This is The Poet Speaks, a show all about oral tradition.

Now, when I was a little girl, couldn't speak until I was four years old, and I couldn't read and write until I was seven years old.

And what makes poetry so amazing, so incredible, is its absolute fascination and ability to change our lives.

The oral tradition, the reason why we speak, the reason why people need to get their words out.

And what's fantastic about the show, The Poet Speaks, we speak to poets from all around the world.

The ins and outs, right?

Oral tradition, location, environment, culture.

Why is poetry so important?

Poetry, it's everywhere.

In our culture, our food, our reading, our writing, The words of poems can literally create the magic of life.

So are you ready?

Amazing Poetry awaits.

♪ Yeah, want me to be ♪ ♪ what they prepared me to be ♪ ♪ Like me better when I was scared to be me ♪ ♪ Ordinarily weak to freedom, ♪ ♪ slow with military to keep ♪ ♪ Rewriting blue don't mean ♪ ♪ that you were necessarily free ♪ ♪ Could you stop today and take vacay ♪ ♪ without they critique ♪ ♪ They got you feening for two days ♪ ♪ at the end of the week ♪ ♪ We built a system ♪ ♪ where you can't truly speak ♪ ♪ Say you don't want to work your life away ♪ ♪ They calling you weak, ♪ ♪ huh?

♪ ♪ But there ain't no life ♪ ♪ when you can't do what you feel ♪ ♪ Feelings the only ♪ ♪ things that make life real ♪ ♪ Get on my knees, I kneel ♪ ♪ I ask God why he put me here ♪ ♪ In a world that to me don't appeal ♪ ♪ Man, can I be real ♪ ♪ Without this music I don't like it here ♪ ♪ But if you say that s*** out loud ♪ ♪ Looks might get weird, ♪ ♪ they might get scared ♪ ♪ So I keep it tightly sealed ♪ ♪Walking around behind ♪ ♪ my smile feeling mighty dead ♪ This is "The Poet Speaks."

♪ Call me ♪ ♪ Call your ♪ ♪ My baby ♪ Call me ♪ Call me ♪ ♪ Call your ♪ Soy island boy son of a crack epidemic.

hijo de tecatos y borrachos, hijo de abusadores, de rata de dos patas según tu punto de vista soy un verso, una mezcla of all las razas soy yuca, batata, yautia, banana, calabaza.

Soy summer lunches before Cretano Park pool.

Powdered milk, welfare cheese, monopoly food stamps, and nene lindo, the Titi Heicel eclectic mess of all.

Soy Salsa, Merengue, Bachata, Ballenato, Mariachi, la Salsa always popping.

Musical theater geek, if I was a rich man.

Hip hop and cardboard boxes on the block.

Reguetón, bandolero soy yo Heavy metal punk rock in La Junior High pop.

Soy un cerro una maravilla, a spirit still activist, are still fighting, still July 25th, 1978. soy Cristo bravo whit that close shave Carnales sin cojones vamos pa encima, a Harvard graduate, un grito machetero, unos calibres de águilas blancas banderas sobre la frentes de migrantes buys in the Bronx.

Barefoot mocoso with cucarachas for roommates flying pigeons en el rufo.

Soy sexual, domestic, mental, physical, abuse, abandoned, and education neglected, pero su bisabuela once told me nene you special, que se vayan pal carajo, shine baby boy, shine, caña brava, la oveja negra de todo rebaño soy perdón, misericordioso, lento para la cólera, no regrets.

Died August 3rd, resurrected the same day.

Ser de otro mundo waiting to return home.

soy aleluya, eucharist, atalaya, Seeker of unanswered questions, incrédulo.

The willow tree in Loyzada and eighth wondering where the f*** Mikey went, because that dope feen still owes me f****** $5.

Sinfuego's lost poetry.

Lord East Ash's a cause, una causa, un títere, un sorbo, un suspiro, soy.

(soft music) So tell me a bit about Bronx River Park, kind of what, what is a place like this?

What's it mean to you?

Oh wow.

Well, I grew up a couple of blocks up that way.

Before these buildings were here, like I don't know what the hell this is.

But this is a place where community would get together.

