but when all things cease
334 · Jan 2017
Creatures
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
I'm just a lone wolf feasting on
A flock of no variety
A junkyard dog whose had his day
Unleashed upon society

To liberate the colonies
And warring hives of drones
Who drop their bombs like flies upon
The roaches under stones

Free to soar with eagles
From the cages of these birds
Who clip my wings and dull my plumes
With pigeon-carried words

These ravenous hyenas
Cackling over carcasses
And opportunist vulture beaks
Who slither in the darknesses

Bowing as the lion king
Is flooding the savannahs
Cutting all the jungles down
And stealing our bananas

As he builds his pride rock higher
By selling lies of ivory
Until the lesser creatures have
All disappeared entirely
332 · Dec 2017
What’s Right
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
Keep ‘em hungry, keep ‘em dumb
Keep ‘em silent, keep ‘em numb
Said the fascist to the master
Make each nun a smoking gun
And then the pastor preachin’ faster then
Said boy why don’t be shy
And then the actor’s ballot caster rolled
The fake news that you buy
With all your pay to playchecks next in line
The soup is gettin’ cold today
‘Cuz poverty’s the crime of every diamond Dozen dreamer with a dollar to their name
Unless they anglicized its meaning
And then made them wear the blame
A badge of shame like scarlet letters
Chained around their right to choose
How Lady Liberty presents herself
In multiethnic hues, or so we’re told and so we Hear, and so we’re taught to hate and fear, Then disappear the past like pastors
And the masters
And the fascist fake-newscasters
But the federal reserve should be the one we’re Goin’ after
332 · Dec 2016
Star-Crossed Embraces
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
No void could disgrace
These two distant wishes
Lost and alone
Yet finding their place
By onwardly glowing
To search for the end
Of this dark, empty space
Or perhaps just a moment in time
To collide and explode
In a star-crossed embrace
330 · Dec 2018
Are You Fine?
Michael Marchese Dec 2018
Not the first person
Rehearsing the act
But I am the original
Matter of fact
When it comes to rejecting
Unfounded conjecture
Confounding foundations
Of your private sector
As baseless, in basements
Of faceless persona
Unknown to this Brave New World's
Self-indulge soma
A rarefied pride
Coinciding with time
That it takes
To be finally
Fine
You will find
I am easily vexed
And hard-pressed
To detect
Every ***** in the armor
Flawed system's
Oppressed
Populations complacent
Awaiting their fate
In a nation-state
Trading the world
Some more greatness
330 · Aug 2019
Disinterred
Michael Marchese Aug 2019
The former me was immature
Was ignorant
Was insecure
Would instigate
And derogate
And hate
And hate
And hate
Irate
At something always
In the way,
Some implacable
Dismay
As sullen as
The color gray
Torrential was
The constant rain
Despondence
I still can’t explain
A rabid beast
I couldn’t tame
In every smiling face
Was pain
Contained within
The joy we feign
And all escape attempts
In vain
Except an early
Ego grave
329 · Nov 2018
Gaafi Qabdu?
Michael Marchese Nov 2018
Questions warrant answers
But so many seem to be
For me
Directed in my general direction
