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

If The Shoe Fits...
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
05 Sep 2012
🖨️ Print Article

 

by Raymond Nat Turner

“In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Discover trails less traveled

Connecting us with sage spirits

Sampling James Brown with John

Brown”

 

If The Shoe Fits...

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

Shoe leather was once

Voting's egg, blood, its sperm...

Shoe's on the other foot, now

So, to vote, or not to vote

Is not the question---the

Commander even chided and

Derided us: Swap "bedroom

Slippers" for "marching shoes"

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Click our heels like children

Catching burnt orange and ebony

Butterflies filled with freedom to fly

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Conjure comets and name them

"Rebellion," "Underground," "Utopian,"

"Civil," "Survival" and celestial bodies coming...

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Scale the Shangri-la where

Seventy-five year olds march like

Twenty-five year olds and

Twenty-five year olds orate like

Seventy-five year olds,shoulder

To shoulder striking, sitting-in,

Picketing, teaching and taking 

Care of one another on filaments

Of shoestring budgets...

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Discover trails less traveled

Connecting us with sage spirits

Sampling James Brown with John

Brown, disturbing the universe, questioning

Everything about a corrupt, rotten pyramid

Scheme stitched together with tear gas,

Bullets, bombs and LIES...

 

In our marching shoes, blisters and all,

We're the ones we've been waiting for---

Cast Prada, Nike, Reebok ballots

At bought and bossed footmen!

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at Raymond (at) upsurgejazz.com.

(c) 2012 All rights Reserved

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


More Stories


  • El Obeid
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    War in Sudan: Impacts on the Horn of Africa and West Asia
    10 Jul 2026
    The war in Sudan between government forces and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) backed Rapid Support Force (RSF) continues, and so does what experts call the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The…
  • Patriot Front in DC
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Opposing Patriot Front and White Supremacist Groups
    10 Jul 2026
    Daryle Lamont Jenkins is founder of One People’s Project, which seeks to combat and expose right-wing, white supremacist groups and individuals. He joins us from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to discuss…
  • Jacqueline Luqman
    Black Alliance For Peace
    FIFA and the Red Card - A Special Bulletin
    08 Jul 2026
    FIFA and the USA are nothing more than corrupt institutions who rig, renege, and rationalize the fact that neither adheres to their own purported standards - whether it’s the so-called Declaration of…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Patriot Front and What Once Was Chocolate City
    08 Jul 2026
    The Patriot Front’s bold incursions into U.S. cities are a sign of their burgeoning strength and of the weakness of Black movement politics.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    INTERVIEW: “I was deported because I fought colour bar” Claudia Jones, 1956
    08 Jul 2026
    “I was deported from the U.S.A, because as a Negro woman Communist of West Indian descent, I was a thorn in their side…”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us