Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

If The Shoe Fits...
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
05 Sep 2012
🖨️ Print Article

 

by Raymond Nat Turner

“In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Discover trails less traveled

Connecting us with sage spirits

Sampling James Brown with John

Brown”

 

If The Shoe Fits...

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

Shoe leather was once

Voting's egg, blood, its sperm...

Shoe's on the other foot, now

So, to vote, or not to vote

Is not the question---the

Commander even chided and

Derided us: Swap "bedroom

Slippers" for "marching shoes"

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Click our heels like children

Catching burnt orange and ebony

Butterflies filled with freedom to fly

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Conjure comets and name them

"Rebellion," "Underground," "Utopian,"

"Civil," "Survival" and celestial bodies coming...

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Scale the Shangri-la where

Seventy-five year olds march like

Twenty-five year olds and

Twenty-five year olds orate like

Seventy-five year olds,shoulder

To shoulder striking, sitting-in,

Picketing, teaching and taking 

Care of one another on filaments

Of shoestring budgets...

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Discover trails less traveled

Connecting us with sage spirits

Sampling James Brown with John

Brown, disturbing the universe, questioning

Everything about a corrupt, rotten pyramid

Scheme stitched together with tear gas,

Bullets, bombs and LIES...

 

In our marching shoes, blisters and all,

We're the ones we've been waiting for---

Cast Prada, Nike, Reebok ballots

At bought and bossed footmen!

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at Raymond (at) upsurgejazz.com.

(c) 2012 All rights Reserved

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    REPORT: “The People Who Were Left to Die:” Horrors Suffered by Orleans Parish Prisoners in Wake of Katrina, ACLU, 2006
    28 Aug 2024
    Remembering the terrible plight of the incarcerated during Hurricane Katrina.
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Protests for Palestine at the DNC
    28 Aug 2024
    DNC protest organizers kept Democrats’ responsibility for the Gaza genocide in the news from October to August.
  • Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
    Africa at the Center of Another Global Health Emergency
    28 Aug 2024
    EVD, COVID-19 and now Mpox further reveal how dependency is dangerous and deadly.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    DNC: Deceptive Notorious Capitalism
    28 Aug 2024
    "DNC: Deceptive Notorious Capitalism" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    From Kente Cloths to Keffiyehs: The Legacy of Liberal Gaslighting Continues
    28 Aug 2024
    The Democratic Party's political strategy amounts to nothing more than doublespeak and a consistent denial of the reality we see before us. The DNC was a case study of how shameless the…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us