It looks a little better now, like when I was growing up, we didn't have these, these benches or these things to barbecue, the family would just bring their own stuff.

And this is where families would come and kind of get together and share and listen to music and birthday parties.

And the interesting thing is that the Bronx Zoo is to our left.

So what happened was my dad and my uncles would come and set up at seven in the morning.

And like at nine, 10 o'clock, you know, my aunt and my mom would take us to the zoo and then we would come here, and then like, there's a body of water that runs right in front of us, there's a Bronx River, and as kids, we would, I don't know, it's crazy, but we would get on that dam and swim up there and also jump into the water.

So needless to say that there is a lot of memory here, there's a lot of spirits, there's a lot of energy for me in this space.

Like it's giving me the chills because I'm kind of seeing like my dad and my grandparents and like all my cousins running around and, but also like making friends and, you know, with the community, like we would have our neighbors come join us.

So it's been a place that I, and then to top it off, full circle, when I had my daughter, this is where I would bring her, you know?

And bring her to the same playground, although it looks a lot better than it was when I was kid, and we would come over here and have lunch and talk about the water and just talk about growing up in the Bronx.

and then again, because my family was still here, we're coming to barbecues here as well with, you know, my kids and my family.

So it's an extremely special place to say that.

Yeah.

It's always interesting in terms of how our environment really affects our writing.

How would you say a place like this from a young, like you said, as a young boy, to now you bring even your own child here?

I mean, how has that affected your poetry?

and you as a poet overall, how does this place affect that?

That is an extremely interesting question because when I started writing poetry, I started writing it because it was something that just kind of flowed out of me, right?

Music was always my first love and I found poetry through music.

And then years later, when I'm sitting with my manuscript and I look at what I wrote, I actually wrote about my family.

Wow.

When I even knowing that I was writing this book.

And when I'm looking at all these poems in unison, it's like grandma, uncles, Bronx River Park, East Tremont the building where I grew up in, and in some magical way, my life experiences with my family is what literally nurtured my writing, because it was a way for me to express myself, especially when you stop writing the love poems, right?

Because that's how we start writing love poems as kids, and you start writing what's real, right?

So it really, again, I like using the word magic because that's what poetry is for me, like to be able to tell the stories about my family, but it's because I lived them, you know?

And I was able to, when I took off, I took off.

Like it was just flowing, you know?

And in a way, poetry has always been a part of my family because I come from a family of artists.

Like my aunt wrote jingles en Puerto Rico, and my uncle's a visual artist, my father was a visual artist, so it kind of like was already in my DNA.

It was just waiting for a way for me to be able to not express it.

Yeah.

You know?

So, yeah.

Absolutely.

So then we talked about when you're a young, you're a young person, we write all about love and, you know, all the things that make us happy as children.

You know, finally we grow up, right?, we start talking about the reality, the hardships as writers.

Tell me what is kind of, so you changed as a writer.

I mean, what has also changed here in the Bronx?

Gentrification is a virus that's been slowly creeping through New York City as a whole but we're beginning to see it more now in the Bronx, specifically more west of here, closer to the city, where these buildings, where these old industrial buildings were being knocked down.

These high rises are going up by the water.

This is, there's a section over there called now the Piano District, and it's creeping its way slowly up to the South Bronx.

And even though it's creeping slowly, you can still see it, the rent here is ridiculous, It's very difficult for a family to be able to afford housing here.

And little by little, people are being pushed out.

And it's just like displacement is happening rapidly, and people are just trying to survive just to, just to pay rent, forget about just food and all the things that come with living.

So it's happening very rapidly now, more than ever.

And I see it even in my own neighborhood.

And it really comes down to people moving into the Bronx because it's more affordable for them, but not affordable for the people who have lived there 20, 30, 40 years, so that's the major change right now that I've seen in the Bronx since I moved back.

So I always say you go to a new city, I would say, you know, if these streets could talk, if this Bronx River could talk and tell us poems, tell us stories, what do you think it would say?

So if this river could speak, it would tell you stories about families.

The families that would come to this park and the kids that would jump into a river, but for me specifically, the connection I always had specifically to this river is that I was born in Puerto Rico, I was raised in Puerto Rico, and having a river close that I could go to and be part of.

