Vine’s Rhinoceros (an achizm that’s almost awakizm)
I felt good that I had eyes. —Joe Brainard
In the quiet room: “I asked you I asked you I asked you a specific question. You didn’t answer the question you just went AROUND the question.” Then “YOU think I’M flirtatious?!” Then “What if I WAS flirtatious with the professor who was flirting with me?” … … Long Pause … I guess she hung up.
“Here,” I said, hand- ing over her lunch, “I wrote you a sandwich.” “Arkansas thunderstorms are close to my own words,” she re- sponded, surely meaning something like “What a neat trick!” That, however, was then. Today, I learn of a good friend’s passing, and my current favorite person in the universe will not even speak to me, de- spite my trying in most every language (in the same universe) to explain to him that pretty much the only thing that he could possibly do to actually halt progress (which, as it turns out, is a difficult word to define, in any language!) is to cut off all means of communication. What a lazy way to go, this death by incommunicado. Perhaps, then, the San Francisco fog colludes with that of my own. Feeling my way through it, this fog and that fog, I happen upon the zing of a word that once meant something. “To whom?” asks my favorite person in the universe. Thus we arrive, the both of us, in color- ful bow ties, at the Awk Ward, where for many years I live, taking lots of pictures of myself just to while away the time. Much later, when I finally escape, I find myself at every MUNI stop swimming in a curiosity that is almost always followed by an uncontrollable laughter. I’m not laughing (of course) at all of the people from other more distant terrains who stand in the subway or sit in a bus with long wands which are called Stick Selfie. “You idiots, you lost another month!” says the person sitting directly under the ad for Stick Selfie. Or is it that the voices in- side of my head dare instead to remain silent? Will they always be this deceptive, this quiet, this deceptively quiet, like an intricate stealthy drone driven from five thousand miles away by an even smaller drone?
What I really remember is the snow that crunched loudly white while two by two we emptied milk cartons all over the carpet where we’d light a blunt auburn candle each time we’d place a large chicken clean into the oven and then we’d find ways to warm ourselves up without speech until the cold was floating around us and not on top of us
“like reindeer” amid the pink canvases filled with runny noses we always arrived into the same dusk-colored place – we’d be circling a Christmas tree (“Teddy’s got mine!”) with none other than our dusty favorite, Frosty the Sasquatch. Thus would begin the alt- holidays through which we’d droopily happily endure . . . and now the sun –
shining its headlamp out toward every slice of existence that isn’t already pink (concocting brown and also blueberry and ashen gray but banana, too!) . . . and the trains
whistling arguments with one another; non-stop red-faced outbursts over and under snow-capped mountains, beside the exhausted stumps that stubble the inclines between the tunnels;
these parched remains of an erstwhile lush austerity sec- retly seek – desperately seek – a simple spot in the shade.
Sadly, being but stumps (and therefore never quite capable of grasping the fate- altering tricks known particular- ly by their neighbors, the rocks), each, despite a blaze-quenching desire, meets destiny by coming to rest beneath a canopy of no- thing but emboldened stars; each desiccated stub next to its very own frozen
Looking down onto the desert I am reminded of the dollops in his throat – it could just be the clouds or how the currency of his voice was always paid in whiskey clinks (Were aces wild or bases loaded? There’s only so much one remembers); it could be too a resistantly lingering vapor, but a whiff of that surly misdemeanor, now gone all but non-existent – a stinking ex- tinction the whole of which I’d welcome for an instant – or two – and not in a regret- ful nor a spiteful way, either (Oh, how very skewed becomes each glanced perspective!)…. Would that I could pay my way clear through the pink rock-like layers that compose such beautiful buttes as those that I have yet to completely imagine. But come now would I, could I (?), if but to ascertain precisely my particular description; how each (to a man) whose clipped talk was such a dreamy golden voice gone voiceless – (ah, but whose now hasn’t?) – was everything that’s me and mine in just one singular cloud that drops by, stays a little while, then drops a little rain upon the desert and (poof!) was just a cloud all by itself (like me, like I am now, an isolated puff)? How distant are the layers of that cake! And to the prick how each (a he) he must have convulsed from such repulsion, and with urgency and in direct polarity with apparently misleading charm, that with a similar conviction and speed a quick storm exhibits as it hops across the sage- brush of a summer afternoon – or how a bit further into the frontier a casino’s change leaks