by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
When our giants go down, our spines must straighten up and create new beginnings.
Redouble our efforts…
(For Robert Knight, Chokwe, Amiri,
And others known and less known…)
by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
When our Knights are captured
Or fall on battlefields, as they
Surely must, and we lose their
Brilliant lights and we are
Scrambling to pry pens,
Swords, spears, bread and
Roses from stainless steel
Grips of their icy hands—
Scrambling to hoist our
Fallen banners, temporarily
Mired in mud and blood,
Even higher, scrambling
To staunch rivulets of
Brine from our sweetly
Shattered hearts…
When our giants — in
All sizes — go down,
Our spines straighten
Honoring, immortalizing,
Their legends, burnished
Names, by divvying up
Cosmic, ancient, work
Creating them in the
Beginning…
Raymond Nat Turner © 2014 All Rights Reserved
Many in the U.S. "Left" are actually liberal elements that pull socialism toward the Democratic Party. Black organizers must build independent power.
The Attica rebellion was not only about prison "reform." The prison is the most intense expression of a system of imperialist domination that operates at every scale.
"In the same boat?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
An Open Letter from the American "Left" allegedly on behalf of unnamed persons said to be Iranian political prisoners has provided cover for U.S. imperial aggression against Iran by refusing to…
Empire taught us what to believe about the Global South. It also taught us how to move through it, and being colonized here does not exempt us from carrying those beliefs with us.
