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What Would the Ancestors Say?
Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist
14 Nov 2012
🖨️ Print Article

 

by Raymond Nat Turner

Baptist, baritone strains:

"I've been to the mountaintop,

But this is not the mountaintop”

 

What Would the Ancestors Say?

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

I know

I know

I know...

Harriet Tubman didn't slide

In and out of the slave south

Nineteen times, $40,000 reward

Hanging over her head like a

Scimitar, or Samurai sword;

Medgar didn't die in his driveway

Like a dog put down in the pound;

Malcolm didn't die on floor

Of the Audubon Ballroom;

King didn't die on chitlin' curcuit

Balcony of the Lorraine Motel;

Fred didn't die in his bed, under

Hooves of Chicago death squads

For tomfoolery---nappy-headed

Foolishness--- Negroz shrinking

To plantation Rip Van Winkles

Hung over on Ol' Massa's

Jim Jones Juice (January '09)

The eve of world revolution...

 

I know

I know

I know...

She would be leveling her pistol,

Leaving at least a half dozen dead

Negroz, after commanding "Forward,

Or die!"

 

I know

I know

I know...

He would be tongue-lashing

Negroz with his Harlem-tinged

Tough love: "You've been had,

You've been took, you've been

Hoodwinked, you've been bamboozled!"

 

I know

I know

I know...

He would be intoning in African,

Baptist, baritone strains:

"I've been to the mountaintop,

But this is not the mountaintop,

No, and I'm concerned that if you

Continue traversing this treacherous

Trail you're on, during the dark and

Difficult days ahead, not only will you

Not get to the mountaintop, you will

Find yourselves descending to depths

So low that it will require you taking an

Elevator up eighty-six floors; climbing

Forty flights of stairs to a sub cellar of

Sin, standing on a step ladder on your

Tiptoes, just to suck the Devil's dick---

 

No, I'm afraid I can't be your drum

Major on this one---

The drones must be stopped,

The satanic wars ceased, and

The barbaric killing of other peoples'

Babies ended---forever..."

Raymond Nat Turner (c) 2012 All Rights Reserved

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