When I found this place, I was blown away because I found out the kids would go swimming in the river right there, and I would be like, what?

and we would jump off the boulders into the water.

So there's a very strong ancestral connection for me here that literally would bring me back to Guayania, to the river by my house, to the island.

And although this is not the island, obviously, but having salsa music playing in the background and, you know, wherever you went, it was different Spanish music and your language and your culture really made it feel like, there were moments where I was like, I'm still on the island, you know, I'm still there, but there is a very strong ancestral feel to family, to community, and there's a real strong pull, actually.

The river always calls me, It's a very big theme in most of my poetry.

Origin Story.

O Títeres Run the Sky.

A Títere descends from heaven.

Still high.

Wings tucked into sheepskin, crisp midnight chucks for his Yankee de Mediolao, walks on un tumbao, win cold y agarrao, porque ya tu sabes bacalao.

He stands on the corner of East Tremont and 3rd Avenue, bien guillao, and the Dominican barbershop is still there, where Abuelo used to take him cuando, culicagao, by the restaurant, where they ate greasy cheeseburgers, y batidos de Mamey, the one with the karate classes upstairs, with kids who thought that crane kicks and chopsticks and catching flies with chopsticks resolved everything and these Johnny's tested him and failed because Títeres waxed on and waxed off.

Next to the flower shop, Papi bought Mami's favorite flowers, irises.

next to La Bodega, un bar Orlando, who changed his name to Hakim, and his English still not very good looking.

The important thing to remember is this.

He still sells Malta, India, Coco Rico, y cola Champagne, and those yellow, orange cookies with the sprinkles on top.

Across the street, Tremont Park, pide una pejeta, reminds him of first kisses and the fight with the twins over Abigail, she preferred blue eyes over brown sugar.

Teased because he was too short, his face resembled un aguacate, and he wore hand-me-downs, and the kids used to call his Mami, "Iris Chacón, ahí viene Iris Chacón."

The park he cut school with, Tío Andy, here.

Tío Alan, dolie swept on benches, at these benches, abuela brought Tío Alan food because Don Marcos healing hands and prayers cannot save his son.

En este Parque, Mami took him to because nine to fives occasionally was hand-bought.

este parque servía de sábana, porque summer days on the block were just too hot, and the hustle and bustle of la esquina, and the pop, pop, pop, and the leaking bodies are not the memories Mami wanted him to write about on the first day back to school when he was asked, Mami, when he was asked, Mario, what did you do this summer?

In this place, Tía Heisel taught him how to fly Chiringas, prepared him to live in bloque he loved, it's grit and grime, it's beautiful, broken, everything, because she believed he was everything his maestros told him he wasn't good enough for, and he flew.

Like for real, yo, like, he flew and he had wings, y San Pedro was jealous, and the angels gave him props, and he shined, como the morning star, y las estrellas clapped, and the trumpets played, and not even Jesus could take that s*** away from him.

So tell me a bit more, what is the poetry scene like in Bronx?

You know, how's it changed from you were younger to where we are today?

So, what I can tell you is that, when I started in poetry, I wasn't living in the Bronx, but the Bronx has always had this really strong connection to art.

There have been a couple of movements of young people like Bronx X, with poets like Noel Quiñones, who's now in Chicago.

So there's always been like, little like poetry houses scattered through the Bronx, and it's been this big movement lately, and that's one of the reasons why I moved back to the Bronx.

There's an organization called La Casa de los Pueblos, where we host our open mics.

There's other venues in the Bronx, drawing a blank, but what I could say is that it's thriving.

Everyone tends to go to like Manhattan and Brooklyn for poetry, and we're just trying to provide that space here in the Bronx these days.

I mean, is poetry still, do you think, New York is the scene, I think, of just so much worldwide global arts movements, right?

We've had the Harlem Renaissance, right?

We've had the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican Poets Café, so much literature has just been funneled through New York City.

In today's time, I mean, do you still think poetry has the same influence in a place like New York City that did even back then?

Absolutely.

