RIP Antonio Battle
Last Friday morning, Antonio Battle's counselor from Breaking Ground called. The second I heard her voice, I knew what she was calling about. I hadn’t heard from him in over six weeks, and his counselor generally only called me when he asked her to. Her voice here, too, was different. She sometimes throws me with the edge to her voice, honed undoubtedly from constant confrontation with angry transient people. Here, though, her voice was soft, laced with something like pity. I knew the words as the filtered between our phones. Antonio Battle has died.
The previous night she was doing wellness checks knocking on all the residents’ doors, and she was surprised not to hear Antonio’s voice. She let him be, thinking he must be asleep, then went back after checking on the rest of the residents. The next morning, when she still heard no response to her knocks, she got security to unlock his door and let her in. He was already dead.
She told me I was his only listed contact, and asked me if I know any of his family members’ names. He’s almost never spoken of his family to me, though he has written about them. I realized that, if he ever told me any of their names, I’ve now forgotten them. A few minutes later she called me back asking if I could cull through my records to find any family contacts, as the police were there filing their report.
My first thought in my initial haze of incomprehension was that I have no paradigm to draw on for this death, despite the fact that I am his de facto next of kin. I asked her what they would do with his body, and she couldn’t answer that. I asked what my next action should be and she said nothing. I texted my R/C people, and they told me maybe we should just sit with our feelings for a bit, and write down a to-do list if anything came to us. We made a short list of people to contact, which was almost entirely people who know Antonio through my writing on him for the past three years. This, then, is me contacting you.
Long-time dispatch readers may remember this, but Antonio was in the first workshop I ever led at Rikers Island. In fact, he leads the first entry in my Rikers teaching journal - here’s a brief excerpt:
The security guard who served as my escort and overseer of the workshop seemed genuinely enthused to bring me to the group I’d be teaching. “You gonna love these guys. This one, Antonio, can straight up rap with the best of ‘em. What you call that, ‘spoken word’?”
He led me into the chapel, which I guess will be our de facto classroom. Five guys were waiting for me in the pews, and the guard showed me to the lectern. Knowing the lecture/sermon thing wouldn’t work for the workshop, I asked for a chair for me to sit with the students. I situated the chair between the pews, handed out the questionnaires I’d developed to get to know them, and asked each of them to answer in whatever way they chose—but to keep it to a few minutes—the question, What is your story?
Antonio was first to answer, in what did in fact feel like a well-honed spoken-word piece. The voice he used was both vulnerable and combative, hitting the accents extra hard. After he finished I asked him if he’d worked on that before now. “I been workin’ on it my whole life,” he said, leaning back in the pew.
Antonio wasn’t the only person in that workshop who became a friend, ally, and integral part of the Re/Creation vision; Michael Colbert and Prisoner K were also part of that group of five. In fact, the interaction between the three of them dominated and directed my first year of workshop development. Mike and K were two of the first people I called about Antonio. After some time grieving together, they both agreed to contribute to this dispatch in Antonio’s honor. I’m proud to present their memorials here, as well as a poem written by our own Marvin Wade and a portrait of Antonio by Rekha Luciano, who had been going in with me to work on his visual art until his last breakdown.
Michael Colbert
“If Only Given the Chance”
When a comrade goes down we all go down. Antonio Battle was a beautiful and fiery brother of divine passion in reading and writing, so gifted was he, if only given the chance. When I first met him we were in prison together. (Not in a creative writing course yet!) I met him before entering into the writing course we both attended. His name was Seven, and mines was Supreme, two distinctive Five Percenter names from back in the day. Our earlier years, we actually battled mentally on many subjects of knowledge way before we both attended John Proctor’s creative writing course on Rikers Island. Antonio was very gifted in poem writing of a different kind. It wasn’t like rappers or guys that rhyme. His writing particularly poetry was morbid, a little twisted and it featured a world of how one thought innerly first, to express the outer self which can seem weird at times. But he had a very unique style of expressing it while making one see him, rather his pain, his smile, his hurt and his passions in life.
I mentioned in the beginning, “If only given the chance.” Yes he was given the chance, a golden opportunity to express self, rather pain, or joy, hope or despair in his unique way. He shared so much with me and Proctor, particularly me, we always battled. (Coincidentally his last name was Battle) But our battles was challenges to exceed, to excel to greater heights.
“If only given the chance.” It’s funny how things are sometime in life, and because he was given so many chances, but the only chance he didn’t receive was the chance he didn’t give himself!
Prisoner K
The Personal Battle
Antonio Battle was a mess.
He lacked the focus to truly succeed. A tragedy, that was. Battle was an artisan in every sense of the word. His speech flowed with graceful anger. He spoke with the ferocity of a ballet assassin. The imagery was colorful and bold with metaphors I can only wish I had the capacity to generate. He spoke aggressively of injustice. Battle ranted about ignorance and inequity. He demanded furiously we wake up and see. But Antonio Battle lacked the concentration to use his work and words for the betterment of his life. And I truly believe he could have.
Antonio Battle was brilliant.
I have said Battle may be the smartest uneducated person I ever met. The man could sprout eloquence with extemporaneous ease, yet he’d also stick words and phrases he made up in the mix. (My personal favorite: “In my own self-experience...”) But no one could deny this man had something to say as much as he wanted to say it! I recall a night Seven (as he was known in lockup) kept the entire block rapt for HOURS with poetry, soliloquies, and spoken word. He was still going long after he’d had more than his deserved say. He was still going long after tired inmates would’ve told anyone else to shut the fuck up.
Antonio Battle was resourceful.
He always had a job. Always. Upstate, you’re given a job whether you want one or not. On Rikers, you must find work. Not an easy task since Rikers has no job postings and no internet. You simply had to meet the right person in the right place at the right time in a place where you’re not allowed to go anywhere.
