The File

old blog for my old poems Twitter/Instagram @daoriginal96

[africant]

[catchymemes]

[elmerpoetry]

Spiritual stew

We are seeping in it

I'm telling you man

A room full of spiritual stew

[elmergrowspoetry]

I don wanna quantahfy my jazz

Rather allow it to sag androp as most things in du time allow themselves to

It could rize and iMpload or shiver n quake like yeast vibrating to life when watered,fed

Maybe float down the merrimack with the water channels all put on full volume

Loud as a mama yellin after a child ta git in line for the chanclas fly

My jazz should dye its hair in rebellion

Then call it art

My jazz aint my own but Mrs. Fitgerald let me borrow some/like sugar sweet, but unprocessed for this jazz be raw raw raw

JAZZ goddamnit.

Gone away here to stay wanting play finding range ever sway never delay sweet sweet sweet jazz the kind I let sit till it tires of waiting in the reception office of my concioussness and BELLOoooWS out the sax and the troMbone Coltrane knows bout this jazz, man

Zzzzzzzzzzzzat!

Zebu zebu zebu de du da be boo

Ill let the jazz croon like a pack of rats-

Smooth it over and see it sag

Androp

As most things in du time allow themselves to

Unquantahfiyable….

[elmergrowspoetry]

I find love in the lost dreams of my back ache

The thumping like an ancestral call to my wonder days

Them ones filled with street hype and coronations

Kings Queens and Jesters tied together by the chains of mortality

Knowing that only the carnal plain cares for aesthetics- devaluing the spirit for fear of unknown self realizations

The ones found in the kind of honesty that makes you cry happy, sad or otherwise

I want to be the kind of honest that lets its little light shine shine shine through my chest till im dry heaving out the bullshit worries of an anxious art student, dry heaving out the worries of a anxious brown boy cannon fodder for my stereotypes, dry heaving because my stereotype is brown art student that should be anxious about anything for everything is panic bait- because growing up the idea a pulled trigger was my trigger warning - too late -POP - hope that was a firework

No more pleading with myself to be anything other than the organic organism of originality originally ordained to put the sauce on em - radically - its finally my family the concept of totality- I’m Just like Em -as proud as he- Im tearing down your balcony.

All that to say being prepared to be yourself is not only a culmination of traumas accepted but dogmas unrealized

[elmergrowspoetry]

Thank you for the relentless ones

The ones who know enough is never enough

Keep going till the track stop

And then some

The rump shakers

Feet stompers

The bucky buck ones

The flexy flexers

Rockity rockers

Groovers

Movers

Wanters

Lovers

Feelers

Head bobbers

Shoulder rollers

Smile busters

The ones that go OOOOOOOOOH SHIT

And walk away before they face gets melted off

The Suave ones

The raw ones

The ones with pent up energy ready to expload like a dream long deferred as if they know what happens to those - found once more on the dance floor if you’re gritty enough

Satyrs seeking the lord Pan in nature

And how nature is mama and mama will provide and mama said “don’t stop till you get enough baby you is all natural!”

The ones that get too sweaty but fuck it up fuck it up anyway

The ones with ass that know how to use it

Twerkers

Jerkers

Jookers

Swirlers

Trwirlers

Ones filled with tanacity and shit talk

The ones who come back because they suck and they understand that its a marathon not a sprint

The foam roller sugar mamas

The deep huggers

Joke crackers -

The ones that know what is what but they don’t know what is what They just strut

The nonsensical ones

Thank you for the dancers

[elmergrowspoetry]

I am unstoppable

5-6 words describe yourself

How would you describe God

1)The merrimack backed up its current

The pressure built till my vains popped the bullshit bubble surrounding my destination

Allowed the flow to carry me to neverland

2)Undersandibly misunderstood flailing the unfathomable containing everything thats always been there

3)Found in the fabric washed in the river

[elmergrowspoetry]

Lock me in a room with music it’ll be waiting outside when I escape

Music acts as a time machine

Music originates from a place and time in space then reverberates in another in tact. Omnipresent as God . It is memory, forgotten- anticipated- and recounted all at once. Music is as the Phoenix. Reborn at death, metamorphic as it informs its new flux.

