diary splash: poet warrior sleeping in the grass * (louis reyes rivera) * By Arthur Wilson
Photograph by: Mel Wright (c)
June 11, 2011
It’s a mild, warm, conspicuous day
Close to summer in Brooklyn New York
Poet Warrior Louis Reyes Rivera
Sporting a long peppered gray beard
Resembling a revered leader of a pride of lions
Lies sleeping hard,
Stretched out in the grass on Gates Street
At the Travelled Rhodes International Sculpture Garden
DAMN! Has it been almost 20 years
Since Louis and I locked truth eyes with thunder
And re-entered our Brotherhood Rhythm,
From when we stormed out of the Brooklyn Print Center
With vision blurry and blood shot eyes at day break
In the flotsam of arts’ “yes I can!” Storms
Hustling renegade Brothers
Printed & edited Attitude Magazine,
Until the Print Center day crew punched in
Near splatters of coffee stains & debris covered floors,
Never knowing that Louis, Bernadine, and I
Like shrewd mice hiding behind kitchen walls
Had already scurried out to print a universe of words
About the power of dance against eternity bones,
While most Brooklyn families slept
Through midnight images of life’s eternal tilt & salt
Decades later
After screams for equality let out – & screams held back
Children to rear & myriad burials to carry deep,
After accomplishments & dusted off dreams & fists stirred up
The sleeping repose of my friend is itself, a sculpture,
And more than a random inconsequential footnote
Clocking in the worn weary years he published miles of Shamal Books
When Louis, wrestled with poets to make a noise!
To make sense!
To tell the truth!
And not abandon history & culture
To make a New World
From the odds & deficit opportunities America brings
Louis Reyes Rivera
A goliath among righteous teachers
Carrying the burning crosses of our misjudgment
Warped egos, stubborn derailments of consciousness,
Negro-a-zation & self-loathing’s travail
He lies sleeping in the grass at Gates Street
Perhaps he is dreaming paradise, backwards, out loud
Perhaps he is walking through a kaleidoscopic prism
Of his beloved homeland – Puerto Rico
Partaking in solemn libations with the ancestors,
Wise ancestors who sprint logic & myth through his tongue
With the precision of a learned surgeon
Enlightened by truths’ angels of agitation
Dressed for the unity sorely needed
In the here & now of our massive confusions,
Lifting mountains through the nourishment
Of his rice & beans strength,
To say it loud! I am…We are, still here
Like a bulwark of destiny’s certitude
A beautiful, attentive, caring sistah
Seems to be playing the part of a sentinel
Her chair clearly blocking anyone from disturbing Louis
And stealing his sleep from silence
I ask the sistah smooth as gingerbread & moons
Was she guarding Louis sleeping in the grass
“Oh no,” she replies exploding with anticipation,
“I too am a poet waiting in hope Louis will map out
More images and testimony
As only Louis Reyes Rivera’ footsteps to soulful places can divine
I sit. I rise. I Rise!
When informed that the seat
In which I was about to plop my bones was where Louis sat
Carefully stepping in sunshine I spin past sistah poet
Touch the Warrior Poet on his shoulder,
“Louis, Louis.” The lion looks up and stretches
“Wow, Ted Wilson.” Louis replied
“No,” I say…”It’s Arthur.”
Raising his eyebrows Louis places on his glasses
“It’s you! You said you would come”
The lion surrounded by love’s levitating flow
Raises himself further onto his side with his elbow,
As a rainbow backdrop of paintings & prints caress Louis
Waiting to be liberated and sold
To be carried off to someone’s home or museum
“Louis,” I say…”take your seat.”
“No, you sit there.”
Sitting on the edge of a garden wall
Louis asks for the ginger ale sitting in the grass,
He says his stomach is making war on his nerves.
I grab Louis’ hand, and we sit in comrade silence
No need to play catch up or pull strings from the past,
We cherish the moment.
Poets with no words…no masks
Mel Wright, the people’s record photographer appears
Louis, slightly more alert, drinks a few swings of ginger ale,
Turns, then reaches back and puts on his hat.
We smile and pose for a picture, and that’s that.
I feel Louis needs to escape, to rest, to recharge
To go home
I tell Louis that William is out front in the car waiting
I ask Louis would he like to go home. “Yes, let’s go.”
Moving a slow fast floatation through the garden
Moving past paintings talking Caribbean Grandeur
Louis answers more questions while gathering his wife,
Barbara, heading toward their Hancock Street Haven
Walking proudly with my friend I think to myself
It’s no coincidence Louis Reyes Rivera
Has been nick-named the Janitor of History & Poets.
Not because his knowledge or words arrive to be discarded
Or abandoned inside some dark landfill of listless & blunted memory,
‘Cause Louis’ recall, analysis & words sting, clean up…turn you around
And simultaneously drop you next to the Pride
Power & Connection one should be living in,
To Never Give UP!
Never surrendering to lies, injustice, or brutishness
Poet Warrior sleeping in the grass
Stands, stands with his wife, Barbara
His Gilbraltar…his Underground Railroad Wing
Where both partners in Hallowed Blackness, Sing
And Louis’ poetry always demanding that we & our words
Breathe Frederick Douglas’ Command to AGITATE
Until the phoenix no longer needs to rise from the ashes
And we all can sleep in the grass
Knowing our people are not bleeding
Or posturing to be “A Brand,”
While second by second, injustice & disunity
Sinks us all into further depths of oblivion
Beneath sinking sand
Usually a diary is a spontaneous record
Of a day…a moment
Written once and then sealed.
However, for Louis Reyes Rivera
I was again compelled
To stomp my feelings across memory
And give Due Praise one mo’ time
To announce to my Brother
You no longer need to toil in the vineyard of struggle
As an Army of One
‘Cause Mi Amigo…for You
Blessings without Measure
In the form of love arriving to stay,
And here it comes