by Raymond Nat Turner
The poet is talking about those who peddle “pork barrel pedagogy…selling blankets bearing smallpox— blankets smothering spirits and crushing minds of black and brown babies, like cigarette butts.”
Harriet Tubman Tests?
by Raymond Nat Turner
(For OPT, CW, Ms C, Ms G, BOJ, KKE, DR)
Now, I can see and hear the
Music in my ear from my first
Teacher, the militant I called
“Mommy,” rising at some school
Board meeting and launching into
What she called her “nut role,”
Asking as only she could, “Since
You’re ‘teaching to the test,’ are
The tests you’re teaching to Harriet
Tubman or Sojurner Truth tests?”
After the laughter and applause
Subside, she might add, “Someone—
I won’t say who—said pork barrel
Pedagogy you’re peddling is like
Selling blankets bearing smallpox—
Blankets smothering spirits and
Crushing minds of black and brown
Babies, like cigarette butts beneath
The boot heels of billionaires…”
Then, she might even ask her grand-
Son, the professor of education, grand-
Daughter the parent-teacher, or son
The poet, to second that emotion:
In the Race To The Slop,
Sooie…
Legato laughter, staccato shrieks of
Gleeful play, keep fleeing fire fights
Forbidding imagination, frowning on
Free-thinking, disallowing discovery and
Putting dreamers to death with magic
Bullet, single-shot solutions leaving all
Children behind, caged, crippled or blind.
In the Race To The Slop,
Sooie…
There are Green Zones, dubbed “Work-
Force Development Systems” by white
Knights of the Business Roundtable, killing
Fields where sage, seasoned teachers keep
Falling like dried rose petals, under frantic
Fusillades of child soldiers pointing No. 2
Pencils like M-16s— elite bubble snipers
Suffering PTSD: Post Test Stress Disorder…
In the Race To The Slop,
Oink,
Schools are troughs, full of juicy
Green apples— business banquets
Spinning stress into gold; pureeing
Plays, poems, songs, paintings,
Dances and children into super-
Sized, hollowed-out, spiritually
Emaciated men and women, comfortable
With collateral damage in multiple, serial,
Video game-like wars, for persons
Having Big Brother, but no heartbeat
Or blood count…
Raymond Nat Turner © 2012 All Rights Reserved
The United States and the United Nations are responsible for the ongoing plight of Rwandan refugees.
Grim predictions about the U.S. military occupation of Africa are realized.
Activists secure a legal victory in the fight to save the Moses African Cemetery in Bethesda, Maryland.
Recent debates about Critical Race Theory (CRT) have been abysmally uninformed at best and utterly inaccurate at worst.
Bird, strings, Big Chief: 100: Harlem (For Charlie Parker/Donald Harrison/Harlem Symphony Orchestra) Gathering witnesses bearing beautiful collisions—
