by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Prescient, pertinent and pointed questions to each other, and to our alleged betters about what we have, what we are, what we deserve, and what we settle for, posed by BAR's poet in residence.
Can We Have A Talk With You?
by BAr poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Can little you phone in plays for a big pro sport?
Can bought politicians run without your support?
Can they take over the schools and school board?
Can they make your children pray to their lord?
Can they wash millions of brains in a large box?
Can the get their Goebbels-walk on...on FOX?
Can they keep the masses asleep and uncritical?
Can they make a people, a-historical, apolitical?
Can they keep scaring you shitless in September?
Can they, thenâprestoâchange after November?
Can they pay all Blacks less than whites?
Can they say that voting exercises rights?
Can fools unlearn voting is democracy?
Can cold figures not lie about plutocracy?
Can big money make pols into yes-men?
Can they then move about like chessmen?
Can they also lie like printing machines?
Can they even play Capone with marines?
Can they lie almost every time they speak?
Can they produce nearly a war each week?
Can they, uh,âoopsâovertax you in error?
Can they use it fighting their âwar on terror?â
Can they make trillions, uh, just, disappear?
Can they make killings on their wars and fear?
Can they give you more hope and change?
Can it come straight from the rifle range?
Can they shoot some blacks and belt beers?
Can they do it over again every four years?
Can they deliver change you can believe in?
Can you use more black clothes to grieve in?
Can they lace your rivers and aquifers with lead?
Can they just put six slugs in your childâs head?
Can they keep increasing peoplesâ debt exposure?
Can they cause workers even more foreclosure?
Can they poison peoplesâ drinking water in Flint?
Can they doubleâ and even quadruple your rent?
Can they coolly ethnic cleanse your neighborhood?
Can they claim your home for the corporate good?
Can they send billions to the apartheid settler state?
Can they tell Motown that it will just have to wait?
Can they keep killing socialized medicine?
Can they keep conningâlike Con Edison?
Can they forevermore lie about socialism?
Can the âwhiteâ âraceâ card stay the schism?
Can âwhiteâ knaves know wealth Trumps all?
Can the black ones get over the Hil in free-fall?
Can some old fools, dupes, dopes even learnâ
Hope and change is back and Feelinâ the Bern?
Raymond Nat Turner Š 2016 All Rights Reserved
âBlack freedomâ as a claim, as a possibility, challenges us to imagine and to produce new modes of life.
That all this time later we are still learning new information about Hamptonâs killing is testament to the sheer volume of the effort aimed at this young revolutionary.
Well-meaning whites think its quite alright to steal Black activistsâ words â as long as their intentions are good, which is up to them to decide.
The CRC never defined identity politics as exclusionary or intended to mean that only those who experience a certain oppression can fight to end it.
South Africa is leading the way into the horror of policing for profit.
