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

2/4 Dance Don’t Cut It
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
18 Jan 2018
🖨️ Print Article
2/4 Dance Don’t Cut It
2/4 Dance Don’t Cut It

“Pay, or die…” the Death
Sentence Big Pharma-
Insurance Mob just issued
a neighbor; and a Frankenfood
experiment’s irritating my gut

The water smells swampy some days,
like bleach others; Tents grow in night
air like multi-colored mushrooms—crazy
cancer cells; Another school’s shuttered,
its teachers scattered in the wind, like
pencil sharpener shavings—Money for
Bombs, not for books—Wow, the wars
went from seven to nine this week…

Here they come again with Fear:
‘Freedom of Choice,’ binary bad
or worse options—hiking uphill
barefoot, in elephant excrement,
donkey dung to take one—with or
without Vaseline—from the1% again

I’m not sure I have another 8 yrs
for translating, deciphering slogans:
“Regime…change you can believe in!”
“Yes, we can…and bottle Jim Jones Juice!”
as silly spoils of celebrity-worship;
Isn’t it time for Adult Politics?

Isn’t it time to abandon Infantile
Exercises—searching for saviors
Every 2 to 4 yrs—and Nominate
Meeting More Than Four Corners;
Donate to Door-To-Door; Phone Bank
for Boycott; Campaign for Consciousness;
Support Shoe Leather-Street Heat running for
Raising roofs, planting food, curing cancer?

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


  • Glen Ford on the End of Affirmative Action
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Glen Ford on the End of Affirmative Action
    07 Jul 2023
    Black Agenda Report co-founder, the late Glen Ford, spoke to the Real News Network after another affirmative action ruling in 2013.
  • New Documents Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    New Documents Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners
    07 Jul 2023
    Orisanmi Burton is an assistant professor at American University’s Department of Anthropology.
  • Building the Peoples' Senate
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Building the Peoples' Senate
    07 Jul 2023
    Shannon Jones is a member of the Spirit of Mandela’s Peoples' Senate Coordinating Committee.
  •  The Supreme Court and Political Corruption
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Supreme Court and Political Corruption
    05 Jul 2023
    The Supreme Court has always been a political institution. Racism, political expediency, and outright corruption have always dictated its decisions.
  • POEM: Somebody Blew Up America, Amiri Baraka, 2001
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: Somebody Blew Up America, Amiri Baraka, 2001
    05 Jul 2023
     A poem from the late Amiri Baraka questions the myths of U.S. exceptionalism that engulfed the nation after 9/11 attacks, contextualizing them with a history of the West’s centuries-long…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us