
David Romero
August 2023

David A. Romero is a Mexican-American spoken word artist from Diamond Bar, CA. He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of El Martillo Press. Romero is the author of My Name Is Romero (FlowerSong Press), a book reviewed by Gustavo Arellano (¡Ask a Mexican!), Curtis Marez (University Babylon), and founding member of Ozomatli, Ulises Bella. Romero has received honorariums from nearly a hundred colleges and universities in thirty-four different states in the USA and has performed live in Mexico, Italy, and France. Romero's work has been published in literary magazines in the United States, Me​​xico, England, Scotland, and Canada. Romero has opened for Latin Grammy winning bands Ozomatli and La Santa Cecilia. Romero's work has been published in anthologies alongside poets laureate Joy Harjo, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Luis J. Rodriguez, Jack Hirschman, and Tongo Eisen-Martin. Romero has won the Uptown Slam at the historic Green Mill in Chicago; the birthplace of slam poetry. Romero's poetry deals with family, identity, social justice issues, and Latinx culture. Romero offers a scholarship for high school seniors interested in spoken word and social justice: “The Romero Scholarship for Excellence in Spoken Word.”
NEW YEAR'S DAY
​
The world is new and cold
Naked and pointy trees tell the tale
Almost as bare as those mountains north
Condensation on car windows
The defrost button once a stranger
Now a friend
To drive is to risk being lost in the fog
To walk is to risk being stuck in the rain
Rain here brings snow on mountains
A little produces rings on ledges
Like the icing on layers of cake
Like rings of tinsel on your tree
You just packed that into the garage
Yesterday
Scarves, mittens, and umbrellas rush to the mall
The hubcaps of white SUVs ride to the mountains
Snowboarding and ski trips
You mostly stay home
Pretend to enjoy the solemnity of the gray world
But actually hate it
Hate the world in shadow
The only thing you enjoy is that stinging cold outside
Before you break a sweat
Cutting wood and gathering kindling
Before you flick your lighter
To begin your night’s entertainment
Outside with that dark blue and purple sky
And the black silhouettes of the few trees seen from your backyard
Tonight
Rain will wash you out
Tomorrow
You will love the smell of your house filled with the memory of smoke
Today
You will meet your friend Mario at a coffeeshop
Layer-up to sit outside in cold metal chairs
Under an awning and clear skies
The mountains will be covered with snow
One of you will remark how that’s a rare sight
The other will agree
Indeed
You are two Southern Californians
Shivering
Playing at Winter.
SUBURBAN PROBLEMS
​
Shopping malls across America
Were covered in rock
Long slabs cut into decorative panels
Glued onto the faces of buildings
To give them color and texture.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Believed that in design
It was vital
To incorporate elements from the local environment
To make buildings
Appear as if they were just another part of the land’s features.
Some of those new buildings were beautiful
Those rock slabs
Really did accomplish their stated goal
Of bringing more character
To those chain restaurants and big box retailers
But in the years between 2001 and 2006
My best friend
Neal
Didn’t see decorative faces
He saw scalable ones
He didn’t see walls
He saw handholds
Toejambs
Crags and footholds
Walls
Tall enough to give you a thrill
But not enough to take your life
Enough to break a leg or roll an ankle
But not enough to leave you paralyzed
From “bouldering”
The climbing of boulders
Neal called it “buildering”
The climbing of buildings
In rock climbing
The pre-charted set of moves
One can use to ascend a face is called a route
Each route has a scale of difficulty
Routes are also called problems
And problems started springing up all over suburbia
We drove in Neal’s musty red jeep
With climbing shoes
Chalk bags and a green foam fold-up crash pad
Looking for them
One of our favorites was in Brea
An auto-repair shop
We only ever climbed it at night
Most of the time sober
But when Neal was drunk
No matter where we were
He would immediately take off
Start climbing the first thing he could see
He was reckless and fearless
Some people thought he was weird
Wanted to avoid him
But to some of us
He was a legend
Scale the face
Climb the mountain
Even if it’s in your own backyard
Rock slabs with chalk marks already there
It was catching on
I started referring to it as a movement
The beginning of a suburban renaissance
Like bombing trains
Tagging walls
Grinding in empty pools
Businesses caught on
The faces were polished smooth
Smoother than the hardest routes on El Cap
And any remaining chalk marks
Were washed off
Wiped clean
Like the problems had never been there.