Author: David X. Hugo

loveless (or call the dogs off, jesus)

poetry

nothing can be more appealing
to me than the beauty of a woman;
i see in her figure, and in her form,
(or what she shows me of it)
the chesapeake, the rockies,
the sky.

however, much unlike a good book,
or an album,
the insides of a human are
much less appealing than the
outside. i venture to say:
this anomaly is not found
outside of our personal
shared condition.
the slow and painful stuttering
dive of disinterest that forms
once cracking open the spine
of one of these most
appealing vixens.

i hear the retorts of a million
dead poets in my ears, the
sheepish cry of billions
of single-celled
omnivorous,
monogamous,
thoughtless populi screaming:
but for love!
oh, i hear you all,
all of you shape-shifting spineless
oafs,
willing to subject yourself to
untold ignorances under the
name of some vague emotional
and societal ploy.

i say,
we have multiplied
many times over,
jesus,
now call the dogs off.
i am loveless.

circus

poetry

i buy tickets to the circus sometimes
with spare
hidden
paychecks.
and i am enamored, i suppose,
by the beauty and the tact of the
horses with the long black mains
(although i am not sure of
what breed).
i think for a moment about
another life
where i am a horse trainer
and i bask in their majesty.
for these moments
rapt in contradiction
never last.

i am sure if i trained horses
i would hate them too.

so i get up before the lights
have raised
(with the idea of anonymity)
walk out to the parking lot
and commute back to my
home
which will never be just right

as long as it’s mine.

favorite bland

poetry

dumping ashtrays in parking lots
on brochures about the effective-
ness of time as a decomposition
agent,
lighting fire to the pedestrians
in the nova,
saturday before the big let-down
sure was fun,
was wild,
like your eyes.

stranded and strung out chasing
strippers,
sex
and
success
’round the street from
old men in book stores closing
down gotta love kalamazoo,
michigan,
the homeless.

oh why i gotta love the break
down like i loved the build-
up aint so easy to understand
staring at this whole thing,
this whole big thing,
running away again.

nightmares, government, love

poetry

sleeping with your memories
can make for a bad night laying
in bed all day next day thinking
(circles)
going on for hours about how
they are here to get you or will
be soon, you are sleeping in a
(square)
sweating through the ghosts
shooting glances at your love,
in the back of your eyes like
(stars)

climbing a fence

poetry

blah blah you
self-assured like the civil war
full of shit sayin’ god put it there
standing at a gate
with the key
someone inside and i wish it wasn’t
me
seeing like a blind man with a
telescope and some other
metaphors that would cut real
deep
if i had only used your name.

heroin spoons

poetry

heroin spoons

ice glazed in
grass

cat piss white
t-shirts

from
smoothing edges
to
running
from
police

notes to yourself
reminding yourself
that you are not
being
your self

perplexed by
that concept
you ignore your
old friend

stems

giving up by
sitting down

a man made of
mist and a man
made of stone are
yelling at eachother
on your television,
you cannot
turn
it
off.

passive-aggressive

poetry

sitting in your little
room,
shaking,
pressing playPRESSINGSTOP,
you grin.

you continue shaking.

you breathe a sigh of
relief,
“at least no one knows”
you think to yourself,
sating your nerves with
positivity.

your eyes see a bathroom
on your computer screen,
brought to you by apple
inc. and your girlfriend
is sleeping in the other room
and noticing this you get up
and walk what seems miles
to hear her loudly snoring and
you thinkSHITILEFTITON
and you hurry back and
you realize that you’re shaking
again and this sigh stutters
out of your mouth and falls
to the pit of your stomach

again you press play

you skip past the part
where you set up the
camera,
past the part where you
leave,
past the part where she
uses the bathroom

again you press play

the shakes come on
hard,
real hard,
you smile
grin
you smile and grin
i see you smiling
and grinning
cheesing
pressing play
i see your white teeth
through your smile
i see and i know i smelled
it on you,
i smelled it on your breath
trailing every word that
you said,
i wont forget that smell
and i wont let you live
with that.

not with that smile.

do not associate the focus of this poem with any type of pre-existing ideal or concept that exists within your brain unless, of course, you’re right

poetry

you have shown me how
to get things done
you have shown me what
emotions can do
i have seen how you let
random entities bounce
chaotically off of each-other
for eternity

you have shown me how
i can be fooled
i have witnessed the steadfast
nature of your creations and
i have listened to old men
talk,
old men who really had it;
i listened and understood

i have seen men beating
their heads against walls
until they bled out into the
streets,
i have seen how little
communication exists between
people,
i have heard how much
you have to say–
i have listened when i could,
i am afraid i have not understood
much;
i am also afraid that there is not
much to understand

i cannot tell you how life is
across the universe
but i can hazard a guess that
will come very close

i can still not understand people,
i cannot believe;
which is why i cannot understand
you,
or much of what you say,
however loud you say it

i can never let the ink dry
before i throw away today’s
draft,
because i wake up with the sun
and see it erase the meaning
of all that i had imagined that
very day with it’s waning
over the horizon like white-out
over a dissertation written by
humanity,
who, collectively, is unsure
when exactly the paper is due.