softly-swiftly into pocket – with a whoosh! – it’s vanished irrevocably, leaving for jilted memory all sorts of bruises and cuts that in turn will leave scars, the very templates of bitter remembrance, and hands that remember being full with what’s gone – as with a ghost town’s erstwhile panhandlers’…. This story of a couple of men once disguised as side- burns walking through an arboretum, and how they were at once two books that being stolen from a leisure van parked on a little rock in Little Rock…. How that little black pocket rock once conveyed a made-up mood, a few feelings, for example, like the ones given out by whistling sagebrush – those same clumps disintegrated by the dis- appearance – now gone so damp as to give a vertigo, a berserk and unconventional spin. And do they ever spin! They spin until all of my arms and teeth are lost, until a single blunt post of saguaro gets stuck somewhere in the rainforest of a distant hemisphere as the vague scent of whiskey as it clicks or as it clinks through the bone-chill night after night after night toward the rocks that are uplifted and carried by the dreaming wind until dropped as a stack like silver dollar pancakes into blood-colored buttes. And nearby, where burial grounds grow paler pink under the scorch – “We’re going to Illinois…aren’t we?” –I thought I heard him say. “If just to perk things up a little bit” – (But where did we ever go? And will it ever be remembered?)…. The once and all familiar…. And then we…. At last… And since…. (a dis- continuance)
1) An unvert is neither an invert or an outvert, a pervert or a convert, an introvert or a retrovert. An unvert chooses to have no place to turn. —Jack Spicer
Toby Lee, guitarist and child prodigy, stares out from the computer and onto his bed but momentarily, lost among his various quirks and tradition- al guitarist twitches. He is hard- ly as historical as they are, these traditional glitches.
Unleash, henceforth, the 9am piece of misunderstanding (Oh, do come back Mister Under- standing…)…. Your promised plans make fucked up moves, make things like me hurt. That tough love disguised as bitter pills to toughen up or make one better? I’ve never been an easy scam (much as I tease so) but next to you I’m not but had. Isn’t that historical? As if the vapor of your fake death would deign to respond.
Without a map, without a dollar, without an aging couch, much less a familiar door to open (close and deadbolt), I find my- self (like I find Toby Lee). In this bubble of misbehaving, misbegotten emotion, I am left to face this farcical non-existence you invented for yourself, an omnipresent tension that turns out to be as real as your fake pills for love.
“Witches’ brew?” offers the magician’s assistant, as he lifts the gargantuan magic eraser up to the summer sun.
The lousy way you’re treating me is only hurt- ing myself. Mary very easily makes teacher’s pet breathe. I watch lovestruck just to further distance myself until I am well again. Enough of the hell you say! It was inevitably your choice that I chose incorrectly. I love you so much that you broke a record I set picking an ultimatum. In other shadows moping a- round inside your skull, distance is directly pro- portional to engagement. I look down feeling less heathen and negatively affianced. “We both knew this would happen,” says the finances to the ugly pile of material conquest. Ever the victim, I text via SMS knowing full well that to square off with reality is to disavow it. Like knock- ing on the door to a place you single-handedly just emptied only to find the table set like a midwinter holiday. (It probably goes without saying that you have arrived, as always my fairest delusion, for no other reason than offer the only tradition at which you’ve always been best: con- cocting the signature cocktail, of course. And this elixir? Well it is so good it takes me out to the ballgame and shoots you all the way to the moon where that fat ball of cheese is still having its way with you. Because, you see, it has stolen your playbook by playing the victim and pointing its fingerless blame right at me. And the stars? Well, they each have their turn with you, too. But they’re only extras scattered about in this rousing conspiracy. And while I sit but twiddling alone in a cavernous ballpark, the moon turns its cheese-riddled cheek to a new favorite culprit as you perform your final erasure, dissolving traceless into the Andromeda, a wasted and infinite expansion of space.)
These people are not morn- ing people. These people are getting in the way. What is the opposite of two roads diverging? A bridge over troubled waters? Would you like to hang out today? I’m not certain I can do that. For one thing, I have to charge my cellphone (the days are endless like this). In my mind I’m thinking I owe him a dollar. In his mind he’s thinking he owes me an apology.
The Burden of Living Off the Graciousness of Others
I really enjoy it when, say, a generic brand of strawberry soda has, rather, a distinct cream soda taste. And this happens on occasion. To me, it does…. Anyone else?
