Author: David X. Hugo

if you’re not first

poetry

in the silent night
there is the muffled

whirring of machines

in the distance rotating

the stars

and below the earth
there is a clicking

of gears for the cleaning

of water

and chemical filtering
and so on

then the parasitic slugs
they go crawling around

towards the clocks all ticking

and i know this night is
not silent

the sounds and sights you
thought were queer

once

as a child

have now all
faded away by virtue of
their own monotony

you let the colors dull

then blend together

the cities get eaten

by the dirt but you
keep moving
lost in the reptition
and build building on top of building

and the stars
and the tick
tick
tocking

the abundance of the ticks
diminishing the value
of the individual
blurring together until
you can’t feel the difference
between

seconds and minutes

minutes and hours

dreams and crisp air.

is one to respect the twinge?

poetry

further proof that you can’t trust your nerves well i saw the blood on the cloth last night and when it dried so too did the feeling and when it dried it disappeared and i love and hate and feel like crying all within a cycle of the heart and when it’s gone wouldn’t i kill but when it’s here wouldn’t i leave further proof that you can’t trust your nerves.

the very least

poetry

all of you deserve a song
or a sonnet at least
goddamnit some sort of prose
maybe a short poem
at least a couple of words

and the world, well
it deserves the finest painting
or some sort of modernist
abstract piece
one that would garner review
in at least the college paper
at least

i should mention this night
in my autobiography
or an essay, a memoir
my diary
at least

and all of the unknown
doesn’t it all deserve some
thought? at least?
an hour of life,
set a side
at least a moment
or two of reflection

but i?
i deserve nothing at all
not but a stretch of solitude
at least.

you’ve gotta be an asshole to think your ship is perfect, anyways

poetry

his perfect ship has the smallest hull fracture
and he wonders, leaving every port
“this time will it crack?
this time will the madness take?”

he’s travelling down portage road
towards the only gas station with the metro news
but the boy at the counter
his father is a regular at the bar
and knows his wife, and what’s he doing
out here this late anyway? the boy has
asked
and he can feel the crack stress

down below the captain fears
the pitch-black madness of the sea

it has tainted him, and he throws
his fists at the truck driver by
the coffee pots

the crack leaking in the madness
of the cold dark sea already

the killing off of a character in a play starring johnny and his alter-egos

poetry

your scraping the bowl, johnny
your hanging around near the bottom
your sick of it
your sick with it
now, what were you smiling for?

don’t think i don’t see you, johnny
changing hats stage-left
your perfect delivery only
making an ass of your self
and at home how you check the papers

the gig is up, johnny
and this is the best you could do
where your opium dreams have lead
down with the curtain close
scraping the bowl, swirling the bottom

on 22

poetry

(wonderland)

man-eating plants and
and
air with high acidity

tunnel vision

the smells, they stick
and are all sulfur
in the end

the colors slip
from your memory and then
from your eyes as well
and too from all the things

you bathe in what
eats you
just to keep you clean

and
on your knees you are
standing tall
relatively
but still too pussy
to lay down

oh carmello, carmello,
is this all that there
really is?

(lost)

a picture is all you need

poetry

a picture is all you need
when you’re yearning for the past

like my bike ride to work
and the dim nowhere sky

the booze in the autmn
leaves
it’s been a year

it’s been a year

or the party with the crazy guy
the one who knew
your perverted friend

and the yellow colored
lights in their house

file errors

you can almost smell the
girls,
on your bed
flipping you off
on a laptop

or the ones of you trashed
by yourself
bloody-nosed
in the mirror
in your bathroom
all alone

followed by the dead foliage
pricker bushes
and nasty landscape
of the lot behind
the parking lot of
your hellish old,

whatever,

a picture is all you need.

untitled pt. 2

poetry

the gravedigger did the dirty work
his shovel rotating as the hands
of time zoomed all around us like
the horse flies on my grandfather’s farm
and there you were,
oh, there you were
your lifeless body looking foriegn in
the moonlight
twisted and distorted
a fairy-tale gone wrong

and what was left of me left
after he slumped you over
started covering you up
dim light
peeking over
the horizon
i drove home and listened
to your favorite songs
and you were alive with me.

lake superior (fresh water)

poetry

he tells me to get some land
some waterfront on lake superior
to get me and some of my fuckin
buddies around and get some fuckin
land
it’s the
largest fresh water source
on the fuckin planet
i’ll never need water
fuck detroit
he says
i don’t have time to
wait around for that shit
i need to get me some fuckin land
and i know he’s right
cuz when the shit hits the fan
at least i know i’ll have a plot
with my name on it
where no one else can stand
and watch the shit fly
or i could always wait till
people want to build shit
there and pay me twice what
i payed for it and fund my
retirement
like the guy
if i make it that long

worm/cut (in half)

poetry

yellow, crooked,
cracked pavement dimly
lit by a street lamp
and this one
stutters
and flashes
all night
along this dilapidated
street

drug dealers hide
in the craters
in the pavement
and growl like
dogs
and the shadows
cast from the
poor street lights
look like dogs

and here you are
crying because
you’ve lost it all
cheeks like
the surface of a
dying planet
recieving it’s last
vital rain clouds
before another ice
age

everywhere you look it’s
either her,
or death,
and in this part of town
the dogs don’t want your
meat
they smell no fear
you are just a worm

and she’s a gone,
so,
you squirm around
feeling wormy
wanting nothing and
living even when cut in half.

PORTAGE ROAD

poetry

in your garden the plants
refuse to grow
and when you take a walk
the natural things they
wilt and bend
repulsed
almost magnetically
by your presence

your a fucked-up modern
day king midas,
man

your a modern day
fucked up kind of king
midas,
man

and all around you is an
invisible force that
turns things off and
makes them die,
and on your ride to work
and on your way home
destruction is all you see

and when you go out
and the pretty things
keep dying
destruction is all you
know

but when you see a flower
you still reach out to touch it
and the pain is anew all
the time.

love lost

poetry

i would admire your fresh face
in the grass in your back yard
and how you could make something
out of nothing
climbing a big oak tree
that they had to cut down,
last summer
got too big for its own good

and what ended up lasting
or at least it seems to me
are the dimples on your face
creases left from the smiles
from last summer
losing balance
at least 20 feet high
too good to be true