Just for my attention
To be given over
To a prying pair of eyes
So languid in its little mind
But then in kind
I find an offer
For my curtest of reply
Albeit with an edge
Of temperamental
Sharpening responses wry
I can't deny the food
They share
With me
Without a reason why-
Just some extra questions
I'm more willing to oblige
For with my hunger satiated
My impatience can resign
Michael Marchese Nov 2023
Dusk settles in
On my grimmest despair
Of my guilty subconscious
I’m all too aware
Too fixated on quelling
The faith reservations
Uproarious tirade
Of self-confrontations
At war with
Internal conformist
Resent
I nocturnally wander
The wastes of lament
Not enough for
My suffering’s
Love hesitant
But sincere
What I actually feel
Is content
328 · Mar 2018
Quetzalcoatl
Michael Marchese Mar 2018
As gold as my soul as it slithers and shivers
And withers
To smithereens
First she was fire and ice at the same time
Second was burning wealth land with the moonshine
Deep as the sky when I’m high in the sky
Now I fear of no depths of the bottle, I ask why?
Try as I might to undo what I do
To imagine the tombs they await I and you
They equate I and you
They degrade I and you
And they make us see through what is not I and you
One more reason to fight
For a lefty theft right
To threat Tet upon agent’s of oranges blight
Splittin’ 3/5th’s a white
With arms-dealin’ pro life
Like it’s Jefferson smokin’ his whipper wind pipe
Diggin’ Ghraibs for his slaves in the back of a black site
Business is boomin’ like Truman in ruins
We trade magic mushrooms with animist humans
That’s just how we do it
In 50 state fascist Ford family reunions
Of clinically cynical gimmick illusions
Malthusian predictions
On stocked market shelves
Just as coated in sugar
As Keibler elves’ spells
British rebels who colonize
Liberty bells
Pledging sacrosanct vanity
Brinksmanship sanity
Phosphorous fire and fury brutality
Tyrant king lizards of ye olde feudality
328 · Nov 2021
The Weatherman
Michael Marchese Nov 2021
Put me through miles
Of tortuous trials
All while the torturous
Boredom beguiles
Me spending it
Pending
My breakthrough’s
Approval
Potential is fading
In tandem with youthful
Refusal to sit back
And idly by
Just observe and report
The cloud forms in the sky
327 · Sep 2016
Kids on Drugs
Michael Marchese Sep 2016
Power trip monopoly
Is played
With human property
To trade
Us for the Holy Grail
And drug crusade
Us straight to jail
No passing go
Or class
Or puffs of satan's burning grass
No abc's
No lsd's
But keep us hooked
On begging knees
For liver fails
Cancer sticks
And sleight of hand
Magician's tricks
Deceptions made
Through politics
A veto of mentalities
That think deep
And lose sleep
Pondering mortalities
And look in
And speak out
To question their realities
The open minds
One of a kinds
The won't be sold
The uncontrolled
Substance abusing fiends who dare
To seek the truths
Kept from their lungs
And wicked psychedelic tongues
By taking all of which they care
Then pass it on for all to share
326 · Dec 2017
Artemis
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
She guards the chirping cricket pastures
Meadows in the morning dew
Anew she leaves me chasing stars
In full she makes me once in blue