The act of engagement. Engaging in
person (irl, non-virtual). Yet for all of
the day’s generosity, the beautifully
spun green and gold floating backwards through the internet, past the new
social blockade and landing here in my very lap, it is that act I miss the most. Nose to nose talk done not by fingers (which carry about contorted, flying through the space just in front of
our eyes, if not locked between a pair of them). Voices the steam from which we can feel on our cheeks and words that are spoken with our entire bodies…. My eyes, your eyes. Eyes that know me and
mine that know you, eyes that have a history between them, can work to recall
times such as these. See the both of us
in something of a tight orbit, air quotes, a three dimensional thumbs-up, a held
but spinning glass of wine, building suspense, finally tilted so it’s almost spilled, until we are speaking a decibel or two louder and our faces flush. We seem to care, as if we’ve each a bit of
something at stake, a small piece of you and a small piece of me which we offer the other or carefully take. We’ll talk the afternoon away, just like we used to, of course, through a wonderful
evening we’ll chatter away. It’s so lovely
to see you, perhaps you could stay? Let’s say for dinner? Or even the night? It has been forever, there’s so much to relay. Oh, please say you’ll do so, I find my
self texting while thinking so loud that I notice the sound of my very own voice. I look up embarrassed then back at the key- board before reminiscing, soda in hand, caught
Transformations can occur (to the transformed; to the spectator of the transformation) as immediate, an immersion into inversion, yin becoming yang; yang, yin. The cockroach lies flat, content, as it (mostly) covers the nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor sits silently in the distance, chugging, as if making a joke of its very own silence, of the cockroach atop it, here, in the middle of a state that lies somewhere in the middle of a country. All passersby pull their automobiles over just to spectate; to participate. It is, as always, a beautiful day. Each of us are part of the beauty, and so we whisper: “Gorgeous!” “Ama- zing!” “What a spectacular day!”
Do other people not know where they think they are when they do? —Sue Landers
The ear thing today is nice guys finish last. In this fantasy (the paper- work within paperwork), my being does not live me. Yep, here I don't be me (a recommendation I'd reckon). I don't live. But yet, the opposite, which expands beyond the opposite, does not become the infinite, so, therefore, does not ache. Like existence; like expansion. Hollywood demand: expend $$ for new transformer. This could be the one with which you blew up the transformer in the last episode (the prequel?), with which you blew up the transformer personified. How could you?!, I implied! At 14 years of age. In 2008 or 9. Room number 217 or 217 and a half. RUN LIKE HELL out of Miami. Who does that? Come to think of it who runs like hell out of Miami? Maybe you were simply running (maybe still are) from Sears & Roebucks to Miami. An utter conclusion. I think. In this fantasy exists a couple of pieces of paperwork about ivory. And how I chipped a couple of teeth saber-rattling.
Small colors are the life of coping waters —Cassie Lewis
If, perhaps, one looks around to examine S M A L L . . . . . If I look. The buses have more volume, less space. All of our prisoners have escaped the frontiers. Life is rising from the garden, for example. Look how the eggplant sprawls, enveloping surface, until it bursts. I am the error in the garden of small. Small colors are only half real, if that. Yesterday, as I continue to punctuate, is memory. Only that. And memory becomes a midden ——— a mountain of youthful adventure (useful ad- venture?), of feast and (rarely) famine, until the memory dislocates, at first dissolving into some- thing very small, then into a nothingness only a volcano might keenly recall. I recognized the turtle, its protruding green meat, as if it had just escaped from the local zoo. As if it had just been to the zoo. I looked on as it —— ventured? —— in awe of the mass of profusion coming from such a shallow hand- crafted shell.
is an under- statement, if you ask me. It is an illeg- itimate word to use for such a charac- ter; re- garding such a story. Take my word for it, I may be an un- ass- uming bozo, but you are just an ass. Well, and a trag- edian. Why, then aren’t you a no- body? Now that is tragic!
one stolen backpack. Three and a half months. Would this be funny from any perspective? Can time exist long enough for some- one to discern? All I can see is what is no longer, until I then lose sight of what I had (in actuality: days ago, months ago, years ago). And who I was. Who I am. Who am I? A reminder pops up on my tiny computer screen, (which is my iPhone, where I currently type this; my only computer...): Manicure. Where on earth did that come from, I wonder. See? I have forgotten nail salons, bars, night clubs, dancing (?!), being casual, the joy of working (yes, in producing paid work I know joy!). “You get to completely start over; reinvent!” But why is that a positive thing, exactly? And how many times must I begin again (please never like this, if so!)…. One might say any singular moment poses such a grand (grand- iose) opportunity. One might say that.
