a few flock notes for jaimie breezy branch
“The artist must elect to fight
for Freedom or for Slavery”
—Paul Robeson
blinded by tears—
struggling—seeing
your ancestral ascension in
"Promotions..." .
…I'd planned to reach out
to you ‘bout doing a
Truth-Tellers’ double bill—
UpSurge!NYC opening
for FLY or DIE; Loisaida—
or Harlem— 2023…But it’s
Not To
Be...
Loving what you were doing
down
here
below—
with resounding crescendo of
a press roll—Ra reached out to
expand his Saturn Band/interstellar
sleight of hand
Ra reached out to sweeten his sound—
gave you the call/pointing the bell of
your horn at Saturn. and like sun shards
bouncing off brass you ascended— took
flight—you flew
you’d brandished ‘bebop’ ‘bout flight—licks ‘bout
flocking! ‘bout banding together and taking care of
one another; ‘bout flying further, faster—together…
you knew, when one bird found food—the flock
ate; and predators were less likely to fuck with flocks…
it wasn’t easy, ‘breezy,’ blowin’ brazen brass/truth-tellin’
on violently improvised land— or praying for amerikkka on
your horn—running Occupy notes, reaching for Arab
Spring! you knew nazis love ‘neutrality—’ even loved jazz
on
the
down
low.
yes, reich ears plucked fruit from the trumpet tree in Congo
Square. but dixie on the Rhine’s racist caricaturists banned
it from the masses. they branded it, ready? “degenerate art!”
Dr. Goebbels’s bugle/bent white noise notes/twisted facts
were easier than you blowin’ vitamin B flat to rock the
flock
you refused to stay confused/politically paralyzed/no
where to run to—nowhere to hide or duck and cover;
head buried in quicksand
land of make believe/believing blowing your horn
night and day drowns out screaming notes of missile music;
A-flattened Afghan homes; f-16 chords pulverizing
Palestinian children; and No one’s hungry; No one’s
home’s riding the same train all night; and your circular
breathing stops 9 min. of a neck being knelt on; or a
windpipe being crushed by crooks of the law’s long, white,
tatted arm amidst hushed, strangulated tones of “thoughts
and prayers.”
you found The Wright Bros. to FLY or DIE with—
mirrors reflecting reality/hammers blacksmithing
shapes of things to come—an international
anthem— when
Lester leaped in from a St. Louis womb;
baaaD Chad blew in from The Windy City and
Jason came down off Calf Mountain blowing a
way Co2 with you!
Now, it’s your turn to play way out in the universe with
Ra, be copied—
loved by Amerikkka… and her Amazon accountants…
© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
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 and PayPal .
The United States has declared war against the Cuban people for more than 60 years.
Read this essay by Afro-Surinamese writer and resistance fighter, Anton de Kom, about the entrenched legacy of Dutch racism and colonialism in the Caribbean.
Dr. Cornel West announced a presidential run as a People's Party candidate but later announced he was seeking the Green Party nomination.
This week’s featured author is Dixa Ramirez-D'Oleo. Ramirez-D'Oleo is Associate Professor in the English department at Brown University. Her book is This Will Not Be Generative.
