VINCENT TORO

A NAME UN-AIMED

            I thought

            That I could

                        Write myself out of the abyss

            Instead I wrote myself into

                        A greater one

                        Every character imaginable

                                    Had imagined

                                                They were in attendance

                        For some great unveiling

                                    They brought confetti of ions and protons

                                                To hurl at me

                                                In commemoration of my

                                                Departure (Deep Art? Sure!)

                        The only one who did not show

                                    To witness the rapture

                                    Was the guest of honor

I was supposed to be the guest of honor that evening

                        Instead I was the guest of on her

                                                            On her nerves

                                                            On her bad side

                        She has six sides

She is a Hexagon hexed by her own

            Paragon of beauty

            Each side divided into six parts

            That play as sextets sequentially outnumbering me

            When I divide myself from her

            She makes 36

            Minus me

                        Complete and unbroken

                        Her true art is unspoken

Now there are only 2 of me

The me that wants to be hers

The me that wants to be mine

On this subject I am divided

            Even as the reasons for staying multiply

            Add to that

                        All the ways I misconstrue her

            And I am quickly subtracted from the equation

            That equates me

                        With her ability

To remain silent

When she is silent

I am a smashed piggy bank

I squeal as the tokens are taken

            Extracted from the shards

            Of myself left on a 4^th graders desktop

            They are swept away only

                        When someone has cut themselves

                        On one of the broken pieces and all the change is gone

In an instant she is gone

Behind a bathroom door locked to seal out

My cries for change that crack the back of the silence she seeks

I seek not to fill the silence merely for the sake of its unnerving effect

I am attempting to hunt down

The toy collectors

Who have tried to make a game out of me

But I am mistaken

            She is not a toy collector

And I am not a game

She demands that I stop playing games

Or she will not ever come out of her cave

Yet the only game I seem to play

Is my own un-naming

Un-aimed

The names shouted leave casualties across

The landscape

Like a rifle in the grip of a blind epileptic infant

In an instant

It is silent

And I am alone

Toro is a poet, playwright, and musician living in Jersey City, with a B.A. in English and Theater from Rutgers. A teaching artist in New York, Toro was a resident writer/performer at Dixon Place for the 1996 series, Y Que!: A Latino Poetry and Play Reading Series. Toro’s poetry has been published in The Aquarian Arts Weekly, where he served as the Editor of the Theater Page. His play “Bong Hits” was produced in 2000 by Urban Renaissance Productions for Trinities Trilogy at Theater 22 in NYC, along with another of his plays, “One Way.” Toro spent 1998 teaching and writing in Ankara, Turkey. He has appeared on the Hottest Poets Radio Satellite Network, WBAI’s “Latino Journal,” WKCR’s “Composed on the Tongue,” and in the documentary feature, The Source. His mini-books are currently being presented as part of the nationwide Art-O-Mat series. In 2001, Toro was awarded a residency by The Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. His music project, Juxtapose, has recently finished recording their debut album, Escape from the Pigeonhole.