2 iPhone 6 cellphones – each less than one month old
a couple of two terabyte drives; one w/ a lifetime of downloaded (and most all if it paid for) music and the other w/over 100 yrs of digital (the older ones obviously scanned from originals) photos
a large black rolling suitcase (unknown brand) which contained this list of items
stolen on 2nd
night of being
homeless,
sidewalk
robbery
on Mason
near Sutter
all 5 bottles of my prescription meds which could not be refilled soon enough for the furniture move to the storage unit
2/3rds of everything accrued over a life- time — of which the 13 most recent yrs were spent on Nob Hill in an apartment I called home — where, during my scheduled attempt to remove my belongings, I was ass- aulted by the apt mgr (who refused to allow me to go to the emer- gency room as I was
attempting to do so—
it had all become way too much for me
to handle)
various clothes, inc many t-shirts, dozens of coats and jackets, the beautiful table from the kitchen, as well as my old- est piece of furniture, the marble table in the hallway, well over a hundred works of art, one large box of memo- rabilia w/items from most every year of my life
all gone
& also, 3 door-drops of shoes, all of which fit me, inc several pairs of work/ dress shoes, the loss of which would be the source of severe blisters for two months
one 10-yr-old cat named Coco the Loco, who, like me, had lived for over a decade in an apart- ment (#35) at the intersection of Pine & Mason, San Francisco, California.
Be happy, and/or RIP, dear Coco the Loco (my companion, 2007-2017)
Well, if you are going to go to the trouble of chivalrously beating up a guy – or flat-out attempting to break your arm over his head – you should break your arm over his head. Or something. What’s a pacifist to do when someone stands up for you like that; when some- one is such a sweetheart? We must really love liking one another. “I really like you.” “I really like you, too.” Or something. With your proclamation you probably placed your hand neither firmly nor gently on the cheek of my ass. I dramatically squeezed my face and attempted a show of shock with “You’re crazy!” There are moth-eaten ways in which we do love each other without trust. Everyone here is a hustler. Trust is not an option. Like? Love? It is not reduction to call these words quite inevitably “relative” (as they say). Who took whose whatever? is one of the very few possible headlines you might find in the morn- ing, or whatever time you read (if you do, in- deed, read). The other main topic is bedbugs. This one took up an entire resident’s monthly a couple of weeks ago. It was the only one I have attended thus far, and likely will re- main so. It is advised to maintain an unidenti- fiable sexuality. Doing this eliminates a good portion of deleterious attitude. So, for ex- ample, when a sexuality clue to the contrary happens to be dropped during casual convers- ation, especially among three or more people at once, there is a great risk of torture and/ or death. To reiterate, it’s of grave import to remain straight, even if you happen, on occasion, to feel otherwise. Keep in mind that anyone you pass in the shelter hallway or at the cafeteria, anyone casually walking by your bunk bed of a morn- ing or evening, will (most often silently) be taking tabs. The mental notes are easy enough that one can be entirely comfortable with them within very short measure (“Normal, normal, he’s okay, normal, he’s straight, this guy must not be because I’ve yet to reach a clear conclusion, normal, normal, gay,” etc.). Other words can be substituted for the word “gay,” but whichever your choice, it is imperative that one’s jaw is squarely clenched, teeth nearly grinding into a powder on the tongue and lower lip, whether tabulating aloud or silently. Just bear in mind that tabulation is always of the utmost import. After completely missing my hero break his arm over the bigot’s head, defending the existence of myself and of my particular sexuality, I didn’t feel very normal; not very straight at all. And me, an utter pacifist. “That’s some chivalry,” I say, directly to my hero’s broken arm. “Well, it’s only two thousand dingledy-dings for fuck’s sake,” the arm’s face replies – a face which, as if only just noticing it, is so much more beautiful than I’d
Get it through mind, into head cavity by way of whatever means, that this is not a play by Edward Albee. You are living socially, awkward and loud. “Oh, lord, be you bene- volent, malevolent or irrelevant, I want no drama, nothing more to diminish respect. No more begging.”
Then it’s to bed. I’m on the top bunk, so nothing unusual because I am a top, with eyes on the ceiling, through which the moon is pregnant and orange; gorgeous. I know because I ran into a tree earlier attempting to ponder the pregnant moon while simultaneously walking. Was it because I am a man? Or just plain clumsy? Don’t answer at 9:30pm, after I snap at the moon because I bumped into a tree. The tree, unpredictably, painfully, was in the throes of a winter snap. Is this my home? Or is it somebody else’s habitat? It is the future of habitats, and
Bruce Willis finds himself in the grips of a robotic and foreign actress who dares to steal every scene from Bruce. She chews through the movie with a big wig that is reminiscent of a particular decade. And of robotic women, with whom it is apparently impossible not to fall madly in love. I know that I did. Fall, that is. I am terribly clumsy. And while I rarely look back, unless
in order to view and critique the now; to readjust, to remap. I have always loved the period wig atop her robotic and unsurprisingly magical head. And Bruce, moonlit Bruce, is no exception. Like many who have come before him, he is motivated to save the world simply because of this love. Saving the world for love sounds aspirational. But it also seems like a terribly cloudy, illogical thing to do.