By night I harvest Halloween’s
A waning crescent is my dreams

Of her fair maiden in the glade
Displayed, can’t keep the hounds at bay
Her darkest-sided serenade
My huntress, come now light my way
326 · Oct 2022
Unfinished Business
Michael Marchese Oct 2022
It’s almost like
There could be blissful
Amidst
The conflictual
Phantasmagoric
Abyss
Like a day
I don’t want to die
Nearly as much
The resultant
Residual
Remnant of trust
I’ve adjusted
According
To where she would stand
Were I poor,
Powerless
With no titles and land
Just a man
With a hand
For composing discord  
With this pain as my shield
And this pen as my sword
326 · Jan 2018
Lee Harvey Oswald
Michael Marchese Jan 2018
You think words can’t hurt
Or reign down from the skies
I’ve red little handbooks
That say otherwise
I got history’s vengeance
Packed mean at my side
Cruisin’ free like Zheng He
In that Normandy Tide
Got these war orchestrators
Class consciously mute
Guess these urban invaders
Can’t handle Pan’s flute
In the jungle you feel it
I’m stalking my prey
Scalpin’ tix of head-shavers
From **** CIA
‘Cuz I spy with my eye
A bomb-dropping peace keeper
And wake up the crowd
Like a Soviet sleeper
325 · Aug 2023
Let Me Run You Through It
Michael Marchese Aug 2023
Not another word
About my misbegotten
Purpose
All compendiums
Addendums
End
In every bit as worthless
As these verses
Reimburse me
For the squandered
Fortunes fated
To be spent
In purgatories
Just a man
Incarcerated
In a prison
Of what vision’s
City ruins
Have created
I have crumbled
Inundated
Like a cookie dipped in milk,
By the weight of over-shaded  
Like a flower left to wilt
There were no pills
Or panaceas
To alleviate undoing
Only bills to pay
Atop already
Mountain debts
Accruing
All before we even come to her
To once upon a time
We were
Like fairy tales
Enamored bliss
Impaled upon
Unhappiness
325 · May 2017
College Parties
Michael Marchese May 2017
Bring me back to all my friends
To muses mixing color blends
To pulses keepin' beats in sync
With drops of chemicals we drink
To stress and strife corrosions
In these sensory explosions
To the sonicbooms of full bloom shrooms
On smash bro's in these livin' rooms
To kickin' it and gettin' lit
And puff puff passin' on some ****
To spittin' game and droppin' brains
Like profane, urbane hurricanes
To rebel, hippy liberal arts
All splattered 'cross our shattered hearts
To worshipping no God machines
Still sleepin' on my LSDreams
To representin' generations
With my squad of X-mutations
Turnin' up, no comin' down
We lifted 'til we hit the ground
324 · Dec 2017
The Which? Doctor
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
The anti-social socialist
Rebelling in my cavernous
Passive aggressive pessimistic
Bottomless abysmal bliss
An optimist illusionist
As broken as a communistic
Idealistic nihilist
Persistent in my will to power
All these people coexist
The movement moves at zero hour
Time is of the essences
And fruits of labor, rather sour
When the truth can be dismissed
For stories far more humanist
So I include some sudden twists
And spin it like a columnist
Then spit it like a Bolshevik
To kick this ***** like old dog tricks
I’m king of the empiricist
Globe-trottin’ like a colonist
Until I conquer all of this
My omniversal alias
Shall be the metaphysicist
324 · May 2017
Globe-Trotter
Michael Marchese May 2017
An indigo dawn
Without sunlight or shade
Awakens me sleepless in terminals waiting
To bask in the glow
Of skies without borders
Of peaks beyond mountains
Of cascading jungles
And clarity coastlines
Stretching as far as the eye can perceive
Of the details to stories no one could believe
But write them I shall
As the misshapen-shifter
Of paradigm falcons
The ever-adrifter
The gifted and chosen
To roam with this pen
To be eagles and ravens
On ironclad dragons
Then perch atop cities
And gaze upon views
Of the world's yet to gain
And the self yet to lose
320 · Apr 2017
Earth Day
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
If only she knew
My raven, my dove
Has taken the form
Of my only true love

Like the sun and the moon
Equilibrium's force
She's my wind and my tide
She's my energy source

She's the opal-eyed skyline
Divine is her power
So how do we let down
Her flower-haired tower

Then pluck every petal
And cut every strand
Then toss her away
Like a raggedy Anne

Quick **** for a buck
To the coal-mining reaper
She screams out in pain
But we keep drilling deeper

Her willows now weeping
Her beauty erodes
In each drop of your ugly,
Corrosive payloads

To her womb of creation
Deforming it's birth  
When all life is valued
In financial worth

Why can we not share
In her warmth every day
Feel this thermal attraction
I'm melting away
320 · Jun 2016
A Writer's Elegy
Michael Marchese Jun 2016
I need you to know
The demons I'm fighting
Before I must go
I'll share them in writing

I’m made of regrets
And mundane subsistence
Incarnate vignettes
Of a worthless existence

I’ve lain with my guilt
A restless bed shared
My guts have been spilt
But nobody cared

I could empty the grief
Drain these misery veins
Feel the crimson relief
But the deep blue remains

I draw nothingnesses
From black hole heart
Paint abstract abysses
Oblivion art

I’m always alone
In a crowded room
I’m always unknown
In a nameless tomb

I’ve been lured to wastelands
To seek self-destruction
On siren shore sands
Of lust and seduction

I’ll slowly bequeath
My will to survive
As Time bares its teeth
And consumes me alive

I believe when you die
So too does your soul
Salvation's a lie
And Truth rots in a hole

I’m leprous afflictions
To your smiling faces
I'm faithless convictions
To pious good graces

I’ve woken in sorrow
From unfulfilled dreams
Cursing tomorrow
With nightmarish screams

