"I grew up in the Barrios where everybody did their sense of poetry, we played a game called the dozens where we could insult each other in perfect rhyme. So I learnt to use my poetry for wisdom's way and then of course I, poetry was not wisdom's way cause I was going on all these different wrong ways and then finally I ended up in prison doing 5-10 and 5-15 years for armed robbery." It was in prison that he decided he was going to change his ways. So Piri began to study and went to work on his first book that today is a classic called Down these Mean Streets. Piri is the first Puerto Rican to write a book out of the Barrios about the Barrios; about being a Puerto Rican in America.

"I see the youth beautifully, I see them communicating [through the spoken word]. They're speaking in a tongue of poetry that's so very beautiful in a sense; it has no room for lies. It tells you that truth is that sense of feeling. And to do it in such a beautiful way es spiritual, tambien, you see? Poetry is a flow bro', it's wisdom's ways."

Piri has been an integral part of the artistic landscape of La Peņa. He has been a source of knowledge and creativity for those who have come to see him present his work over the years, and those who have collaborated with him on stage. "La Peņa is a total role of inspiration and a place where you could come where you're accepted and people who are poets and people who love poetry have a place they can come and to do a sense of sharing and caring with each other. It's nice, you know we purge, we need an audience, you know? Otherwise we poets we just make poetry to each other."

photo by Hugh Lovell