Midterm…Mo’ Power to the People!
by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know,
You don't know
How glad I am hearing Oakland’s Measure FF won 81%;
60,000 workers will get $12.25 an hour—U.S.’s, highest
Minimum, heading for fifteen; SF’s Prop J’s mirrors FF;
Nebraska, Alaska and Arkansas are also on the case…
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you
Don't know
How glad I am to hear ‘bout grassroots Richmond
Defeating Chevron’s neo-colonial city council candidates and
Their $3 million mayoral man! “Do people” go door-to-door,
Leather on concrete, bone to wood, collecting peoples’ pennies,
Nickels and quarters? “Do people” believe, like Harry Bridges,
That workers ‘stimulus packages’ reside in their back pockets?
“Do people” meet more than four corners democratically
Building coalitions? Richmond Progressive Alliance People do!
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you
Don't know
How glad I am to hear from Hawaii ‘bout grassroots Maui’s
Moratorium triumphing ‘gainst Dow Chemical and Mengele
Monsanto, though outspent 87 to 1!
Why Halloween long faces? Was there a two-degree
Climate jump? Have another billion bees disappeared?
Why trembling, hand wringing, frothing at the mouth?
Are sidewalks opening, swallowing us? Are we being
Plunged into decades of darkness, sans Dem majority
On Capitalist Hill? Post-mortems galore, searching for
The dime’s difference in billionaire clubs, two wings of
A vulture, scripted scam-pains, wrestlers’ choreography
Like Theater Security Actors (TSA) taking water away,
Protecting us from terrorists…
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you
Don't know
How glad I am, not knowing details how Dems took
World Wrestling Entertainment-style ass-whuppins—
Could ‘War of the Week,’ ‘Enemy of the Month’ serials,
A 1ST & 4TH Amendment redacted decade have something
To do with it? Might showering $3 billion annually on an
Apartheid aircraft carrier, slaughtering Palestinians
2,000+ biennially, enter the equation?
Wouldn’t warehousing Black and Brown men as
Commodities sold on the New York Stock Exchange
Become corny as Cosby’s sweaters, Pat Boone’s bucks?
Maybe people went Teddy, singing: “It takes a fool to lose
Twice and start all over again…think we better let him go—
Let him go, ‘cause he looks like another Booker T-KO!”
Rays of sun, midterm mourning bipolar
Vortex slicing, dicing foggy radio-activity
…And you don't know, you don't know, you don't know,
You don't know
How glad I am, celebrating tiny triumphs,
Studying small victories, dreaming
Bigger, invoking charms, chants,
Spells, sorcery, black magic, voodoo, science—
Whatever, organizing the People’s Tribunal,
Shoe-Time at the Apollo, trying, shoeing away
Nuremberg Negroz like Unca Jim, Corporate
Black Cash-hounds, Sharlatons, Jesses, takes!
Black masses reigning leather, showering stilettos,
Sneakers, boots, on Negro and lighter-skinned senior
Scoundrels like Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, W, Ashcroft;
Force-feeding Gary Null’s ‘Green Stuff’, Guantanamo-style…
To orange jump-suited Alberto Gonzalez, Holder, Big O
As restless lines wrap three times ‘round the block for
Passes to meet Mumia Abu Jamal, Jamil Al-Amin,
Russell Maroon Shoats, Chip Fitzgerald and other freed
POWs and political prisoners—Black Is Back bursting out
Of Occupy, into Jericho, morphing into 400,000 strong
Climate marchers, metastasizing into Ferguson flavored,
Million Worker marchers Toi-Toiing through Times Square
On their way to Wall Street, proclaiming: This is NOT a test,
We control the docks, streets, trains, runways, radio and TV
Stations, gas, oil, factories, farms, orchards, we control the
Water, the grid— “Hands up, don’t loot!“
Raymond Nat Turner © 2014 All Rights Reserved
Mayotte is a French overseas territory island located in the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar. It is also near the Comoros Islands, whose citizens travel to Mayotte as undocumented…
The Democrat-sponsored bill has broad bipartisan support, but civil rights groups say it’s open to misuse against climate and racial justice activists.
The women of Vieques, an island off the east coast of Puerto Rico, have been on the front lines of the generations-long struggle for peace and justice to end the havoc wrought by U.S. foreign policy…
Gerald Horne observes U.S. politics, congress can change policy on the Middle East, and the campaign to free Ruchell Magee after decades of imprisonment.