I revel in vices
Of white winter's blight
And devil devices
Of shame-bottled plight

I welcome the reaping
With feasts of laments
With fine wines of weeping
And sin's decadence

I’m carrion skin
An atrophied carcass
Decaying within
A flesh-eating darkness

I’ve watched mankind sink
To the depths of its greed
As I've drowned in the ink
Flowing blood that I read

I'll hang from the gallows'
Rope of mortality
Claimed by the shadows'
Noose of reality
320 · Dec 2016
An Epitaph
Michael Marchese Dec 2016
Weep not for me
I found release
From all the pain
In heart, in mind
In every day
I felt each chain
Just wash away

Look to those tides
And tiny toes
For your white sand
The truth of all
By these oceans
I still stand
And feel so small

Pray not for me
It too shall cease
The love, the hate
The things we hold
What God hath wrought
All we create
From conscious thought

Instead rejoice
This comes from you
My Mother Earth
Tended my seed
From root to tree
To seek rebirth
And set me free

Mourn not for me
I made my peace
Under the sun
In life, in death
To just exist  
To be as one
To self-desist

So watch me fly
For 'neath your wings
You let me hide
Then from the nest
You let me soar
Now hear with pride
My lion's roar
320 · Oct 2017
Guagamela
Michael Marchese Oct 2017
As lost in my writing
As I am the world
Fixated on finding
Perfection of word
Has guided me thus far
Along undeterred
Though I swerve
With a fervor
Fanatic erratic
My course is corrected
With focused precision
Of my diplomatic
A noble demeanor
Of virtuous tact
An entitled opinion
On ethical fact
And a skeptic at best
To conventional wisdom
A glitch in traditional
Bugs in the system
A tiger's charisma
The candor commander
My lion-heart echoes
The Great Alexander
With reckless abandon
I conquer my fears
With artful aesthetic
I fashion my spears
Of destiny waiting
For my hands to seize
The moment I note
My divine symphonies
"I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion."
-Alexander the Great
319 · Nov 2016
Die Another Day
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
Embrace my words and feel my pain
About to jump right off this page
Pushed to the edge of self-disdain
Release me from this sealed-fate cage
A life enveloped by mundane
Each letter signed sincerely, shame
A suicidal note bullet
That ricochets within my brain
And poisons yours with but a drop
Of venom from my weeping vein
So drink it in
Forget my name
Blackout within
My ink blot stain
Awake the hangman every day
And die with me each way again
319 · May 2021
Incentivized
Michael Marchese May 2021
Long lost
Tired toil feeling
Hard work seldom
More appealing
Sore on every corner
Poor
In every way
You can’t ignore
Just let me make some money
Daily
Maybe meet
A pretty lady
Lately that seems
Nigh unlikely
Half my bed is empty
Nightly
Only slightly
Fear the worst
That gifted girl
Left me accursed
Whole world reversed
And snapped me back
On track to death
By heart attack
319 · Jan 2017
Elemental Breakdown
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
My fire might flicker
Though wild it roars
When oil is thicker
Than water-thin wars
In my rivers of blood
Which boil and fill  
With anger they flood
From the barrels you spill 
Your acid rain shower
Then raises frustration
As I solar power
A new generation

Which melts all the ice
In my cool-head aloof  
For no snow-blinded guise
Can bury the truth
Down further they dig
And then drill ever deeper
While we buy the rig
That they keep selling cheaper
But money is cold
And it's making me sick
And it freezes my soul
Like each cabinet pick

