Gabriel Charles Ponce aka “SolEros”

The great James Baldwin once stated: “The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us.”

With that being said, I am indeed a poet. However, I do not claim to know the truth more than any, especially considering the years of truth we lost as a people is plenty.

But I do speak MY truth.

And as indefinite one’s subjective truth may or may not be, it is concrete to me, for it is the truth we live and breathe. My personal journey through anti-racism can best be expressed through the sacred art of Spoken Word.

Quoted below is part of my poem I will be speaking in the video above. I hope you feel me, and I hope this also inspires the rest of y’all to Speak Yo’ Truth. For it is the truth that sets us free…

“I speak in riddles and rhymes
Like a funky dialectical combination of Calo and Jive,
For these words I now master,
Were never meant for my kind.

So of course, now,
I speak in rhymes and riddles,
Playin these nouns and verbs in your ear like the fiddle,
That allowed Rome to dwindle…
Down history’s books.

But why is HIS story always the tale that we took?

For if you follow a tail long enough,
You always gon get left behind.
And it’ll have the “hero”
Lookin like the “crook.”
Pending, how you glance upon demise.

So, how does one articulate anti-racism and their journey?

Especially when most of those life changing moments,
We make ourselves forget.

Cuz sometimes we’d rather have a past that’s blurry,
Than a present that stays ever so certainly
hurting…

Oh what a dilemma,
But indeed, one worthy of prolifically elaborating through this prose,
The extent of our pain and woes
In the form of these here,
ember-sparked notes.

But…
what’s the point of my poetry, if these gems I unbury ain’t gone be used?
What’s the point of my pain, if you boutta rock as I read to you my blues?
What’s the point of this video, if it’s just for views?
For when the caged bird sings, what would you do?

So, ima harmonize in a music only you and I can overstand,
Yet still beautiful enough for them to be able to dance,
And grooveee to these orchestrated symphonies as we throw the funky jam…”

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Gabriel Ponce, sovereign student of the game, in his 7th year, and last semester as an undergraduate within the college of HSS at CSUF. Hawaiian and Chicano and is a Santa Ana native. Ponce founded Cal State Fullerton’s Omega Epsilon chapter of Sigma Lambda Beta, a historically Latinx fraternity. Instagram: @s0leros