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 it takes 100 years
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
06 Dec 2017
🖨️ Print Article
if it takes 100 years

I am the North Star—
Hope; Never wavering, organizing,
burning thorough bars, walls, wire—
I am consciousness of all
creatures, crystalline water,
clean, sweet air, black soil
From forgotten reservations

I am non-GMO, organic apples,
pears, lettuce, tomatoes, spinach
Springing from beads of sweat
mixed with midnight oil—
I am not the latest sneakers, phones
from Black Friday Madness,
Celebrity Worship or
Dumbed-down gossip ‘bout ‘stars’

I am coagulated blood
of gunned down doctors wafting from
Women’s reproductive rights—
Flowering from fertilizer of guilt
I am freedom, loving
Whomever I choose…

I am single-payer
Healthcare rising from Big Pharma
body-slams/lies of lobotomized politicians;
I am affordable housing
clubbed from corrugated cardboard sleep;
I am free education—
Peace studies writhing free of
handcuffs, cutting off circulation…
I am smoldering ashes of a
burned down Black Baptist Church
Repudiating ‘race’ with pain

I am revolution—
Socialism passing freely, back and forth
between metal detectors/bomb-sniffing dogs—
Arriving just moments ago:
…Having been here forever…

Raymond Nat Turner © 2017 All Rights Reserved
Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performing artist. Find much more of his work at http"//upsurgejazz.com.

poetry

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


More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio January 23, 2026
    23 Jan 2026
    In this week’s segment, we cover state repression and regime change efforts. While the corporate media parroted state narratives about a popular uprising in Iran, all evidence indicates that recent…
  • ICE Protest
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    ICE Domestic Repression in Minnesota
    23 Jan 2026
    Mnar Adley is the founder and director of MintPress News, an independent media outlet. She joins us from Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Donald Trump's ICE enforcement is used as domestic police…
  • 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…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us