Author: David X. Hugo

in cairo

poetry

in cairo they throw
rocks in the streets
and are stacking bodies
to rig the death count
to get the air time
and off the cement bullets
ricochet with the words
allah akhbar
young men hurl themselves
towards the crackling streets
looking up at red sky
hoping today is the day
and i hope there is something
for them there
i hope they get lifted off
the streets of cairo in some
bright, elegent light
and horns will play heavenly tunes
while their brothers
pose for the camera
screaming “allah akhbar”
and loosely bandage
the marytrd wounded
with his eyes glazing over
i hope he is floating with
the virgins and his dead
relatives in peaceful content
forever-bliss
and there are no stones to throw
and you will not have to say
anything
and they will write your name among
the dead with an emphasis and
the young souls will look to yours
in awe and say “I want to
go his way:
on a street-corner
for the cameras
as a hail-mary pass.”

a day in the life by the beatles

poetry

as i walk in the clerk behind the counter debates with his associate when they think i will kill myself. i tell him that i was raised on the american dream. and i drove down here with my windows down. and i’m never happy for very long. we traded currency and i went back my hole. it was dark and dry just like i like it. i’d like to have a much bigger hole, however. and maybe one with an adjustable darkness knob. i never let my mother visit. she thinks i live up high, with the star-fuckers. drinking that currency in a bitter drink that is awfully bad for you. i’ve come to understand that for as much as i do, there is more that i don’t. my nights are very dark and dry, i only go out to be insulted by clerks, usually. they live in my neighborhood though so it’s not that big of a deal.

i just wish i could invite my mother over.

this is not my land

poetry

this is not my land
it is not your land
we were just born here
orphans to an island
you may build a fortress
but time moves like water
existence is arbitrary

i go walking
i don’t claim it’s my way
all ahead of me
lie omnipresent highways
and below me
there are metal bi-ways
this land was made
for you and me

i move and trample
with the fall of my footsteps
my will imposing
destruction begetting
and all around me
no horns were playing
this land was made
by you and me

the sun is rising
i am unknowing
of who got it going
now the clock is rolling
each tock is tolling
and my pride is growing
this land is for me
and only me

this land is my land
this land is your land
from california
to new york island
rom redwood forest
to the gulf-stream waters
this land was made
for you and me.

the giant

poetry

depressed
modern
eating disease
today-america
apathetically excretes
missiles
and
inference

in god-like
proportions

equal in appetite
necessarily naive
an organism
kept ignorant
by the very structure
of her foundation

this cell,
laughs!
and whistles while he
labors!
for where else are
we to go?
where there is only
servitude, or exile?

ants

poetry

i cannot stop the ants
that crawl on my desk
through the day night
i know of their general
origin but cannot find
their home
if they have one
if they’re real
maybe they’ve followed me
for like eight years
maybe they’re inside of me
and more of a part now than
ever and are now running
across my eyelids
as a real physical metaphor
a real hallucination
the real power of the mind
in the dark
crawling around your throat
telling me to leave you,
while you sleep
because i’ve always been
the lonely type.

no direction for the aimless

poetry

you feed your self dog food
you’re soaking up rain water
they call this progress
you write to pass the hours off
on to someone else
hoping for validation
from like-minded beings and
publish them, anonymously
you are afraid of your own thoughts
you hear yourself say garbage words
you just walk along the hard ground
finding solace in it’s curvature
there is no direction for the aimless.

to the stranger laughing loudly outside my window

poetry

my anger feeds off of your happiness
errant emotions you force into the moment
stupid unfinished lovesongs written to strangers
to every stranger you see, every day
whose frequency is innumerable
to which you profess, each is as important
nay i see entropy with each guffaw
i see desperation in the face of mediocrity
i see another dopamine junky
a sociopathic one, at that
licking the floor for happiness
in the form of laughter.

fast cash kalamazoo

poetry

i was here for
8 hours for every
24 it took the sun
to go over my head
and come back again
and now we’re
closing up shop

the floors are cleaned
and silence pervades
this beast that time
gave a name

the pawn shop,
where you learn the absolutes
how to avoid them
and to spend your time
swimming in hyperbole

unchecked commerce
on the edge of the west
the dying fashion of
negotiation

and we’re closing up shop
and once the doors lock
a stranger to this womb
i will be,
but all the better for it.

Māra

poetry

water not the weeds
that grow down your spine
and have the determination
to cull them eternally
for i remember when i noticed them
at least five years ago

i said aloud to my friends:
“why these weeds on my
straight and narrow spine
they have to go!”

a young man still, feeling
very old at heart i sit
crooked, wavering
trying not to feed the weeds

do not prevent them,
the weeds
do not loathe them and
bring them rain
just do not feed them
and cut them down when you can

and never tell of them
your friends

the weeds that will grow
on your spine
inevitably.

sic erat scriptum

poetry

no altruism i felt at then
your eyes drifted t’ward me
like some ghostly wet dream

a modern temptress sent by
fate in an aged rotting package,
another hannah

i kept my mouth shut
like how i keep my pen
when love stops reading

the half-baked moon whispered
to me secrets i already knew
and i’m sick, sick with feeling.