Their whipper winds crack
With white lightning force
But I thunder write back
With tornado discourse
For my tropical breeze
Has felt too many die
And my last temperate trees
Have heard Mother Earth cry
Her judgment will soon
Blow the guilty away  
In a righteous typhoon
That I've long kept at bay
319 · Dec 2017
Pasiphae
Michael Marchese Dec 2017
You made me gentle
And passionate calm
Yet you triggered my spark
Like a riot rhyme bomb
My explosion introversion
Through the netherworld of fear
To wag my tail and show my mane
Every time you would appear
And how I longed to feel your touch
And drink from skulls of your oppressors
I would try to save the world instead
Of leveling your lessers
Into servants that appease you
On their knees to even see you
As I breathe you in these poets
And I teach them how to be you
With your rebel goddess wrath
And your diplomatic peace
And a strength no man could equal
And a ride no man could lease
With all that Mother Nature power
In your elemental waves
So adrift in the emotions
Of clandestine sea floor caves  
Until you leave ‘em on their way
Seeking out the very best
Until they’re rising in the east
As mythic dragons of the west
A restless, willful reminiscence
Of the past you found me lost in
Learning how to make your enemies
The ones I’m Holocaustin’
318 · Apr 2017
Objective Lens
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
One of billions hungering
For lightning to the thundering
Sharing every piece of mind
Now starving for a peace to find
On earth, in truth, in life and death
A poet since I first drew breath
A picture of a world so cold
Then hung it from my frigid soul
As old as time is nothing new
As empty as the sky is blue
I look at clouds, I just see clouds
I raze my flags, I just see shrouds
It makes no sense, this realist art
It makes no love, this abstract heart
For Mona Lisa still remains
Inside my Jackson Pollack brains
But should I shine my starry nights
She'd merely see the faintest lights
Of supernovas never known
Alone I claim this black hole throne
318 · Jan 2017
Book of Revolution
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
Further down the wishing well
The pale horses descend
The wheel of time is turning
As we're thirsting for the end

Faith's accursed plagues have reaped
The Eden fruits with drought
Apocalyptic famine's war
Yet spill no drop of doubt

The only change is rising seas
That flood the streets in vice
Treading in the melting ***
As cook's increase the price

The cost of life almost as high
As crossing Heaven's border
For the heathens' health and home
We offer you no quarter

Here lion rules devour  
All the naive little lambs
And prayers will fill the bellies of
The beggar's hungry hands

Now fear and hatred subjugate
The mass consumption slaves
Buying that salvation lies
Somewhere beyond the graves

Locked inside such walls we jail
Convictions in a cell
Of mind incarceration
With a death sentence to hell

In anthems of hypocrisy
To not take part is treason
Yet burning cross injustices
Need only pious reason

To deny the evidence  
That helps us to evolve
From silly monkey problems
Flinging **** can not resolve

Unless this nation under God
Pledges loyalty
To the truths it has forsaken
We can not be free
317 · Feb 2017
Wild Side
Michael Marchese Feb 2017
Living on the wild side
Of man-made legislature
With a will of rhino hide
Defending laws of nature

From invasive species gaining
On a three-ring circus stage
In an age of lion-taming
Makes us monkeys in a cage

As we're sinking to extinction levels
Captives in a profit zoo  
When grizzly bear essentials
Could replant the trees where once they grew

When green was life, and not its price
And Earth it had no cost
Her beauty would alone suffice
For all resources lost

Before we ravaged her chaste skies
And bled her dry of ****** lands
By forcing her to synthesize
Our selfish energy demands

Vicious avaricious rats
A mass consumption plague
Of king cobra bureaucrats
No drop of oil shame

Rising seas to meet their marks
Bottom-fed on dying reefs
Cold and lifeless, great white sharks
Their souls of coal lie deep beneath