Music knows why the caged bird sings as music is the sung song and the sad song that made the bird sing so sullenly.

Music keeps us up at night and rocks us to rest before waking us in the morning, a bucket of fresh water cruising through our fibers.

Stretch out the music- cut it up in octaves reform it with melodies- challenge it with keys -pluck out baselines- charge it with drama and drums. Give it a name as you experiment. Music man. Natures great experiment.

Lock n’ Key

[elmergrowspoetry]

Getting out of bed. An Autobiography of Inheritance.

I wake

With hope I say

“GOOD MORNING!”

And honor my brothers faith in day

Then John Coltrane descends upon my still too warm pillow.

Twiddles his Saxophone

I hear Maya Angelou crooning in the deep

“Who the hell are you dancer? Stand firm as the rock that the mastodon imprinted with legacy apon his tenure on our earth. Lay next to the river and make war no more. Be as the tree which whispers truths that peek through the murky waters of the middle passage. Who the hell are you. Do tell after you’ve risen from the fall”

Coltrane bee bops like Quincy Jones

And Michael Jackson laughs somewhere in heaven from atop a tree he’s been climbing.

Louis Armstrong chuckles too as Coltrane utters the blues as I wake and see my sisters in chains still to this day. Blinking, I inhale Coltrane’s latest composition in the key of Langston Hughes’ Harlem . I find my pulse in cadence with the congas and the trumpet and the gun shots.

Still wading in the waters of a country still uttering rhetoric of white souls in hoods still drowning. Drowning. Drowning.

Out with the last bit come Coltrane and his horn

Out pops Dr.King

His ear is still bloody

Warm hot blood caressing stocky neck

My feet touch the rug as I sit up. Down my shoulder the blood of Malcolm X runs rampid just as warm as Martins blood and as I watch I no longer can discern my own blood and it is warm. And it is warm. And it is warm.

John Coltrane treats me to an Encore as I stand up off of my bed. The screams of the enslaved afro-caribbeans -raped mothers- slaughtered fathers- bastard siblings mangled black bodies…they escape all at once and I weep knowing my black body is a reminder of their dehumanization.

Through the salty stream I turn and find James Baldwin starring on at me from my vanity mirror. The blood Martin, Malcolm and I share has dried up on my rug. Maya is Smiling unapologetically. Louis joins her as Michael climbs down a tree somewhere in heaven. Quincy looks ready for more champagne as he jots down the last of Johns fading trills. Kendrick Lamar is unmoving as a gargoyle on my bean bag. Chance puts his hat on my unruly hair. John ends his soliloquy.

James muses…

“Well, what in the hell are you going to do”

I am still

I wake

With hope I say

“GOOD MORNING!”

and honor my brothers faith in day

Dress… as the phantoms of my integrity watch on.

Walk off to the day

Pledge to take it

And do

[elmergrowspoetry]

I’m learning to let go of the love I once clung onto regardless of reason

it does’t seem to help anymore

and she doesn’t want me back

I wonder if she ever really did

A part of me still in love with her touch hopes 

the rest of me knows that romance and love don’t equate when weighed by the heat of candlelight and chance the rapper albums saturated with our whispers as we “got to know each other” -whatever that means

It’s like I’m learning to let go of something I’m no longer certain I ever had

and it breaks my heart

but she seems so happy. I’m almost glad she doesn’t need me anymore. Until I see her-but she doesn’t see me. Worse, she does…and it makes no difference.

