No hay mal que dure cien anos
me decia mi mama
Ni cuerpo que lo sostenga
todo tiene que acabar
Pero hijo no te rindas,
lo que sufres, va pasar.
Siempre carga tu cancion
como arma, pa’ amar.
* Translation
There is no evil/ wrong that lasts a hundred years
my mom used to tell me
Nor a body to withstand it
everything has an end
But son, don’t give up,
what you suffer will happen/ pass.
Always load/ carry your song
As a weapon, to love.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2020. All rights reserved
Adversity came to town,
looked me in the eye.
I blinked; it knocked me down.
I was on my knees,
it kicked me in the jaw;
it cracked my teeth and made me bleed.
It saw my head was bowed.
It struck me again …
and nearly knocked me out.
Adversity grabbed my hair
and held me straight;
struck me hard across my face.
It saw that I was blue and sore.
Swollen lipped, I smiled,
and simply asked for, “more”.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2020. All rights reserved
Lately,
I’ve been coming loose;
untethered.
Spiraling from my orbit,
and heading out
into forever.
How can this be,
. I wonder?
That there
will come an instant
clapping me asunder.
And I will be no more …
Unwhole.
Everything that made me
will remain
But I
I will never be the same.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2019. All rights reserved
You believe you have a personal relationship
with your God?
Well, so do I.
You think he tells you how to live your life?
Well, so does mine.
The things your God says are wrong,
my God thinks are fine.
The punishments that make your God strong,
would make mine seem less divine.
Keep your God where it belongs,
In the temple of your mind.
We’ll each get to sing our song
At death; just give it time.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2019. All rights reserved
On one of the days
of that week of creation
(the sources aren’t sure
if it was the 3rd or the 6th)
the angels were told
to bow down before Adam
for man was God’s favorite
invention; made as he was
in his own image
from the mist and the mud …
how could this tiny
material thing, be greater
than those who’d known only
Heaven?
And this is when
the angels conspired to whisper
forever into the ears of men,
lies about the nature of nature
and the terrible predicament
that we are all in.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2018. All rights reserved
Ten years ago this month, I started posting here at WordPress. It was (and still is) just a way to share some of my “creative” work with the world. It has been an inconsistent, nonsensical, non-sequitur of a blog, but I am glad that I started it. Most of the things I find interesting or entertaining, still end up just as ideas in one of my many notebooks. I am not a working artist or writer, but more of a scribbler, a doodler who occasionally stumbles across something interesting that might be worth sharing.
Most of it isn’t good enough to share, of course. It’s just me entertaining myself.
But I didn’t want the TENTH ANNIVERSARY of this blog to go without any posts, so I turned to my notebooks to see if there was anything worth sharing. I’ll let you decide if there was anything interesting. What I found was:
Happy suns, angels and mystics?
A sketch of “Slenderman”
I made for my oldest son, when he was into that sort of thing
“Voynich manuscript sketches”
Drawings inspired by the supposedly mysterious and undeciphered book. My intention was to color them in, but I got bored with the idea and moved on.
AND Drawings made just messing with a fountain pen.
“madre y muerte”
“mi familia”
“terror from the sky”
I love having a creative outlet that is also a kind of electronic repository for my thoughts and ideas. Long after I am gone (if net non-neutrality doesn’t wipe me out) this blog will exist as advertised: “the journal of a man living outside the demographic sweet spot”.
Thank you to anyone and everyone who has ever stopped by, accidentally or otherwise. I never imagined I would still be posting ten years from when I started. But I am glad that I started.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2017. All rights reserved.tenth
I want you to know
that this started
as a suicide note,
that I wanted to end it
by slitting my throat …
cortando la lengua
ahogado en sangre
kicking and punching
because I was angry –
buscando salida o comida
pa’l hambre
before I had realized
how this
was coming along.
That the words I was
writing transformed
into poem
palabras perdidas
de mi corazon –
perdona mi arte
si no tiene razon
when by
language and meter
it turned into song
filling some hole
that was born and
kept growing
nunca sabia
si venia o me iba
before I had learned
what was worth
knowing … and by
writing discovered
where the muses
were going
tormentas privadas
y como me joden
that language
could save me
enslave me to living …
force the forbidden
I keep hiding and
hidden
me salvan … palabras,
alarmas y espadas,
siembrada sin planes
que encuentro en mi alma
inside me
whatever it is I
awoke that drives me
also derides me …
it’s haunting, but lively
idiomas que usan
qualquier instrumento
buscando sentido
y razon pa’l momento
and despite it
I keep writing
along
like beating a drum
turning the silence
into a hum
of a rhythm to come
flowing and stirring
the smoke and the rum
asking me questions
of where I was from
making me look
at what I’ve become
the meshing of parts
that somehow you think
is less than the sum
the stranger himself
the prodigal son
a brother and father
con un corazon
and nobody knows
where it is I belong
they haven’t discerned
if I’m right or I’m wrong
if I’m noise or I’m song
But I want you to know,
that while you
may not always love me
yo siempre te quiero
y no puedo, sin ti.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2017. All rights reserved.
Dead at three twenty six pee em
on four, thirty one, twenty fifteen;
its work is all done.
Ten years in space
thirty five million pictures taken
three thousand orbits and never mistaken.
Slammed into the planet
and just as it passed,
sent back the best selfies of Mercury at last.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2016. All rights reserved.
I don’t like finding the dead bodies of insects
anywhere ‘round my house.
Don’t get me wrong, I smash and swat and kill
the little buggers when they trespass on my space.
They are disgusting after all, and especially to me;
when I consider how alien they seem,
but still share my ancestry.
How I hate thinking that they still foment
within their genetic recipe
the blueprints for my symmetry.
No, my distaste for finding the leftover husks
of dried out insects comes from the deep
realization that I share that fate with them.
That their grotesque beauty should be
so fragile in the end, and so easily extinguished,
left without ceremony, to be collected in a dustpan.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2016. All rights reserved.
Martin and Malcolm and Bobby and Jack.
You still hear their echoes inside of books.
Heroes are killed, and they never come back.
Stepped to the front and took lead of the pack.
Out of the valley and onto the brooks.
Martin and Malcolm and Bobby and Jack.
Believed in defense, but not first attack,
avoiding the jabs, the crosses and hooks.
Bullets kill heroes, and they never come back.
Tried to save Rome from the sieve and the sack,
warning the people of liars and crooks.
Martin and Malcolm and Bobby and Jack.
Were placed center stage and then on the rack;
received with suspicions and sideways looks.
Villains kill heroes, and they never come back.
Their efforts and names are fading to black,
for whatever they said has been mistook.
Martin and Malcolm and Bobby and Jack.
People kill heroes, then they want them back.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2016. All rights reserved.
words with no names 