Pearly, sparkling teeth of preachers
Sheep until their time is done
Show these puny, insect creatures
Powers of your chosen sun
316 · Mar 2017
Flatlining
Michael Marchese Mar 2017
Pull the plug, return the feeling  
Resurrect its deeper meaning
Eternally internal bleeding
Out the suicidal beating
Of a barely living being
Worth less than the air I'm breathing
Further in the dark receding
Nothing real to keep believing
Blinded by a faith misleading
Echoes torture chamber screaming
Silently I wither, grieving
Elegizing starless evenings
Mourning joyous moments fleeting
Buried by the grimmest reaping
Rotting slowly, maggots feeding
On whatever's left of needing
Flesh to form my muse appeasing
Where I find myself exceeding
Astral plane existence seeing
In a world of lucid dreaming
Michael Marchese Nov 2016
Abandoned, alone, betrayed by the light
Perspectives adopting a darker lens
Exiled, outcast, stripped bare in the night
Perceptions blackened by meaningless ends
Tossing, turning, sleeplessly devoted
To silencing monsters under my bed
Whispering demons often hath quoted
The skeleton closets filling my head
Awoken to share them as banquet toasts
To hordes of zombies' sleepwalking smiles
Welcoming Grim, my most gracious of ghosts
To feasts of brains and mindless lifestyles
Cast in this life as a man silhouette
Forever to bask in my final sunset
315 · Nov 2019
Surveillance Capitalism
Michael Marchese Nov 2019
Contraptions enrapture
The thoughts in my head
Like the Black Widow Feds
Spin the global-wide web
Making beds
To be lied in
Belying the eyeless appliance’s
All-seeing
Spy-lids
With die kids
And ISIS’
World hunger virus
Deciding divisive devices disguised
As the iris’
Optimal optical scans
Are just scams
And we buy it
Like contraband-widths
We demand
They supply it
Reliant on intel cartel
Data pirates
Bespectacled specters
Of property private
Sectors stealing secrets
And quieting riots
To keep us compliant,
Complacent
And safe and secure
Our freedom-
Information
In their bidding war
With the state’s machinations
Harmonic convergence
To merge us as one
Motherboarderless
Servant
A mirthless,
Subservient
Permanent
Nervousness
Bliss on the verge
Of transcendence
To micro-chips
Cold, calculating,
Brain-drain
Pain-impervious
Hard-wired smiles
Like customer services
As all the while
They got us on file
If someone malfunctions
It’s to the junk pile
Of planned obsolete
Made in China deceit
Soon enough
The new stuff
Is complete
And released
To the public
Consumption
Effete, then deleted
The outdated being’s
Illogical reasoning
No longer needed
Not fiscally viable
When product placements
Make preferences pliable
No more investing in
Such unreliable
Feeling-based flesh-
Eating parasites,
Troglodytes
Nature’s blight,
Human rights
Merely an oversight
To the Lord Profits
Most prescient prophetic
Detective’s objective
A future perspective
On forced-course corrective
Behaviors unfavored
In apes
Less aggressive
And traits more impressive
To more uninventive
And more inattentive
Assembly line minds
From their vines
Disconnected
Preemptively programmed
To heed the directive
Effectively rendering
Life contraceptive
Selectively-breeding
Exceeding perfected
Like fascists on acids’
Exclusive collective
The watchers still watching us
Acting defective
Then tactfully cashing in
On more expensive
Preventative measures
To end such a pensive,
Depressive death-sentence
Condemned to a prison
Super vision’s
Sentience
“Arguing that you don’t care about right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”
-Edward Snowden
Michael Marchese Feb 2017
Forgive me father
For I have sinned
Over and over and over again
But first I must ask
Before judgment is passed
Just where in this forsaken hell
Have you been
And why have you waited
So long to begin
314 · Apr 2017
The Shepherd
Michael Marchese Apr 2017
Beyond the beyond
I believe I have seen
That existence itself
Is a dream in a stream
Drifting to shores
Of what does it all mean
Are we nothing but sand
In a recurrent theme

Could we be everything
But still be so blind
Universal potential
To limit the mind
To what this is now
As less than divine
Such beautiful creatures
Of Nature's design

The peak of the climb
To be free of this chain
To desire for not
But this infinite brain
This hunger for wisdom
Is all we need gain
We can bask in the sun
Of reptilian pain

Let it flow through each vein
As the warming ignites
A meltdown of global
And personal blights
To sharing this land
To end civil plights
And still save the world
From its dying last rites

In the narrowest sites
Of the hunters of gold
Armed to the teeth
With the things that they hold
In small heads and hands
In hearts of sheer cold
They see Mother Earth
As a ***** to be sold

