washing up
by David X. Hugo
at times my mind feels akin to driftwood
and good words like the tide
washing up the sand to touch me
alas, again, not today.
at times my mind feels akin to driftwood
and good words like the tide
washing up the sand to touch me
alas, again, not today.
the world-famous guitar extrordinaire
played some hendrix upon a mexican
stratocaster
oh lord
he was so good
i could barely tell
i thought those songs were his
and neither of us wanted to tell
the secrets that were so painfully
clear
that he was high on crack cocaine
and that we both felt like the
weather outside
and he’d never been world-famous
either
and i wanted to just go away
we wished otherwise
like the people driving down cork street
and all the people in the hardings
and at the day-cares
and everywhere
somewhere in each tune he changed it a bit
original, i thought
unrecorded, too
he played on, and on
la la la
and it rained outside.
am i not a wolf?
and if so
i am not such a monstrous
one
for clearly
this vicious circle
keeps
turning
better to be a
noble wolf
than a dead
rab
bit
better to have teeth
to use or not to
better to remain good
in a circle of evil.
you’d not want a black soul like mine
which would suck the color from the
dandelion fields who breath only for sun.
and on the days when children’s laughter
sounds like a trainwreck approaching.
you’d sit and say “let there be nothing
but which i approve” and dig yourself
a hole somewhere out in the woods.
and in there it would be warm
even during the coldest hours
emanating enough heat for just you.
the bills were payed
the car was running clean
the sun was high and shining
and so was tim
messages, on his phone
were full of things to do
full of wanting lovers
and not so full of shit
at this time tim was a member
of a higher type of being
and feeling a unique euphoria
touching the bottoms of a holy aura
his moderation might be questioned
but his spine was true
and at the top of the hill
speeding along felt just fine
but one even sure of grip
knows the old addage
“what goes up,
must come down”
and down he’d
go
just
like every
breathing minute.
i won’t tell you how to use your legs
i will let you lie, and sip my drink
for i’m a man who can describe himself
and my morality borders so closely the line
of acceptability that i’m interesting
and someone who can walk will come and sit
next to me and sip delicately on their drink
in tandem and we’ll sit far above the floor.
i will discuss with them.
and my compatriots.
dying.
he sat as a beggar and held
a shakey hand out to the princess
she gave him a slice of bread and
it was wonderful,
wonderful enough to well up tears
in his hungry eyes
but later, as the pangs began anew
in his lowly stomach, he saw
trough a thicket of bush
the princess
frolicking in baths
filled with the finest meals
with fat
smiling men
fat smiling men with fat ear to
ear smiles like they could die and
be happy
fat smiling men that could die a
happy death in pools of the
finest meals whose stomachs
would be full and souls would
be empty and so tim the beggar
moved on again
his hunger subsiding.
in room 104
in between rooms 103 and 105
he lay unconscious
if you walked from one room
to the next and to the next
like he did in his dreams
you’d see vacancy,
of all sorts
and you could imagine
people coming and going
all wrapped up and tight
like little springs
the doctors and hangers-on
discussed mortally while he
floated in his dream way
above their heads
but then
hadn’t he
always been
above their
heads?
he’d not find himself, tim
on this plane or any other
ever again
he’d never find himself ever again.
this is a room full of televisions
turned on and on and on and on the
same volume and on and on and on
different channels on and on and on and on
they play filling this soulless room
distorted
distopian
discordant
distant,
lost;
the colors flash and the sounds to
a trained ear tell you to run away
our protagonist friend and narrator
lies here emitting putrid electric waves
shaking up the air for no genuine reason
he’s just a television,
after all.
in the chorus you said
he was your daddy
and printed on vinyl
with all that passed
you’ve got to play that track
still
it’s your most requested
biggest hit
that night we toasted
to liars, and
everyone looked around
then to their feet
and i added,
“for wasting all our time”
and everyone felt like i
was talking to
just
them
then, when the stagehands called
and there was no one at the mic
i knew you’d felt your mortality
i knew all your songs had died
and they’d find you at home
pulling out a strand of hair
every second
it’s best for me to be asleep
as the world spins too fast
and alltogether now
sometimes you just gotta give up
the grass holds my footprints
degrading the vista, for you
and i wish i’d not have stepped there
not have wanted to even at all
i told bowie to drop his guitar
told antonio to quiet his strings
and i quieted, too
finally because no one was listening
it’s best for me to be asleep
as the world damages so
and sand will cover me up
and time will be the great communicator
my friend john always looks at the ground
he’s THE BEST at it and I LOVE HIM so
whenever people come ’round there go his eyes
right past his feet
my friend john watches daytime tv
EXCEPT FOR THAT he’s pretty smart
and knows how to just look at the ground
and stay away from people’s eyes
my friend john is THE BEST around
and he talks about his strategies
and he talks and talks and talks
until his eyes then hit the ground
my friend john says he feels so large
knowing that he’s the best around
with billions of others, much worse
because I LOVE HIM so
i let it rain on niko bellic for ten minutes
i felt like Vonnegut
watching him stand in one spot
shaking off the rain
sometimes
you find yourself
washed up on a foreign shore
and you must get to know
the indigenous people
the language
and look around
and blink
as if you’d woken up from
a dream
as if you’d been here
all along
forgive me, please
for basking
in the luminescent haze
and shaking hands
with the deciders
of happiness
of pain
for today they smile upon me
forgive me for not stopping
the walking dead look alive
but move at a glacial pace
with no structure to keep their attention
from wavering, from fading
their nervous tissue is dying
so they can only feel a selfish pain
and the pent up anger
from years of holding a bored stare
is the only thing burning in their dead hearts
with human money they buy serum
to keep their decaying flesh fresh
and then, like lemmings with an
entitled sense of dignity
they walk in line to the graveyard
and reserve a place
for their dead body to rest
empty like the void of space
and just as useless
every time you gotta fight
to keep the cold from sinking in
the shiver lies dormant in your spine
you don’t wanna let it out
this time, you were doing so well
save one gust in a blustery storm
and now that it’s snowing
the shiver wont wait to get you
you let it out, you damn fool
and now it shakes you wherever you go
try and sleep it off, make it go away
spend time under artifical suns
how many times has it been now?