[elmergrowspoetry]

All I know is sometimes it feels like I dont know anything

Its frustrating to wake again

And lose out on a chance to gain

Some acceptance

Or dignity

I spy I spy some shit and see

I report it

Articulate

Then scare white people with my wit

I can not quit

Ill never sit

I’ve got to switch the code that makes me more of a rich kid

You know the kind

The ones that jive with being always off on trips

Cause they’ve got IT

The cash the zeal

They buy a car then paint it teal

Just reveal that fact of life

That daddy made the sales that month

So laugh and swing and pray and sing

That life dont catch you slide slippin

Cause then you’re broke where it hurts most

Your flair just turn to empty air

[elmergrowspoetry]

i can see Lowell 

from a windowsill in Manhattan 

A shining light caught between the prison bars of a fire escape 

escapism the only option 

for a kid like me 

with hip-hop dripping off his toes 

i can see Lowell

though I no longer smell that crisp unbothered air 

the little church on Varnum no longer spies on my 

evening pacings

to the city limit

and back

the sound of back-road engines humming

 no longer an opportunity to flag down a Lowell friend 

On their way to do Lowell things-

who I haven’t seen since 

Lowell High School

there’s still Lowell left in these hands

there’s gotta be 

there’s gotta be…

sure as there’s a cozy coffee shop on Market Street

sure as there’s kids with school ID badges dripping round their necks 

..or else

pizza joints that put orange soda in the sauce 

in a little city by the river

i could see New York 

Boston- over the way 

the pine trees unwavering in the midst of father winter 

i tell myself I followed the Jazz 

like Jack- like Ginsberg

will I finesse a Beat of my own

or will Coltrane croon me down 

the Merrimack with that finicky horn

there’s still Lowell left in these hands 

on this tongue 

waltzing across this heart

hoping to never die 

i can see it all 

from my windowsill 

tender youth in motion 

my little City

by the river 

[elmergrowspoetry]

Open  Letter to James Baldwin

This is an open letter to James Baldwin So my children know I wrote it and my brothers know I spoke it

-

James

Harlem still tempers the indignation of buckshots

Hollering for mangled niggers

And Boston hears the cries 

While London rallies in the street

Yet I am not free

James

Did survival always mean indulgence where intolerance is concerned

is that why they shot  the ones who spat it back in their faces

I ask myself if to be civilized is enough anymore

Their diplomas can’t save me

They cannot understand me

Since they refuse to understand themselves

They cannot forgive 

Since they have yet to acknowledge wrongdoing 

But in its place claim superiority

Over what I cannot fathom

Since I am not a nigger

And they have yet to examine what need there was for a nigger to exist in the first place

In a society where the commerce of superiority is pimped 

I can no longer save face 

Not even through dawning a western mask of education

That once great chrysalis of hope

So I turn to the east for inner peace

in my gaze catch glimpses of what it must be to finally breathe

And revitalize my dignity  

James

We hit them streets again

And as you warned

They were waiting for us

 we did it anyway

at some point we had to choose to allow the world to deal with us

void of apology

so we took the children

And the dogs

so they shot them as equals

We took the scripture so they burned it and interpreted the flaming bush 

White Jesus casting tea leaves in a Voodoo shack 

The Sacrilege of convenience whizzing past our heads

Smoke too putrid to breathe 

Tears streaming down black faces

Tributaries to rivers our ancestors built Egypt upon 

Tributaries to rivers that floated cotton down for ginning 

Langston spoke of the rivers

the Negro still knows of them

James

The land grows ever weary

Though time has manifested- 

Progress-

Lies destitute  -

Though feigning ignorance

The inalienability  of the truth stands resolute

That the machinery of this country

Operates day in and day out

hour by hour

Until this hour

To keep a nigger in his place

Yet they still do not know what I want

What they do know is that they still  would not like to be black here

that is all the testimony I have ever needed

They still will not kneel with me

Yet my throat remains crushed

James was it hard to breathe 

When they shot all your friends

James they are still shooting

James how did you learn to breathe with bullet holes in your back

Did you write poems in the blood of our brothers

Was the blacktop your isle 

Was the lectern your sword 

James

They still refuse to know my name

Do I have to write it in blood?                                       

-

Elmer Martinez 6.6.20

[elmerpoetry]

the poem came out of nowhere

hit me in the chest like a pandemic 

spreading up my bronchi mixing with the smoke of the last blunt 

assaulting my trachea while the melodies of the high set in 

tones of mellow accented by the spaces in time left deficient of anything but a familiar cough

reminding me that the poems don’t give a fuck who’s expecting what where when or how 

like this bitch down the block Rona don’t give a fuck about who’s expecting what out of life

like she musta thought she was God walking round LAUGHING at our plans 

like have you ever told God your plans 

and watched him shit all over them-

like maybe I’m allowed to question everything sometimes just to get through the day 

and still-

I pray that the sun comes up

 the day after the music dies

but am afraid my feet may no longer be

dancing to the spirit of the war cries 

General Lamar screaming

it's gone be alright!”

