Author: David X. Hugo

our governing body

poetry

i’d think you’d have
compassion
‘cuz you stole all of
mine
take off your colored
glasses
for all the hues have
died
the stench will kill your
olfactors
when your livin in a
stie
but i digress, you
progress
to make my happiness
fly
like a paper plane in the
summer
whose nature the ground drew
nigh

before we leave

poetry

i am truly taking the
last hits
of this bag
and am thinking
how i let you down,
and died at the
end of this dream.

i hear them knocking
all day,
these days,
but i wanna spend
my minutes between
you and the sad
winter sun
before i awake
and consciousness comes.

current status

poetry

up here they call me dr. hugo
i work at a chinese restaurant
where my boss
(an old chinese lady named mary)
calls me josh-ah
i have a scrape on my
knuckles from punching
the bathroom fan
the earth is monochrome
i am only charging the
sun a one trip-fee
for a round-trip flight

i am hoping that it takes
a hint.

entropy

poetry

e n t r o p y
fear
HATRED
[ERROR]
$money$
$money$
$money$
$money$
pots
mearcs
there’s a video camera every where to be seen
why NOT
PUT ON
a happy
face? 🙂
put yourself at the center of your map
program your gps to tell you where your at
g
ive
yourself away for cash
or a laz-e-boy
e n t r o p y
write your book
change your name
never resolve
never end
eyes closed
mouth open.

put up or shut up

poetry

words stumble and fall
out of my mouth like
spit after anesthesia

old man winter’s gray
song drunkenly serenades
the inside of my cave

these damn apes are
invading and i must resort
to guerrilla warfare

i see their ships marching
through the bay like
ants to watermelon

dog shit on the bottom
of my shoe — surrender
in the pit of my stomach

tomorrow’s daybreak may
reveal thousands more,
armed to the goddamned teeth

gameday

poetry

practicing standing up before the
alarm goes off
tying, untying shoes
placing coat in correct position
arriving to practice 20 minutes
early to get the proper motiv
ation and the proper preper
ation so when the coach says
“KLINGER, YOUR IN!”
i will not,
not,
not,
not,
not,
fumble the ball like a fresh
man,
or sophomore.

hitting the field with extra
grass in my teeth,
even if i get that touchdown,
i must not waver.
do you think atlas wavers?
do you think a coach would
bench atlas?
or hercules?
or klinger?

runnin’ the block

poetry

the oil gets thick in the motor
when it’s not turnin at 23 degrees
Fahrenheit after you been runnin’
the block on foot thinking “why man
i oughta get outta this place”
with your head all up in the sky
oh man, your so high. oh the lead
in your head that they put in the
drain they say if you don’t drink
it it makes you insane but you
gotta nervous tick like your
life’s down the drain so your
thinking you might stick your
head in the rain when your
thirsty ‘cuz you know that
shits
mind
control
aint it?
when it all comes down you
gotta pick up the dollars
and put them back down
or all the school children might
call you a clown so you pick
up your back and you walk
down the road towards oblivion
thinking “at least i’ll go there
alone” and man,
you are so damn high.

wally’s world

poetry

on the way to the
vee eff double yew
i saw dereks in the
cornfields
and i can see why you’d
not want to be here.
i hear they sent you
in to cash-for-gold
and got a settlement
from a white house,
overnight,
postdated for two years,
and i see what the govern
meant. side-note:
my baby she is a cow in
the pasture,
all four of her stomachs
filtering the asbestos-grass
(have you seen the commercial
for the new tree ants?
delicious, i hear).
my friend denny, see, he lives
on every corner,
he puts syrup on his bread
and sells you awful puns for
10 a piece.
and, i suppose, i’m glad as hell
you finally walked out of wally’s
world, we’re all still unsure
as to why any of us bought
tickets. ’till then it’s midnight
in the living section.

to my dead grandpa rich

poetry

while visions of you are still
fresh in my head
i ought write a poem
about how you are dead
about how you let
yourself drift out to sea
when the grim reaper came
to town

i was a commander
underneath you in battle
herdsmen in computer chairs
leading our cattle
i remember the opium
sun on the beach
before wilford brimley
came to town

i don’t much write tributes
to men twice my size
i gave it my best
and we both know that’s a lie
but you were in florida
where they stuff ’em away
before the chariots
came to town

(you were my favorite,
too)

rain cloud

poetry

i am the rain cloud above the
ignorance parade.
i block out the sun
and ask “where did you
put your umbrella?”

i did not choose this.

i can be light as any cloud,
when there is no rain for
me to fall. i can let the sun
through when the wind pushes
me out of the way, or when
i am not feeling gray.
why should i feel bad?
i am like anything else.
without emotions getting
in the way.

you

poetry

you are a big black monster that is
the color of a black hole and loud
as hell standing behind everyone in
some sort of transcendental fashion
but our ears are dulled to the point
to where your incessant sucking no
longer piques our interests.

but you, you are hiding everywhere
and your energy makes everything
work.

it makes the engines turn with
heat your energy flows through
the veins of us all packaged in
pretty bows. but in all of those
pretty bows also is your loud
screaming and your lack-of-color.

