Tenth Anniversary Posting, 2007-2017

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:

 

 

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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

Why I Hate Cleaning

I don’t like cleaning –

and not just for the obvious reasons

like taking away from

all the nothing else I might be doing

.

it’s because cleaning reminds me

of how awfully endless the simplest

nastiest tiniest specks of the universe

are falling forever and finally landing

all over everything I own

.

even me, I am falling apart, all over

my apartment, flaking away little bits

of my skin, leaving my oils and my

stink like my cousins who live in the jungles

traces of hair and my preference for beer

.

and cleaning can take on a strength

all its own and possess me for stretches

where I’m looking for hours behind doors

meant to cover all the clutter that’s gathered

and quietly planning to take over my home

.

worst of all, cleaning can lead me,

and does now more than before,

to collections that have had real time

to marinate in the taste of forgotten

.

pictures and letters and buttons and

faded ribbons pinned to nothing

boxes that might have meant something

were I Pepys or Strong

.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2010. All rights reserved.

Ahhh; diction …

Every time I get one right,

a line that reads like music

or the perfect word surrounded

by almost perfect neighbors;

something happens to me,

and I promise myself

that there will be no more

restless nights chasing that high.

.

You’ll never see me

again crawling on my hands

and needs, picking through

the carpet or looking for a pen,

scratching on a blank page

or imagining a connection

between anything I scribble

and what I have been living.

.

And yet I know there is no cure.

I am a sick and unwell man,

and even obscurity cannot fix me

the way a few lines thrown together

can ease the pain for junkies.

.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2010. All rights reserved.

Intoxicate the muses

Tonight, when the angels

come for me, I will fool them

into staying longer than expected.

I will give them wine

and tell them that it’s water

steal their wings when

their halos are misdirected.

It’s the only way

to get a good thing

from any angels sent to save you.

Because they know

nothing but the light

they think they live in,

angels don’t understand

what it means to

need forgiveness.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2010. All rights reserved.

Losing Traces

A poem in response to (or stolen from, depending on your perspective) a friend’s poem.

 

No posts

No signs

No symbols

No music

No meaning

No sonnets

No turning

No land

No secrets

No business

No present

No past

No knowing

No dreaming

No sequels

No man

No order

No echo

No loom

And no time

No standing

No making

No art

No mankind

So Soon

No moon

No ocean

No searching

No thoughts

And then,

Never mind.

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved. With due credit to fellow writer and friend, Carl Tillona’s “Search for Traces”

Robot inventory in the middle of serious writing

 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.

 

How poetry fuels the world

I found a note

reminding myself

to pick up jalapeños,

cilantro and lemons

to make picante sauce

for one of your

family’s parties.

 

It was written

on the back

of a torn out page

from a book of poetry

that you gave me for

Valentine’s Day our

first year of dating.

 

I already had the book.

I kept the page

           You wrote.

I recycled the page

and the picante was delicious.

 

This proves that poetry

          is a renewable energy.

 

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.

covenant

on the page

     where i am god

 

i breath life

into the bodies

of the words

as they appear

 

i give them form

against the

emptiness

around them

 

and promise them space

without the invasion

of capitalization

or the oppression of punctuation

 

i ask them to gather

in ways that pay honor

to that which came before

 

and warn them against

the sins of plagiarism

and the vices of being cliché

 

and i threaten them

that they can be

ripped into letters

left to mean nothing.

 

Copyright © henry toromoreno, 2009. All rights reserved.