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In Langston’s Home
BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
06 Nov 2019
In Langston’s Home
In Langston’s Home

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
Love the Jazz, the Blues,
Words, acts, pages and stages
In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
Love the People, their 
Problems, pains and triumphs

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
You wake asking, “What 
has Harlem become
This morning?”
Each day is different!
This Manhattan morning
Your favorite coffee shop’s
a bank; and by noon
the other bank will be
another phone store—
the former phone store
a dog grooming salon
and so forth and so on…

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
You wake asking, “What 
has Harlem become
This morning?”
And you find the cute
couple with the quiet
kids are gone—disappeared—
Deported to Haiti, though they
are Jamaican and Mexican;
You find the bodega brothers
are headed back to Yemen
to be bombed by backwards
Butchers of fossil fuel infamy…

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
You wake one morning
Smiling. You speak. You say,
“Good morning, Revolution….

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished poet and performing artist, and an official of the National Writers Union. Find more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com

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