Cool menthol smoke swirled out of Will "Da Real One" Bell's mouth and nostrils as he stood for the last time near the tinted-glass entrance to his joint, the Literary Café & Poetry Lounge. Twenty minutes past midnight on May 29, the 47-year-old poet was near his black Dodge Charger in the parking lot of the shopping center where his spoken-word sanctuary was located. He had just left a message on local comedian Larry Dogg's cell phone, asking if he could send some freestyle rappers, who had stopped by Will's café to perform, to the event his jokester buddy was hosting.
Courtesy of Cynthia Bell-Lewis
Michael McElroy
Rebecca "Butterfly" Vaughns encouraged Will to stick with poetry as a profession.
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The mood at the café wasn't to the rappers' liking, and Will's patrons didn't particularly embrace the song that one of the lyricists performed. Will didn't want anyone to feel unwelcome the last night he opened his doors. So he sought to resolve any animosity through a diplomatic gesture.
For the past five years, Will had bounced from location to location, spreading his gospel through a silky baritone voice that dropped rapid-fire verses about the grim realities facing African-American men growing up in Miami. He was a dark-skinned pied piper with a handsome smile that belied his imposing, broad-shouldered, six-foot-five frame. He wasn't the kind of man who would broadcast any of the troubles that undoubtedly weighed on his mind that evening.
Two years ago, he had settled into a quaint North Miami storefront at 931-933 NE 125th St., tucked between an accountant's office and the popular bakery Grateful Bread. The venue sated Will's hunger for poetry while supplying a steady diet of his words for other poets and poetry lovers from across the region.
But Memorial Day weekend was it. The time had come to shut down the Literary Café. He had survived more evictions than he could count on his large, smooth hands by cobbling together enough money through donations and borrowed cash to pay the rent late. Only his closest friends knew he had made plans to bounce out of there in April, when he told them he was through. But he couldn't bring himself to lock the doors for good. The reason was the tight-knit group of spoken-word artists that spit poems past midnight at least four times a week at the café.
As he puffed on his last Newport cigarette, he battled with the angst and anticipation of down-sizing. His plan was to continue hosting his popular Saturday-night poetry readings at Mocha Lounge on 738 NE 125th St. He would dedicate more time to touring the country like he did in the old days, when he was riding high from appearances on Russell Simmons's Def Poetry Jam on HBO.
But the café was his baby. He breathed life into it. He kept it going for almost half a decade even though he struggled to pay overhead costs. He certainly wasn't turning a profit. Walking away now should have been a tremendous relief.
Still, the inevitable reality of closing gnawed at Will"Da Real One" Bell on what would be the last night of his life.
View a photo slide show of Will Bell's memorial service.
I run till I find myself standing in the middle of an intersection in Las Vegas and it's September 7, 1996
The day Tupac was followed by an entourage of eyewitnesses but everybody claimed not to see shit
So I run alongside the passenger side and pull Tupac out so Suge Knight is the only motherfucka to get hit
Then I hear that scream again:
You better run, nigga.
So I run
I run till I find myself in L.A. Just in time to push Biggie out of the way of the last gun blast
And I'm lying there with this hot lead in my ass,
And I'm thinking, oh God,
At last, I ain't gotta run no more
I ain't got to be nobody's nigga no more.
The audience at Manhattan's Supper Club grew quiet as Will took the stage for his performance on Def Poetry Jam. It was a wintry February night in 2004. He sported black boots, black jeans, and a black T-shirt with bold white letters spelling out "Black on Black Rhyme," one of his favorite poetry groups, based in Tallahassee. He also wore a black glove on his right hand.
Scowling and gesticulating, Will unloaded a steady staccato of words that form the verses to his poem "So I Run," a boiling-with-rage ballad documenting his dreams of saving his African-American heroes Harriet Tubman, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and two of hip-hop's most important rappers: Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
His voice climbed decibels as he ripped through the poem. Reading the last stanza, Will raised his gloved fist and bowed his head in homage to 1968 Olympic medal winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos's black-power salute. The audience rose to its feet and roared as Da Real One coolly walked offstage.
That moment catapulted Will's budding career as a poet. It made him a popular commodity. He toured coast to coast doing national slam competitions. He traveled to Seattle, Baltimore, New York, Boston, and other U.S. cities. He also landed gigs from Toronto to Kingston. He released his first spoken-word CD, Verbal Vision, and began working with local rappers such as Luther Campbell, Trick Daddy, and Trina. For inspiration he read the works of Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Gil Scott-Heron, Nikki Giovanni, and, most recently, the Last Poets, of the '60s civil rights movement.
