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


  • Kit Klarenberg
    USAID Exported CIA Balkan Terror to Haiti
    26 Feb 2025
    After the CIA orchestrated the 2004 coup in Haiti, the U.S. ushered in a genocidal paramilitary organization from the Balkans to violently remove all resistance to regime change efforts.
  • Black Agenda Radio
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio February 21, 2025
    21 Feb 2025
    In this week’s segment, we hear about US policy towards Somalia, which is again the target of US policies of destabilization and military attack. But first, we talk to an organizer about the…
  • Donald trump signing executive orders
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Afeni on Mobilizing Against Neo-Liberalism and Imperialism
    21 Feb 2025
    Afeni is a Washington, D.C., organizer and an Electoral Justice Table member of the Movement for Black Lives. She joins us from Washington to discuss the first month of the Donald Trump…
  • Map of the Horn of Africa
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Trump Administration Continues U.S. Destabilization of Somalia
    21 Feb 2025
    Abayomi Azikiwe, is the editor of Pan-African Newswire. He joins us from Detroit to discuss U.S. policy towards the Horn of Africa nation, Somalia. The Trump administration recently carried out…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Fall of Eric Adams
    19 Feb 2025
    Eric Adams has a multitude of legal and political problems that have ended any political ambitions he may have had. Donald Trump may have kept him from going to jail, but in seeking a lifeline from a…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us