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


  • INTERVIEW: Por qué Luchamos los Negros/What the Black Power Struggle is About, Stokely Carmichael, Havana, 1967
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    INTERVIEW: Por qué Luchamos los Negros/What the Black Power Struggle is About, Stokely Carmichael, Havana, 1967
    28 Jun 2023
    When Kwame Ture was still Stokely Carmichael he gave an extraordinary interview in Havana in 1967 on Black Power politics, Third World Solidarity, imperialism, and revolution.
  • Human Suffering Worsens in DRC, the Heart of Africa
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Human Suffering Worsens in DRC, the Heart of Africa
    28 Jun 2023
    A million more Congolese people have been displaced to satisfy the resource hunger of the industrialized world.
  • Bipartisol and the ailing body politic
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Bipartisol and the ailing body politic
    28 Jun 2023
                                                         
  • BAR Book Forum: Amanda Lock Swarr’s Book, “Envisioning African Intersex”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Amanda Lock Swarr’s Book, “Envisioning African Intersex”
    28 Jun 2023
    This week’s featured author is Amanda Lock Swarr. Swarr is Associate Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington.
  • AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #47
    Black Alliance for Peace US Out of Africa Network
    AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #47
    28 Jun 2023
    Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor Ann Garrison analyzes the continued plunder of the Democratic Republic of Congo by U.S. allies Uganda and Rwanda in the latest Black Alliance for Peace AFRICOM…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us