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

Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles (for Uvalde and other schools…)
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
01 Jun 2022
🖨️ Print Article
Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles (for Uvalde and other schools…)

                                                                              Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles
                                                                                (for Uvalde and other schools…)

I.
Blood-splattered backpacks and papers strewn beneath
overturned desks—
Summer dreams blasted out orange-sized exit wounds.
High velocity .223s chased children into “harm’s
way;” “wrong place, wrong time—” last school
days—first double digit years of their lives.

Gut-punched parents receive swabs matching DNA with
powder-burned bodies. Instead of reviewing report
cards And smiling ear-to-ear.
Terror-etched faces—emptied eyes—listen to doctors
'bout 'bleeding out’ in 5 minutes. 'Bout cold store whole
blood transfusions…Must parents master this
information?

Warfare-failed state, carnage curricula, forces
teachers to teach to tests: Safe words. Hand signals.
Switched off lights. Locked doors—blocked with desks. Hiding
silently. Climbing over classmates’ bullet-riddled bodies;
crawling/running/slipping on scarlet floors— ‘snuff porn targets’
in capitalist video games…

“Good guys with guns”…arrive… Yellow tape, Blue Lives
Matter Most mindsets...Fabulous strike- breakers who strike
marchers; pepper-spray protestors; knee necks—And
Sauntering and loitering overtime. “Good guys with guns,” fully
funded/trained—Tackling, tasering, cuffing salt of the earth;
Lunch bucket parents, Suspected of attempted life saving...

Moments of silence…Semi-automatic “thoughts and prayers;”
Hollow-point “horrific and heart-breaking” blast from muzzles of
merchants of death. Market shares skyrocket as platoons of copy
cat killers
groomed by Grandma Genocide/Grandad Slavery line up
to Serve…

II.
(I close my eyes and imagining 400 million guns tumbling—like
uranium raindrops—
on Costa Rican,
Ghanaian, Swiss streets…
Weekly mass murders? Cops killing a thousand a
year? “That’s ‘life’” shrugged shoulders?)

Say it’s ae terrible dream…shooter downstairs—lower
grades — where lil’ Elijah sometimes says, “I’m sad…” as we check
in, serving snacks. Shooter storms the school farm—
Blasting Farmers Ben and Beth and children pulling greens from
black soil— Enters classroom off cafeteria, Chef Kathy’s
teaching salads/cooking skills…

Shooter storms Ms Cross’s 4th grade class—I’m tutoring the lil
mocha brown sister in aunt’s custody; Berkeley High basket
ball star-to-be;
blonde, blue-eyed twins; Yemen’s Ayat reading out from
under Bombs
of beheading embassy butchers…

I jackknife up! Woke with gnarled NRA images: Ms Johnson
after lunch. Long-gun strapped across shoulders managing
her class! Ms Logan, chalkboard, Glock hugging hip. And
Ms Wilson,
Principal, flaunting sidearm—rather than love detecting
Arms, hugging her students mornings at playground
gate…

© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All RightsReserved.

 

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet;

BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

Mass Shootings
Militarized Police

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


More Stories


  • The Left Lens Presents the Left Voice in Latin America w/Camila Escalante
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    The Left Lens Presents the Left Voice in Latin America w/Camila Escalante
    23 Jun 2021
    Wherever the Left has risen up in Latin America, rightwing oligarchs backed by the United States have responded with violence and political chicanery.
  • Freedom Rider: Biden, Putin and the Press
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Biden, Putin and the Press
    23 Jun 2021
    The corporate media claim that President Biden went easy on Vladimir Putin outside the G7 meeting, but that’s only because Biden preferred to sic the imperial press hounds on the Russian president
  • Appearance Versus Essence: Biden is Stabilizing, Not Ending, Neoliberalism
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Appearance Versus Essence: Biden is Stabilizing, Not Ending, Neoliberalism
    23 Jun 2021
    For neoliberalism to truly end, austerity and privatization must also come to an end and universal public programs such as nationalized healthcare and free higher education must exist within a cont
  • REVIEW ESSAY: A Truncated Story of Black Rebellion, Charisse Burden-Stelly
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    REVIEW ESSAY: A Truncated Story of Black Rebellion, Charisse Burden-Stelly
    23 Jun 2021
    Black violence functioned as both a political challenge to racial domination and a political rationale for both the intensification and normalization of aggressive and pervasive policing in poor Bl
  • Ethiopians Go to the Polls Even After the US Tells Them Not to
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Ethiopians Go to the Polls Even After the US Tells Them Not to
    23 Jun 2021
    Many Ethiopians expressed enthusiasm for what they consider the country’s first real, competitive election, writes Ann Garrison.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us