I think the spoken word is extremely important, and I love that you mentioned the Black Arts Movement, The Nuyorican Poetry Movement, and we tend to look back and say, that was the golden age of poetry because people were discovering that we could not only write poetry, but now poetry could be brought to the stage, right?

And then the term, spoken word, comes out, and then you have the slam scene, and you have all this poetry just literally exploding and moving across the United States.

But I think that poetry continues to be extremely important in the New York Art Movement.

It is the one place where I think, see, with visual art, you have all these different type of visual arts, and it's the same thing with poetry because one of the things that I hugely advocate for is use your language.

I don't care if it's Spanglish, I don't care if it's Creole, I don't care if it's French.

The important thing is to be able to use this spoken word as a tool, not only to, woo-sahh and kind of let go of things that are bothering you, but also as a political tool.

You know, poets have died because of poetry, you know, Lorca, obviously Neruda, and a bunch of other poets, you know?

And I think that the artist's responsibility is to speak about the times they live in, you know, like Miss Simone said, you know?

So it is, it has been important from the early, from the beat-neck movement to now.

You know, it continues to be a powerful tool.

And I always tell people, people ask me, how did you come to poetry?

I tell them, at first I give them this whole story, but the more I kind of think about it, I agree with my comrade when I say that I was born a poet.

You know, it's just, this is what I was destined to become.

You know, so.

Well, you, then you tell me, why do you need to get your words out?

Because...

There are people who are trying to do a certain work, and sometimes listening, whether it's a speech, a song, a poem, it could be what triggers movement, you know?

For me, I'm always speaking about the island, a proud Puerto Rican, and my job is to advocate for what's happening there.

And I use my tool, I use my poetry to be able to speak about that, to connect those that are here with back home.

And there's been times when I myself have gone to an open mic and I've been off about something and I've listened to a poet read an amazing poem and I'm like, I needed to hear that.

Because sometimes I don't have the words to express that.

You know, sometimes I'm, you know, we're kind of stuck, and when we hear somebody else say something that could trigger, change a point of view, change our life, make us get up and do something.

So yeah, a lot of times people say, "Oh, it's just poetry."

Yeah, poetry has moved nations at times, you know?

It is a little spark of fire that burns everything down sometimes.

It's as small as a mustard seed.

Yeah.

Could change a whole nation.

Absolutely.

You have one last poem that you get to write.

That's to be a love letter to Bronx River Park.

You're giving that poem to an alien that's never been here before, to Bronx, specifically the River Park.

What would that poem be?

I actually already wrote that poem.

It's a recollection of what this place was with all what Los Boricuas called Revolú, which is all the noise, all the clatter, and being here as a kid and the connection to this river, to the river back home, and how I connected both to Bronx.

How the Bronx kind of became a surrogate mother, being away from home because of how big the community was.

I knew I wasn't home, but I felt, I still felt like I was on the island even though I wasn't there, especially because of community, again, not just my family, because we were large, but all the families that were here.

And just letting them know that there was really strong love between the BX and my and my town in Puerto Rico, and how they basically kind of like cradled me and made me feel safe Between the cracks of the blocks and the gristle of black tar, the bodies the city has collected lay low.

If you listen, Los Broken, Abandoned, have gathered far from home, all lost on the toss of servilletas.

You know la vida salvaje, oye, la cosa afuera está bien buena, Jíbaros have become hood servants, figuring out los mathematical equations to Los numeritos, cuando a birthday, an address, and a telephone, become a dollar and a dream, hoping to pegarse this week, porque no hay chavos a day to day lucha for life.

Tryna stay cool en un verano en Nueva York, Orlando, o Filadelfia, they say, you'll fit right in.

It's just like home, they speak Spanish, aquí también, aquí Papi could also dole his way here.

Carmen will be convinced he'll stop hitting her, because he loves her and all he needs is un trabajo.

This week, Miguelito's papi will come back home from buying milk, María's mami will tuck her into bed instead of dancing for extraños, Israel's deal will make love to his wife instead of touching him.

Rosa will not go to school, porque the bullies la tienen en harta, mira, mira, mira, mira, mira, mira.

Her English dances salsa, someone will convince Marta that life is worth living after María.

Someone will convince Vero that life is worth living after teremotos, Manuel will find un trabajo instead of metiéndose pepas.