and with each time it takes longer
longer to sleep off
longer to get warm
it’s some dumb drunk and me
in a gas station in a city of snow
with dullness and silence
humming through the radio noise
under the heavy business lights
you can see our many bruises
from tripping in our modern hamster wheels
and he stumbles crooked which makes
me wonder who knows which way is straight
anyway
this time,
i say:
the coffee is free
the fun police aren’t fun
until you’re one
and you begin to compare
what is and isn’t fair
“why should he be given free
what cost so much for me?”
and you hate what loves you
and become jealous in your dreams, too
living in a human zoo.
me, over here
my mouth numb with ecstasy
i am lazy
but i am not dumb
in the jungle you can not
remain easy
i’m so tired of finding
disgusting things in the
most beautiful places
hidden in secret cavities
i can’t stand to see it
i just can’t stand to see it
this perversion makes me
want to die
in a place with a beautiful sunset
only to find the deepest destruction
behind one single cloud
that engulfs everything, eventually
and where would i find myself then?
the most profound despair
found in every smile
with less will than i have currently?
from where would
i draw inspiration for
a single breath?
here he sits reading
the cliff notes in a
history book
listening to far out
jazz
the main character
in a book he’s
currently working on
is he the writer?
is he the protagonist?
is he both?
every day he wakes
with old eyes and
a young heart
and the pages fill
and disappear
all with the same
fiction
the same drivel
different titles
he finds familiar
dialogue in his stories
he sees his own words
in the history book
he thinks “man,
i must be the
only one alive
out here”
further with every whisper
did the needle bore
and every touch, too
until the floodgates
burst open like light
through sunday curtains
you were an undiscovered
sweet nectar that i wanted
to name myself
traveling the highways
to my heart
and in the sunshine i loved you
and we kissed in the parking lot
i could feel you then
and i can feel you still
under my skin and
i’m strung out again
itching away like some
goddamned asshole
night and day waiting
for his next big fix
maybe you’ll have cats
just to mask the smell
of the dead bodies
buried somewhere
in your cluttered home
you’ll blame your short
breath on the asthma
when really the child
inside you wont let you take
the medicine for your
corroded
heart
and the last time i saw you
you grew cold in my arms
and no love could be enough
to fill your acidic chest
not mine,
at least.
he came to our party drunk already
he grabbed a guitar and joined our songs
singing blues and bashing chords
reality came knocking
the police
the landlord
he answered the door like a madman
screaming “i’ll kill who
ever it is!”
a struggle ensued
he screamed “wetback!
spic!”
at the mexican landlord
and
it was a drunk struggle
until the cops came and
we all ended up on the
street but the cops never saw the knife
well,
he’d pulled it on the landlord
before his girl got him to the car
he was still screaming
“i’ll kill you!
let go of me! you bitch!”
we decided, via telephone
to avoid the cops, we’d party
onward at another domicile
i believe, this was our first night
together (you and i),
and when we got there he was still mad
he shattered the glass door
of the apartment complex with
his knife
he ran off into the woods
after changing clothes in his
girl’s car
i told you how much i admired him
and you were so afraid when the cops
came to the second place, too
and here you are getting engaged
about to fuck for the first time
because you’re getting married
at 22
what a joke;
i still wish i was him that night
his book, by now
was far too long to be read
in full
no plot was evident
he just kept writing
his hurried fingers
whirring inside of
his pathetic house
tim
triumphant in the night
i am breathless by your
majesty
truly befitting of so
many eyes left wanting
but still
your spine
does arch
with the waves of my
electric touch
masterfully wielded
my name rides particles
into your lungs
as you gasp for air
after years stagnant
and in this
i feel like a beast
and you do too
as i find my hand
on your throat
this rush is like a drug
as the teeth sink in
and i grow wary
to say the least
as the ecstacy
flows through our
veins
of what parts of me
are left in your
memory-foam
mattress-top.
what is there, really,
but chess with joe?
he’s got your back
to the wall
and you say
“fuck you,
man!”
he’s got you coming
and going
both ways
but you’ve still got the
fight in you
and it goes like this
all the time
on under the blanket
of night
on an occasion or two
you might win
joe might grin
then you will go on
again
on still under the
blanket of
night.
once two ghosts were talking on the phone
it was the saddest conversation in the whole world
then one said to the other “well,
i’m going to hang up now”
and at the dial tone the pain engulfed them both
and on each end neither could really handle it
so they disappeared as the first snow hit the ground
and the dial tone played on
to homes haunted no longer.
clear day through
a cracked window
with focus you can
truly see
how the smoke rolling out
of your head
now dissipates in the
sunlight