and you, since you do all of these
things people will say that, when
confronted with your existence,
that this is reason enough for you
to still be alive.

sucking and poking and prodding and
demanding and taking and ripping up
the earth like slurping noodles or
pulling the fabric off of the top of
the table but all of the things on
top of it falling down. all of the
trees and buildings and things just
falling down and making the loudest
sound only comparable to the one
you make at all times that we,
as a people, under god, indivisible,
have decided to ignore with our
utmost and purely sincere American
dreams.

you, nameless, horrible wretched
demon of the conscious or subconscious.
you are on the face of everyone at
all times, you are on the cusp of
every feeling, the tip of every tongue,
the parenthesis to every sentence,
you ooze and seep through cracks like
smoke or the oily-creature-thing from
the animated film fern gully.

you, it is not possible to kill you.

you just gotta have the right friends

poetry

they say they are drugs
and that they do nothin’
but bad,
unless they filter it through
the bureaucracy and all of their
committees and sheets of
paper thick with molasses.

i, say, i love you all when
my little white friends drift
lazily down my throat.
i say that i’m at 100% when my
good old friends sit around
on velvet couches and chat
about things that make us happy
resting our feet on a coffee table
made of pure opium.

doodoodododoot
dodoot dodoot doot dadoot doot
doodoodododoot
dodoot dodoot doot dadoot doo doot.

i say my vein lines vibrate like
bass lines when i’m high
and i am at one with lower
pitches and the smoother licks
that life brings. i say that the
cold rain up against my face
trickles down to my spine and
is smile inducing at times.

hey, senator man, church man,
why don’t you let loose?
you wouldn’t think it poison if
you saw how it makes you
more alive.

Things; big, small, medium-sized

poetry

after the day a million nocturnal Things
begin to run around in my head

all of the Things and their parents
make such a loud and awful racket

although I am told the Things are
me and I am them and we are all
together,
I have a hard time thinking when
the Things are running their mucks

the Things fight and argue a million
little Thing things,
leaving me all around my room
on different corners of the globe and
so-on

and
when you hear things come out of
my mouth sometimes the Things
slip out and I can’t explain how
it is just
not
me

the birds are sleeping somewhere
around in bushes and hedges along
the sidewalks of michigan,
and today was the first day that the
snow snuck it’s way down in the
rain…
tomorrow is the day that we all sit
and pray and say thanks to the real
big Thing upstairs and for all of the
little to medium-sized Things we have
permanently made in our 3d world
or in our heads, or for the people
that we think we know or that think
they know themselves. and every day
is another that the Things in my head
will spend erasing my memory.

someday soon

poetry

i met a girl in my dreams who whispered
in my ear as the wind picked up and
weaved and flowed beneath my hands
clung tight to the grips i’ve been holding
to keep me from falling off this cliff
and loosened it enough as a final re
minder that yes, indeed,
the time has come. do you want to
know what she said though? she said
“nín hǎo” and she was like
breathing on a window and drawing
a heart and seeing it there when
you wash your car. i swear, too,
that i saw her one day and i
feared i might lose my job
or my pride or my kids or
my wife or my mortage or
my bed or my blankets or
my sedentary life-style if i
went up to her and said “hi.”
so i didn’t,
but i will.

the complexity of infinity found by the ceasless mind

poetry

life is an ouroboros
or: ouroouroouroorououro
ouroouroouroouroouro
ouroouroouroouroborus etc.
why? well,
love is blind! things of
that nature, like,
christian capitalists…
like, freedom.
like, how…youth is wasted
on us poor folk. spent endlessly
drudging through homework and
work at the minimum wage legally
allowed to pay a human being
and spent not experiencing
anything, unless, of course
you are a hippy,
drug-addict,
good-for-nothing,
hobo. of course.
in america, freedom is most
surely dead.
for if i were to sit in one
spot i would be sued or
some such legal rigmarole,
though, that is all i really
wanna do (to sit in one spot,
not to get sued).

last day of summer and/or fall sucks

poetry

i can write LOVE on my arm
all day long but i cannot
stop the fall from falling
all over me like a whale.
sanity leaving with the
leaves i am a helpless
child to the rhymeless
wastes and abandoned humanity
that is MOUNT PLEASANT,
MI 48858 (Apt #A253).
all the debts must be
wrung in,
all of the snide comments
must be said,
all of the comfort must
get sucked with the humidity
and brought down south
to comfort the old souls
in florida being fed
by tubes and so-on.

do you remember the last
day of summer? when
we traded a pack of
cigarettes for a beautiful
sun, clouds, temperature,
scenery and situation?
that day was the last
drop of water in our
trip through the sahara.

indecision, perfection, treadmills

poetry

i just can’t make it
twiddling my thumbs all the day long
like a dopamine fiend
picking up boulders and putting them
back down like a modern day
sisyphus, or something.
thinking
re-thinking
doing and then
un-doing
stopping
starting
stopping again,
to start, one
last final time
(this time
i’ll make it
right)
and i am going to rip these
cement feet right off if
i can’t go see the sunset
tonight.