Battle campaigned for work like a mother. He called out anyone he thought could help. He walked around with business cards. Little slips of paper in which he wrote his contact information. In lockup that meant his name, number, and location. He handed them out to anyone who had the slimmest connection to employment.
Battle also lost a lot of jobs. It’s why he was constantly looking for employment.
Antonio Battle was stubborn as a mule.
That stubborn streak was one of the reasons Battle was so fascinating. It was also sadly a reason he never got further in life than homeless ex-con. He had thousands of plans and ideas but never put any single one on the table. He was going to be a documentarian. Battle was hyped to build a business, write a biography, advocate for prison reform, do a one-man show on Broadway. According to our founder, John Proctor, Battle was instrumental in developing the foundation on which Re/Creation stands. But, ultimately, you couldn’t get Battle to fine tune his thinking to one goal. The only thing that mattered was what he had in mind in the moment.
Antonio Battle was probably better off in prison.
I think prison is horrible and would not want to subject anyone to it. But I admit prison is the best thing that happened to me. I can't accept the idea that that only applies to me.
Think about how much Battle impressed all of us — in prison! How much he shared of himself and the brilliance behind his thinking — in prison! How the very demons that drove him seemed to be in control — in prison! How dedicated he was to forming and growing the organization that became ReCreation — in prison!
Do you know how many inmates took advantage of others? Battle never did. I never saw him ask anyone of anything — until he left prison and became an urban scavenger.
Unlike a lot of substance abusers, I never saw a sign of Battle struggling with having his favorite pastime taken away from him while locked up. What some inmates did to get high or drunk would bowl you over. Battle didn’t seem to indulge or care. He was writing and reading. He was in the yard working out with an animalistic velocity.
But the second he walked out of prison (and he walked out many times) he went straight to old habits. He returned to survival on the streets, using catch-and-catch-can as his rule of thumb. Battle never gave up his plans, his art, his dreams. They were always a part of his being. Battle just had other things to worry about.
Antonio Battle was my biggest fan.
No one encouraged me to keep writing the way Battle did. He tended to drool over my work as if I were Baldwin or Iceberg Slim. I appreciated that. I’d read something to Battle and he’d act it out after, as if I’d touched a reality vein that allowed him to live in my moment. Battle was a better writer than I, no doubt. I often wonder if he knew that. I never told him. I liked being Iceberg Slim or James Baldwin. I liked having a fan.
Antonio Battle wanted someone to listen.
No one who ever sat in a room with Battle would deny the world was his audience. I believe he didn’t need to succeed, to better himself, to change, because as long as he had an audience, he was fine. And everyone was his audience.
Not too long ago, Battle had a video crew meet him. Instead of being met at the box he called home, he had the crew meet him further up the street. He almost immediately broke down how empowering it was to be free. Not of prison, but of everything. He walked, squawking powerfully about being homeless and why it gave him a sense of authority no one and no thing could take away from him. He did this until they got to his box, at which Battle officially announced he was home with the bombast of Ralph Kramden.
It was a wonderful performance. Definitely not his last. Long as there was another human being within listening distance, he put on a show. Battle was known to perform while alone in his cell. (Of course, he knew just beyond his walls were ears.) Battle/Seven/Antonio was always performing. He was an amazing performer. Antonio Battle was a brittle, angry, shining star.
I’m glad I listened.
Marvin Wade
Spoken from beyond
When my vision was blurry
You shared your eyes for me to see.
When I no longer had a voice
You gave me your mouth to speak.
When the silence was deafening
You lent me your ear.
When I was afraid to be free
You showed me life without fear.
When ever I lost sight of myself
Your light showed me I wasn't gone.
When I didn't have a friend
You gave me your number and your
Name. And I thank you, John.
I’ll end this dispatch with a conversation I had with my colleague Jamie from the Fortune Society last weekend. One thing I talked out with her was my feeling that this is now the end of Antonio’s story, and it’s not the ending I hoped for or envisioned. I told her how I’d thought this was just another of many down cycles, with Antonio retreating into himself and his illness and me waiting for him to come back, only this time he didn’t come back from himself. She recontextualized this, reminding me that all those times in this cycle could have been the final sunset if I hadn’t given him friendship, respect, and hope, however fleeting.
“Think of it this way,” she said. “What’s that old Buddhist proverb? Fall down seven, get up eight. Think of how many more sunrises you gave him. Don’t just think about the final sunset.”
As we mourn Antonio together, the Re/Creation Collective is in the process of planning a memorial to honor him and his work. We will share details about this as they become available; in the meantime, if you would like to make a donation toward the cost of the memorial celebration, please click here.
Photo by Rekha Luciano
John Proctor is a writer, educator, activist, and founder of Re/Creation. He teaches academic writing at Manhattanville College, and his work has been widely published and anthologized.
Michael Colbert is one of the pillars of Re/Creation since participating in its earliest workshops on Rikers Island, and has been instrumental in developing our organization.
Prisoner K was a member of the first cohort of the first workshop John facilitated at Rikers Island. He was recently released from his sentence in an upstate facility, and is a working technical writer. He values his and his family’s privacy and like John has read Kafka’s The Trial, thus the pseudonym.
Marvin Wade is a Spiritual Activist and family Man. While incarcerated, Marvin wrote multiple books’ worth of stories, novels, and personal essays on every bit of paper he could find, combining his gift as a storyteller with the art of writing. With the help of the re/creation team Marvin has since increased his knowledge of the computer which has been essential in allowing him to assist in the editing of his dispatches for the re/creation website. His poem “Where I’m From” was recently featured in Voices of Fortune 2020 literary magazine.