Author: David X. Hugo

the game

poetry

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.

do you want to know one thing?

poetry

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.

5670

poetry

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.

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