Author: David X. Hugo

finding a little evil in everything

poetry

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?

poem

poetry

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”

might as well face it

poetry

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

where has all the time gone?

poetry

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.

timber fire

poetry

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

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)