pumping through my veins-

still I strain to lessen the pain of minds restrained then dumped in cages

days of memes and video-games

now look who’s in the simulation 

cognizant of the omnipresence of the yuck 

the cooties 

the achoo shit

and “please wash your hands” 

like how I have never thought about my elbows this hard before in my life 

like now we all fired so how cool is your new job in the industry post grad   

its like  Brady made a drunk bet he would leave when the world ended and it did 

And we still talking bout toilet paper!?

We talkin bout toilet paper

not a game

toilet paper 

white moms telling younger versions of me I have an exotic accent is preferable 

I see now that plans should always be prepared for an audible  

its audible the silence that’s left in the speakers

if we don’t speak now forever hold your minds pieces 

peace of mind so divine

it leaves onlookers speechless

This chemical brain fodder is in some cases 

Needless

I speak on the subjects they cram into need based 

Communities 

that crumble when white people seize them 

Desisting 

Resisting

Persisting

Insisting

Now-

How you look that we all fucked up

Can't toss a virus in the back of a garbage truck

Pour some dirt over it 

Call that a government cover up

Regardless 

The silence is left in the Rona zone 

and home girl doesn’t know how to stay in her lane

caught me incapable of feeling more mundane 

till the New Yorricans could emerge again

dominoes on the sidewalk 

breakin on the pavement 

Salsa en el club 

that abuela was always tellin me about

and the sun convincing me to be as brilliant as I could 

in whatever I could 

until I could no longer stand it

and that's a summer night in New York -

It’s like a pandemic 

Like it comes out of nowhere

like a poem

spreads up your chest 

and strangles the truth out of your tongue 

as the mellow sets in

[elmerpoetry]

I love the people on the benches

They pray

And smile with no solicitation

They remember in the distance

Taking a load off

They pepper the street with friends, each assuming their station round the bench

They call mom and let her know they ate today

Then they're off

Walking in prayer

Smiling

Unsolicited

Toward those memories in the distance

[elmerpoetry]

I can no longer run away from my self love

It gathers in my eyes

Looks at everything I have ever been and approves because finding worth in the scruffy times is tough but being enough was never fabled to be easy

Spent enough time searching for a reason to love myself to the point where I have overlooked liking myself at every turn and it burns that not everyone will always love the way you like them but you have to love them anyway if only as a key to your own metamorphosis

Because forgiveness is salvation

And transforming isn't always lovely but it is hopeful

Not simple but thorough

It is unexpected outcomes and being humble enough to learn from when shit just doesn't go your way

Saying I love myself in spite of not always liking myself is my super power

And I ain't got no kryptonite

[elmerpoetry]

I've been a victim of someone else's ideology my entire life. It has never stopped me from living a happy- powerful- successful life full of love. That won't change. New day- new bullshit- I've been equipped with the tools for survival and I am no stranger to using them effectively. I've built my house on the rock of the lord. Growing up I was taught to remember not to have fear for is God is on my side who can stand against me? The strength of the enemy comes from doubt in the power of the lord. I've never been betrayed by my God and I fear not though it may appear I walk in the shadow of the valley. I rejoice in this time of sorrow for my faith is stronger than the lies of the world. It always has been. I am my faith. I've been explaining that with every choice I've made in my life. Each of them have been my exclamation to the Lord that I shall serve to leave the world better than how I found it. One act of good at a time. I didn't ever have to walk the streets screaming my faith- I always put it into my actions. This won't change. I won't allow the world to change me. If this is my mountain to move- then let it tremble before the faith of my mustard seed. It shall be moved. So today and hereafter I rejoice for my faith is unshakable and mighty. It terrifies the enemy in all the places he lies in wait. I have already won. There was never a question.