Half a day,
that’s all that I can take.
A half a day at a time …
and so I wake before
the day breaks like I used to;
stay in sync with life.
,
But just past noon
I must go down,
take a nap to rest –
.
My legs, my back, my broken
parts have ground
themselves against themselves
put my limits to the test.
.
I’ll rise again, if it is meant,
to take on the latter part …
and it is always my intent
to bring all my mind and heart.
.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2021. All rights reserved.
The horrowshow Milkbar
also known now as the best mesto
for my droogs and me,
where, “What’s it going to be then, eh”
is the question repeated
by malchicks and devotchkas …
any random nochy with a thirst
for twenty-to-one, or any other
way to filly out the bezoomny
we feel trapped in the old mozg.
Bog himself knows the starry lewdies
try everything they can to escape
their grazzy cheepooka. They
have different ways of lying
about the jeezny, my brother.
But if you viddy their glazzies
after a few rounds of their
favorite poisons, behind their guffs
and ha ha ha creeches
you’ll hear from their poogly rot
what sounds like a hound and horny
excuse for why they wake up every
morning to ookadeet their domy and drat
for the measly hem-korm in their pockets …
why they rabbit until their plots
fall apart and are left with nothing
but to itty or take in
the last unending spatchka.
It’s why we’re showing mercy, my brother,
and a beautiful thing, kleb and krovvy,
when we take these broken vecks
out back to bend ’em at their altar
in the darkness of the alley
and smash them in the litso —
make a mark in the rassoodock,
so it plays like a shoomny sneety,
like a scene we’d see at the sinny.
It’s the only way to prod a bratty.
* Inspired by a student who invited me to read and discuss A Clockwork Orange with him.
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
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.
I don’t know
what you’ve been told,
about what happened
long, long ago;
but it’s happening still
and forever will.
.
So even as
you sit around
bored or absorbed
by retold stories
of the horde you were born to,
learning the sayings and prayers
making your exit and entrance
being just merely a player,
you should come to learn,
through peace
and through violence
there’s a greater tale told
of black hole horizons,
and dreams from hadrons
collapsing in silence …
.
… particles blinking
in and out of existence
ignoring the gravitational resistance
…………..that allows you and me
to walk around on this earth
.
and for whatever it’s worth
whether you accept it or not
this story has got
……………………….no point.
.
For in a curious twist
the multiiverse missed,
what no good writer ignores.
.
Who is this story for?
worse than learning
what it is
is realizing it’s the stuff
that’s getting in the way
of actually being
in the world
completely,
and worst of all
is knowing
that it’s mostly
empty space
repelling through
its charges
our merging
into everything.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2012. All rights reserved.
for Paolo Ernesto
.
the rules for all of this
come from distant worlds
we are satellites of satellites
bound to every detail of the past
.
we trod around our
flooded rock imagining
we could be stars
but we know now
that we are very far
.
we are made from pieces
that fall apart to blend again
with earth and rain
and other broken things
.
like water at different degrees
we are held in a temporary state
awakened for a moment
and given a name and birthdate
.
if we are lucky,
our days cannot measured
only by our presence
or the illusion of our reflections
.
instead we learn to love and live
above the center of the dance
where the music is played
in plasma waves and memories
of romance and laughter; until
yesterday is more engaged
for moments …
.
before the bad news breaks
to remind us of our origins,
.
that the lotus is retreating
that the universe ends up freezing
that there is no way to kiss your gentle face again.
.
* “passing through here” or “happening here”
.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2011. All rights reserved.
What the doctor says to me
in his soliloquy …
and in terms that are expressed
really best by his eyes
and the puffing of his chest
by the stance he finally
takes, breaking our distance
and the way he holds
his clipboard as a shield
against death; that’s
the way he says without a
breath, “this is serious”.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2010. All rights reserved.
There are shows nowadays
that let us ride along
safely from our homes
with the kind of people
who cast an imprint on the flat world
that you and I travel on.
.
My uncle, the sailor, for example,
who got a tattoo in the Navy
before they became crackerjack stickers
or cheap substitutes for personality
was one of those who marked the earth
with his work and left behind a hurt
now that he’s gone past horizons
we cannot yet get to;
.
and we are left at the pier, standing by an edge
measuring the air with everyone around
until we are met with what we can recall –
.
which are all the pieces of the world
he scraped off with his fingertips
and nails to bring home
and mix with the salt of our meals.
.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2010. All rights reserved.
for Haiti after 2010 earthquake
.
Damage to the Presidential Palace is most obvious,
for it is hard to tell which of the other buildings
were already on their knees when the shaking struck.
.
In the pictures I have seen,
wide eyes look out
from their black and brown backgrounds
onto a fresh horror that
arrived from deep beneath the earth.
.
The soil is used to blood in Haiti
and the world is used to watching.
.
The news reports say the quake registered
seven on the scale,
but the island has been at the epicenter
since Columbus landed with smallpox and crucifixes –
lost but determined to profit.
.
To rebuild the Presidential Palace,
where the Tonton Macoutes were born
where Poppa schooled Baby Doc
to brutalize in the grandest Western way,
first in ties and suits and then
wearing pleated uniforms with
officers’ hats and a small herd of
medallions hung from their breasts
marking where their hearts had died,
postcards will be used for comparison.
.
In the pictures I have seen
it is clear that the heavens too
turned their backs long ago
just as we do daily here on earth.
.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2010. All rights reserved.
words with no names 