front row at Aretha's funeral
Star-struck, in childlike
awe of celestial
Voices, silver tongues;
I spent seven hours
glued to the screen—
back in the Baptist Church,
Celebrating, honoring the
humanitarian, North Star
Shero—genius in her field!
What a day, imbibing
Mighty Black Music!
Joyful noise, Lake Michigan-
sized magnet, gathering forces
elbow to elbow—
Enemies, Orange Age
Allies on the clock…
Basking in reflected light,
Assassins, informants, jailers,
Mouthpieces, mass murderers,
super predators, slutty professors
came riding, riding, riding, riding
bare-back, backwards on a
Donkey to The D.
Riding in corporate coats
of many logos—then
Limboing their way
Center stage, tracking
donkey dung down the
red carpet; playing
our emotions, our
Souls, our strength—
our Achilles’ heel
like plastic kazoos:
resurrecting the
Democratic Party…
© 2018. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Our poet in residence, Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed performing artist. Find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
Northeast, midwest, southwest, south, down south, up south, out south—south of the Canadian border—Slouched down in his cruiser, slow-rollin’ the ‘hood; Or a-
The new Democratic administration seems determined to sabotage an agreement to end the “longest war.”
King explicitly linked the value of human dignity to the material conditions necessary to enable people to live a decent life.
In "On Anarchism and Black Revolution" Peter James Hudson examines the historical roots of critiques of anarchism and its relationship to Black liberation movements.
Being in the wake, in the afterlives of slavery…is to be caught in the reverberating aftermath of a long disaster, a durational dance with danger, with terror.
