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

Redouble our efforts…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
22 Apr 2014
🖨️ Print Article

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 can be contacted at upsurgejazz.com.

 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2014 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


  • Iran
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    U.S. and Israel Attempt Regime Change Against Iran
    23 Jan 2026
    Nina Farnia is an assistant professor at Albany Law School in New York. She is a legal historian, focusing on the role of modern imperialism in U.S. law and politics, and a member of the Anti-…
  • Tobi Raji
    RFK-backed Infant Vaccine Study in Africa to Proceed Despite Backlash, U.S. Says
    21 Jan 2026
    U.S. funding for a study on the timing of hepatitis B vaccine doses in infants in Guinea-Bissau violates accepted standards of medical ethics.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Racist, Imperialist U.S. Vassal Denmark Now Cries Over Greenland
    21 Jan 2026
    Donald Trump and other U.S. presidents are gangsters who will sometimes steal from their own crew. The Greenland heist is but the latest example, as the Denmark colonizers cry that they were robbed…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Fragmentation, Force, and Fascism: The Architecture of the Repressive National Security State
    21 Jan 2026
    The state is not drifting toward repression; it is building it with serious intent. ICE raids, militarized police, and mass surveillance are the tools of a system designed to manage and silence…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SPEECH: Reporting the News in the Heartland of Empire, William Worthy, 1970
    21 Jan 2026
    “From journalists…the greatest need of the moment is sound analysis of the U.S. empire and the focusing of the news spotlight on its far-flung sinister operations.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us