by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
When our giants go down, our spines must straighten up and create new beginnings.
Redouble our efforts…
(For Robert Knight, Chokwe, Amiri,
And others known and less known…)
by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
When our Knights are captured
Or fall on battlefields, as they
Surely must, and we lose their
Brilliant lights and we are
Scrambling to pry pens,
Swords, spears, bread and
Roses from stainless steel
Grips of their icy hands—
Scrambling to hoist our
Fallen banners, temporarily
Mired in mud and blood,
Even higher, scrambling
To staunch rivulets of
Brine from our sweetly
Shattered hearts…
When our giants — in
All sizes — go down,
Our spines straighten
Honoring, immortalizing,
Their legends, burnished
Names, by divvying up
Cosmic, ancient, work
Creating them in the
Beginning…
Raymond Nat Turner © 2014 All Rights Reserved
Rosalino Flores is just one of the Peruvians who died in the struggle against the coup government. Clau O'Brien Moscoso continues her dispatches from Peru. A Spanish translation follows.
The UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent must uphold the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA). A recently written mandate affirms the importance of DDPA and the need to…
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