alpha

poetry

back in the
d
a
y
we used to ride the dead
leaves through the hellish
michigan winters
all shady hazed and listless

and my blue car was nervous
around college girls

we made it out like kings of
a shit-hill-made-of-gold,
crowns reflected in our
bloodshot eyes

and we forgot all the names
of the days and the places

now, between stints in county
lock-up and governmental fines
we breath in deep and waste
our time waiting;
because they always catch the
fire but they never catch the
fireworks.

stick man

poetry

your the stick man and
they made a pencil outta you
woah your friends are all left
and your tryin’ to keep it right
they got a number for you
and you know it’s no. 2
you see the blue lines in the sky
nothin’ quite fits inside of them
you celebrate your loneliness with
nights by the sharpener
woah and you’ve got nothin’
nothin’ to write down.

officer buzz-kill

poetry

beneath the skull of a cop is stone.
he sits, staring, waiting for you to
move: to have the wrong facial exp
ression, to be sea
ted in the wrong position (weight
on the wrong ass
cheek)
and then he stands up, slowly, noticing
your criminality.
casually, he walks at any speed
he pleases, and begins the triviailty
of conversation which ends always
in the same way:
cement box.
he laughs about the game last night
with his friends while you sit in
the back of his car, which is always on,
losing your wits and your “savings”
and your life.
he shines his flashlights in your eyes,
inquiring into your soul with his long
stone gaze,
slowly paging through your mind and
your posessions, taking interest in
what he pleases,
fining you for what displeases
the fools on capitol hill,
laughing indescriminately at your
last free breaths.

yes,
beneath the skull of a cop is stone.
his pupils work tirelessly on the
unsuspecting public,
just trying to get where they’re going
to do what they want
often times hurting no-one but them
selves,
maybe the futures of their future
children,
and he wants to steal your vitality
to fill his quota. as long as he is here,
he figures,
he might as well get you if he can.
he might as well get the ones that no
one wants to see gotten and not get
the ones everyone would like to see
gotten due to lack of evidence/effort.

beneath the skull of a cop is stone,
and in the place where his heart
should be there is a fucking piggy-bank.
oink
oink.

fiery bones

poetry

you have no clue at the fire
that exists within these bones
as your eyes systematically
pan over the room, unfocused,
and you see me in the booth
by the window setting silver-
ware down for more ungrateful
customers to fill themselves
with, no.
you don’t have an incling.
i could, and would, run
a triathalon ten times the
speed of your rugged 6 foot
lumbering male counter-
part, the one who attracts
you so with his mind and his
faith;
if only, for a brief while,
i could heat the air
around your skin with
the truth smoldering within
my firey bones.

when the tin man tries to love

poetry

when the tin man tries to love,
his lover working endlessly
to purchase more oil for his
useless joints,
the battery acid may suffice
for months;
however, as we all know,
and in the back of his lover’s
mind at all times,
there are gears under his
tin chest. and on lazy sundays
when the sun floats through
the slits in the shades,
and they lie awake, she should
know that when the battery
acid wears off, he will no longer
feel the warmth of her touch.
and worse yet
when the oil gets thick
and
his going
gets tough
and the
battery acid
isn’t doing it
any-
more
the gears in his chest will
drive him to the door.
(or maybe the cpu, or
his legs, or his feet,
or his hamstrings,
irregardless)
one day the tin man will shut
the door behind him and
freeze up a half-mile down
the street, with no oil saved
up to keep him spry.

awake is sand

poetry

everywhere i go i hear people talkin’ bout themselves
so very short of content but they got alot to sell
they say “every day’s a torment i am in a living hell”

and the rooms they fill with dust
at the mall the body-paint stores are packed

they got the lacquer for the skin of the stars
they got the happenin’ boats and the cars
got easy ways to talk about yourself when its hard

sometimes i see my friends there
they all make me want to go back to sleep

i’m gonna call this “free form poetry”

poetry

i sit staring at rearranged
pixels in a grid made by
god watching plays played
by ghosts
i make love to the marionettes
in my dreams and sometimes
in the wires
of the grid

(on simulated sunny days
in graveyards and in minivans)

remember all the times
you sat staring at mannequins
screaming “WHEN WILL YOU
TALK BACK?”???
so does half of
jcpenny
and the
crossroads mall
security
yet
i
digress.

crazy sonofabitch behind a wall

poetry

these birds from hateville
they know you
before they see you
but they are beautiful,
enough,
i guess,
and i’m at my wits end
filling this birdfeeder,
now that i think about it!
and why, may i ask,
am i so tongue tied?
you should’ve seen me,
all quiet in the forest
while the bees ate me alive.
ah, you should’ve seen me,
watching those stupid birds
while the bees ate me alive,
and i didn’t even scream.
those birds from
hateville,
the only birds around.