It's polluting my soul
To a coal ash despair
But I'm only one man
Why the **** should I care?
Because I can choose  
To just live on a prayer
Or become the answer
That takes us all there
312 · Jan 2023
The Cave-Dweller
Michael Marchese Jan 2023
Ruin me
Leave me eschewed
From indulgence
Removed from
Illumined,
Enlightened
Effulgence
For brightness no longer
Dispels what the dark
Can so harken me back to
And seamlessly spark
Reminiscence
Insistence
On spectral
Temptation
Forsaken
Intruders
From dreams
Reawaken
Retracing my steps
To misplacing regrets
Just reveals
That I feel
Empty nest
Hollow threats
Either change
Or keep feigning
Your value equates
Unconditional love
In two natural-born apes
310 · Jun 2022
Rhyme Scheme
Michael Marchese Jun 2022
One single word
Didn’t think
Much of it
But decisive it proved
Nonetheless
Not to split
All too soon
Long before
We could ever be sure
This is what we both want
To desist searching for
307 · Jun 2017
Cognitive Dissonance
Michael Marchese Jun 2017
Prove me wrong
I need to know
If all along I've come to grow
Into my own Bushido code
Of conduct guiding me to show
How good intentions paved this road
With my abode's most humble tone
To build a hearth of stone for those
To melt their souls adorned in gold
And sleep in spirit's selfless home

Or just to fill this house alone
With all the seeds we humans sowed
As bombs explode and we foreclose
On bungalows and debts we've owed
To others' woes and sin atones
Colossusses of ancient Rhodes
The person that to be you chose
To roam this earth, renounce the thrones
For all this power shall erode
To nothing more than buried bones
307 · Jan 2017
Writer's Block
Michael Marchese Jan 2017
If I could but verbalize
This written language
I speak in my head
I'd express divine gardens
Perception renews  
On the tip of my tongue
Yet my mouth misconstrues

Astrology oceans
Of my consciousness
Like a nuke of emotions
Set to implode
As my knowledge oasis
Dries up in the deserts
Conversing these places

As speech bubbles pop
My most wild dream clouds
Asleep in my mind
Like dormant volcanoes
With so much to share
But discussion eruptions  
I just can not bare
306 · Aug 2016
Fire Child
Michael Marchese Aug 2016
Sparks ignite illumination
Light against the desolation
Lovers' warming flesh fixation
From the kindled stimulation
Comes the embers' consummation

Breathe it life, our new creation
Infant heartbeat incubation
Nurtured flame of preservation
Feed its youth, imagination
Tend its growth to maturation

Fuel its heat with education
White hot minded exploration
Blaze the trails of revelation
Adolescent conflagration
Wildfire tribulation

Torch it down, mental stagnation
Razed up to the culmination
Of all scorching earth temptation
Rise from ashen restoration
Fly your pheonix liberation
306 · Jun 16
Cold Dead Hands
Take it
Wrest it
Rip it
From the clutches
Of my claims
When they are splayed
And splattered
Matters
Of my brainless
Bullet aims
Still fixing
Barrels
To the temples’
Self-imposed
Alienation
Making wars
And civil wastelands
Of the isolated nation
306 · Jun 2017
The Vigilante
Michael Marchese Jun 2017
I lay down my arms and I take up the sword
Spill my enemies' blood
With each peace treaty word
And a horde forged in flame
Of my metalcore gore
Counting bodies like sheep
I'm the ubermensch wolf
To both lion and mouse
I am venomous truth
And my frigid veins boil
Like seas that I spill
As volcanic eruptions
From chlorophyll quills
Porcupin' the punch
With a nuclear panic
A blast of the past
And a shot of satanic
As I put the cult
In this counterfeit culture
Of fake dollar bills
To an early sepulcher
Cruella de vils
They can keep their fur coats
And 12 karat divorces
I'll burn down their mansions
In wars of resources
As I share the forces
Of diamond forevers
Unbound by the chains
Of the ego it severs
I'll fight on forever
As one stoic man
Though together we'd rise
From divisions of land
And these failed system states
Of the union behind
Broken laws and disorders
Of less than divine
Than mortality's infinite
Knowledge design
But the key to the gates
Will be lost for all time
If the cost of salvation
Keeps robbing you blind
And eternity's borders
Are those of the mind
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