¿Qué le sucede a un sueño diferido?

Se fríe como huevo en la acera, o se mastica y vuelve agua dulce.

We are the forgotten.

How do we bring back Los hijos del Sol?

Los bulliciosos días de carnaval, el campesino después de un día de trabajo, ese trago de ron coco, el amor al prójimo, las vatas flowing from abuela's balcón.

Living is not the same if it's not emborinque.

How?

How are we supposed to rebuild?

If to survive, we have to leave.

So a little bit about this, I mean, when you have a view like this, I would find it hard not to constantly contemplate, you know, your life as a New Yorker, but tell us, and tell me just a little bit about that kind of multilingual identity.

So you were born, you weren't born in the States, right?

I was not born in the States, no.

I was born in Puerto Rico, Tell me a little bit about coming here.

You told me you came here at 15.

And kind of tell me a little bit about balancing the two identities and two cultures as a young boy.

So coming back and forth from New York to Puerto Rico, as a kid specifically was hard because, you know, like you're trying to plant roots, you know, you have friends, you have school, you have family.

So because of my father's job, we would have to come back and forth from like the age of like five to the age of 15.

We were literally going back and forth between the island and Puerto Rico, and the challenging part was the educational aspect of it, right?

Because I was trying to get a grasp of one, my language, but to now I have to learn this other language, which I kind of already knew a little bit because, we came here when I was much smaller, but now there's this culture shock also, right?

Of the educational system and how things work and over there is more open.

It wasn't weird to be out in the yard, in the school with the sun, and now you come here to the urban jungle, to these concrete buildings and more secluded in these environments.

So it was a struggle, but you get used to it as a kid.

And then I remember at 15, my dad was like, well, you know, I got a promotion, we have to go back to New York and we're gonna stay now.

And I was like, no, I hate you.

I wanna stay here, you know?

Like this is where my family is, I don't wanna go back over there, it's cold, you know?

So that in itself was extremely challenging to say the least.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's one of those things, I think, it's hard for people to understand, I believe, the kind of challenge people have in that cross-cultural duality.

That, you know, children of immigrants, you know, that idea of migration, what that means, you know, especially for children facing that almost two lived realities.

You know, you go home, you have your Puerto Rican identity, right?

Through your parents, you leave the house, you know, now you're in a place like New York.

Yeah.

Which of course is multicultural, but it's still American.

Yeah.

You know.

You don't hear the rooster in the morning.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's such a like, that's such an iconic thing when you live in, when you live on a place like an island or somewhere where that's actually part of your day-to-day life.

You know?

Or, you know, for us, the Coquí, you know, every night being serenaded by thousands of little frogs this lullaby.

You know, it's not the same.

You come over here and you hear the cars and the pretty sirens, and unfortunately sometimes, you know, gunshots in the background.

So it was, to say the least, culture shock.

Yeah.

You know?

For you, I mean, what is it looking like now?

You know, now that you've experienced that duality, now that you've experienced that, that really, that immigrant story, but what does it look like now, especially with your writing?

You know, you speak so, so well to that experience with both writing your poetry and Spanish and English and what you call so Spanglish.

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about that.

It's a really famous poet called, Rainer Maria Rilke And he has this book called "Letter to a Young Poet," and there's a specific part in this book when he, the young poet is like, "Yo, tell me what I need to write about."

Like, what is it I need to write about?

And he tells him, "Don't write about love, because you know nothing about love.

You haven't lived it."

And for me, being able to write about mí cultura, my people, my experience, I could do that now.

And it's very easy for me to do it, sometimes I have to sit in space and just listen to ancestors and maybe listen to a memory or something, but it becomes very easy to be able to write about my experience because, well, I've lived it.

You know, I've been through it.

I've been through displacement, going back and forth from what I wanted to be my forever home to now living in New York.

And now it's kind of like reversed, right?

I always ask myself, "Well, how would it be living on the island?"

And it's scary because I don't know what living on the island looks like now.

This is my normal now, right?

I'm used to music playing, blasting in the background.

I'm used to the police cars zooming by.

I'm used to the day-to-day life that New York City is, and specifically the Bronx brings.

