Music in Montreal: Our song, “The Internationale!”
The world was pregnant
with two revolutions—fraternal twins—
Newborns cresting, crowning—pushing violently
from contracting wombs…We rejoiced, showering
them with
Revolutionary love!
Morphing, miraculously in tune;
the hungry hundreds’ voices rose
on salt swollen feet
In French, Farsi, Spanish, Russian, Tagalog,
Arabic, Hindi, Punjabi, Portuguese, Japanese,
Mandarin, Cantonese, Creole, Korean, English, etc.
Piston fists pumping to sun, stars, moon—
Our universe. Majestic incantation, “We have
been naught,
We shall be all…” Multilingual blending, crescendoing
like tympani spreading spinal chills—Then snatching
breath from our chests with mighty, wow finish:
“The Internationale shall be the Human race!!”
Too soon we’d see these infant revolutions ripped
from their cribs—from their
Mothers’ and
Midwives’ lactating breasts—And inexperienced
Arms…
And, yet, our song still resounds in jungles,
clandestine forests, barren deserts. Still echoes
off barbed wire and blackened bars of torture
chambers in filthy hellholes…
Our song’s polyglot harmony occasionally rising in
Surprising spaces;
belted out sometimes over orchestration of the world’s
‘richest’ men’s space boy-toys. Over Intelligence
Kings of white nationalist internationals’ Multi-polar
missile music/nuclear nightmare suites conducted by
Truncheon.
Our song still cuts through capitalist-roader nights
with a thousand eyes and facial recognition. Surveillance
state symphonies composed on elephant-eared walls and
eagle-eyed streets, scored on bloodstained rectangular rags
Our song still cries out, “Arise ye prisoners of
starvation…” Not, “ye yachtsmen flying the Jolly Roger for
spheres of Influence…”
Not, “ye capitalist-roaders becoming billionaires on pearls of
Toilers’ sweat…”
Our song still cries out, “A better world’s in birth…” And
“ The earth shall rise on new foundations…”
suggesting cooks can govern—the “human race” includes
Women, Black, Brown, LGBTQ+-And
Toilers must be deciders!
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 U.S. political system is perpetuated through the facade of choice. The false belief that we have the power to decide who our political leaders will be and what policy the government will…
As part of his research on grassroots economic projects toward Black Liberation, Austin Cole spoke with Nicholas Richard-Thompson about his community organizing, expanding definitions of economic…
Attacks by the fascist government and its supporters against Haitian people and those of Haitian Heritage in the Dominican Republic have become more and more brutal, resulting in the outright…
Since the beginning of this genocidal assault on Gaza, the Israeli entity has targeted Palestinian medical workers and hospitals to destroy the healthcare infrastructure and cause maximum damage on…
The Pentagon explored the AI software for research, but the new deal is the first by a combatant command whose mission is one of killing.
