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
  • omnibus

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

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at [email protected]

 

Black communists

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


Related Stories

Claudia Passport
Lola Olufemi
Claudia Jones: A Life in Search of the Communist Horizon
26 September 2021
This is the foreword to the new edition of Marika Sherwood’s Claudia Jones: A Life in E
Silencing Black Radicalism Since the Cold War 
Denise Lynn
Silencing Black Radicalism Since the Cold War 
10 December 2020
Anti-communists used the full powers of the state to silence, imprison, or deport radical Black activists.
A Southern Vanguard, The Lost History of Communism Below the Mason-Dixon Line
Robert Greene II 
A Southern Vanguard, The Lost History of Communism Below the Mason-Dixon Line
01 July 2020
Alabama Communists helped lay the foundation for the organized civil rights movement that emerged in the late 1940s and early ’50s.
BAR Book Forum: Margaret Stevens’s “Red International and Black Caribbean”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Margaret Stevens’s “Red International and Black Caribbean”
27 March 2019
Some of the best leaders of black working class people were communist or worked alongside communists.

More Stories


  • An Unrealized Political Possibility: Remembering the Grenada Revolution
    Kevin Edmonds
    An Unrealized Political Possibility: Remembering the Grenada Revolution
    20 Oct 2021
    The United States overthrow of the Grenada Revolution in 1983 initiated a vicious and unrelenting regime of neoliberalism that has gutted the Caribbean nation.
  • Colin Powell: Iraqis Will 'not shed tears' for 2003 Invasion Architect
    Alex MacDonald
    Colin Powell: Iraqis Will 'not shed tears' for 2003 Invasion Architect
    20 Oct 2021
    Iraqis say they won't be mourning death of former US secretary of state who oversaw the catastrophic invasion of their country.
  • The U.S. Flies Alex Saab Out from Cabo Verde Without Court Order or Extradition Treaty
    Dan Kovalik
    The U.S. Flies Alex Saab Out from Cabo Verde Without Court Order or Extradition Treaty
    20 Oct 2021
    The U.S. kidnapped Venezuela's envoy Alex Saab in Cabo Verde in 2020 and rendered him to Miami without a court order or extradition treaty in violation of international law.
  • Howard University Sit-in: A Struggle for Democracy at an HBCU
    Jamal Rich
    Howard University Sit-in: A Struggle for Democracy at an HBCU
    20 Oct 2021
    Students at Howard University have historically been in the forefront of movement struggles.
  • Government of Nicaragua Rejects Interference by the OAS
    Telesur
    Government of Nicaragua Rejects Interference by the OAS
    19 Oct 2021
    The Organization of American States (OAS) is a U.S. puppet organization that is poised to delegitimize Nicaragua's upcoming election and attack that nation's sovereignty.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us