But in a funny way, it's very familiar also because it's very diverse.

We speak Spanish here too, you know, the cultures mingle and yeah.

the cultures mingle and yeah.

You know what's crazy about New York City It's literally just, it's impossible not to be inspired when you're here.

Living here, walking through Times Square, It's so many people walking by, Performers, subway buskers, Poems on the subway.

I mean, so many stories from the amount of people walking in and out and around here.

I feel like it's literally as a writer impossible not to be inspired by the environment that is the city of New York.

I completely agree.

Yeah.

To the Títere who lived on 183rd Street.

Tio Allen speaks bodega slang.

Street corner prophet proclamador, filósofo, for apache leyenda from a time where rumble, rumble, pa' meterle mano, hay que ser un bravo.

La conciencia de block de tell you quién fue, y qué paso y a dónde.

He curates the ghetto, archiving the history of the viejo barrio, gozando, gozando, bajando, bajando.

These mean streets no son nada fácil, brother.

He knows quien mató a don Goyo from the stoop recites Othello, acompañado con el periódico de ayer instrumental.

Passes down old school salsa wisdom to culicagados who think they know how to summon the gods, playing congas, pal carajo son, You don't know s*** till Barreto possesses your hands in trucu, trucu, trucu, y que, trucu, trucu.

Mami's void echoes from barbecue sidewalks.

No te quiero ver con ese títere y ya tú sabes, the hood isn't easy until s*** goes down.

Some call him Santo Diablo's street legend myth teacher.

He'll pass down, he bless you with Bacardi, forgive sins on Saturdays, raises the dead on Sundays, blast R.I.Ps on the side of the number two train, rides the back of the BX 55 to Third Avenue and 149th Street.

If you fall, he'll tell you que sana, sana, culito, cures everything.

He's a sorrow of a abuelo's bastón recordando tierra borinqueña, reciting a New Yorican poetry en jerigonza.

He's the outcry of Bocinquen every time a child leaves la Isla.

Una rebelion, the lyrics to lejos de ti en Nueva York se crió, not often 188 for grand concourse.

Coje consejo, pa' que llegue a viejo, is his mantra.

Los espiritus they follow him, tell him that the Flamboyán no longer grows in the throat of boricuas.

Que el Jíbaro has misplaced his accent on foreign road, where you will find Mujeres Puerto Riqueñas, que no le gustan a los hombre cobardes.

There you will find him, con su cara de fresco, ready to tell you a story of how this Títere became a man.

♪ Yeah, so there's this lady in my life ♪ ♪ Teaching me righteous past ♪ ♪ She helped me write my life for God ♪ ♪ She refined my rough drafts ♪ ♪ I know she know the best ♪ ♪ Put myself in her hands ♪ ♪ To all decisions I make ♪ ♪ I see him through her lens ♪ ♪ Her glasses rarely fall ♪ ♪ I rarely take them off ♪ ♪ She leave her mark ♪ ♪ So y'all see her when I'm seen by y'all ♪ ♪ She framing all my thoughts ♪ ♪ Into her perfect pictures ♪ ♪ She say what she hang there ♪ ♪ Will erase the dirt on my walls ♪ ♪ Say without her it's false ♪ ♪ But she can bring me truth ♪ ♪ It be perfect for herring ♪ ♪ God is what I'm born to do ♪ ♪ Show everything in life to me ♪ ♪ It don't mean nothing else ♪ ♪ Passport's road in her manual ♪ ♪ That big look on her shelf ♪ ♪ She said to go to it or her ♪ ♪ If I should need some help ♪ ♪ Mama concurs so I bite the spite wood ♪ ♪ I might have felt ♪ ♪ But as I grow I'm seeing s*** ♪ ♪ She don't have answers for ♪ ♪ Just recycle words from before ♪ ♪ You wouldn't know what it was like ♪ ♪ To deep lies cover your whole life ♪ ♪ Deflating s*** you thought was airtight ♪ ♪ You wouldn't know how it is ♪ ♪ Till you spent 22 years live in fear ♪ ♪ Thinking one mistake ♪ ♪ could mean the end is near ♪ ♪ Man you wouldn't understand ♪