for Gabriel, who is fourteen
.
Wrestling with you, nowadays,
both in spirit and in form,
reminds me how much you’ve grown.
When I brace myself,
my arms around you,
trying to hold you,
I can feel you breaking free.
I don’t know how much is me,
getting older and what is you,
growing stronger;
but it makes me think of Jacob
and the angel, in the end,
wishing the night could
be just an hour longer.
hermano, amigo
I don’t gots nothing more
but words for you …
an open invitation
like the blanket I hung
as a door when we lived
side by side, all the places
where we were young together
.
even these things are leaving
us now,
that we don’t talk,
that you can’t call
to say “I love you too”
now that I’m just another
Facebook friend or bit I.M.
.
Te acuerdas,
remember how we met?
¿como todo paso?
.
how by accident your mother
bought the house across the street
from ours? How twelve years
earlier we had both surprised
our fathers and bent their tomorrows.
.
¿Que cosas, no?
.
that so much had to go,
had to break a certain way
to find us playing tag in
the summertime, dodging
between cars or playing kick the can
and waiting for the street lights
to turn on.
.
Te acuerdas como nos conocimos?
.
You doing your imitation of John
Travolta from Saturday Night Fever
and singing the Bee Gees’
“Staying Alive”
to mock whoever the hell was “it”
… except me …
we were already running as a team
.
Ploying silently to keep the
rest at bay, pushing to be better
than each other because no one
wanted to be Robin, because
we both felt absolutely golden,
whenever we were together,
you were Larry and I was Magic
even though our skin said
we had it backwards
… we knew better
.
Ya tu sabes!
.
So here’s a list that only
you will understand with your
decoder ring and secret index
of punchlines and memories
.
Pink Champale and Greased Lightning,
Lower Grant and their mutant bigs,
Hershey Park spinning on its side,
Reggie, the bleachers and spaghetti,
Willie on the train and the fucking fractions,
Missions to van Sicilen, Crescent or Norwood
The middle of winter and a rat’s nest,
Pitufas and soft shelled crabs,
The Dominican outback needing dancers,
Fernando in the ambulance,
Shoeless football, stir fry and home grown,
Seafood Mamajuanas, Billy Joel and
about a million other words I could
string together to hang around our necks
like totems signifying we know
exactly what they meant.
.
But we don’t.
.
We have our own stories, no?
Even if we shared that
glory time so long ago, all things
can gather enough dust
to be covered in the end.
.
Te acuerdo, te amo, te extraño.
.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2011. 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.
“Why didn’t you use my computer
while I was gone,” asks my oldest son,
“seems like common sense,” he implores,
and perhaps it is.
.
He is older than his ten years and it’s getting harder
to explain how things work in the universe.
I sit him down and remind him of the noise
known as the deep field, the background
radiation left over from the Big Bang.
.
He knows this story,
so I skip ahead and tell him again
how it takes a while for a star to burst
for planets to form around the star
how long it takes for satellites or moons
to form around planets
and how all this happens because
stars are so dense they pull reality
towards them, around them
until they have a million things circling …
.
“I couldn’t keep track today,”
I tell my boy, “of this little asteroid you’re making”.
.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2010. All rights reserved.
It begins shortly after I serve my two boys
a plate of white cookies and some chocolate milk,
while I’m dipping my burnt whole wheat crackers
(the English call Melba toast and sell to us suckers)
into chick peas I could have squashed myself,
(but purchased as hummus instead)
when the questions appear about opposites,
but quickly become infected with laughter
(in between chewing and kicking each other)
they spill silly pairs of the commonest things
and finally break all the rules of the logic
that makes any sense of the meaning of opposites
(Think of a bar room late in a shift)
when one of them questions that since it’s
okay to say you’re comparing apples
and oranges like they are unlike, then
surely there must be an opposite for ears?
Mouth I say, and tell them to finish their snack.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved
In comes Alexander,
5, uninvited to my
office where I write
and where he’s
supposed to knock
instead of storming in
like his namesake would.
“Want to hear about
my robots”, he asks
spilling a half dozen
mini sculptures made
of multi-colored legos.
Not right now, I said
and firmer than it sounds
on paper.
But he goes on
explaining that the
first one with wheels
is a rover meant
to explore the surface
and it sends back
information to
the second one with
panels that is an
orbiter which always
stays in space and
it, in turn, beams
down instructions
to the third robot,
a long spindly thing
that is a tower for sending
out directions to the
two battlebots,
clunky pieces that
look like squares with
blasters mounted.
I didn’t want to know
but now I’ve been taken in.
He animates the ones
he’s talked about
pretending that there
is some mission underway.
I can’t help but ask
what the last undefined
robot does or is.
Alex picks it up, the
most elaborate of the
bunch, it is made of
flat pieces with gold
extensions and tiny
white caps, resembling
an alien artifact and
asks me if I really like it
before explaining
that it’s art and it
does nothing at all.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.
I helped my sons
a few weeks ago
make a card with
flowers cut from
colorful construction
paper and peppered
with pictures of
them being cute
as babies can be.
Today is supposed
to be my day
and I expect to
be doing many
more things to
show them how to
be good boys and
maybe great men.
There is no sunshine
again but the rain
has taken a break
when we go out
my boys and me
and start blowing
bubbles that last a
mighty long time.
We laugh when
they burst and marvel
at how big some get.
The little one likes
the dancing colors
on the skins,
the older one loves
splitting them in half.
A few bubbles dare
to land on the evergreens
that border our
house and stay long
enough for us to take
pictures that will
make great Christmas
cards this year.
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.
para mi abuelita Olga, que en paz descanze
She’s standing in the room alone
surrounded by possessions that own
her name,
and she’s wondering aloud
what the rain felt like
a hundred years ago
and a thousand loves away.
When it takes her by surprise;
a memory of being young
and drowning in the laughter
of a game.
And it’s impeccable, this moment
how her imperfections carry her away.
She’s lost her troubles,
become unburdened,
forgets the days her tears
used to salt her grace.
Looking straight ahead
she laments
“I don’t know what’s
worth remembering anymore.
I don’t know why I stored
any of these thoughts.
What are they good for?
What could I have done –
to make things different?
to be the hero?
to take possession of my dreams?
What should I have known
to have an answer
for loneliness and sorrow
to cast away tomorrow knowing
yesterday should be enough –
it should fill me up and let me be complete.”
Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.
words with no names 