The Supremes
Mary was mysterious,
but the best dancer
Diana, the magnetic,
cooing romancer—
But, here’s a secret I know:
cats like me dug Miss Flo—
And the 4th Supreme’s ‘fro!
The 4th Supreme came
Singing tones ‘tween
Douglass and Carmen McRae—
Malcolm X and Lady Day
The 4th Supreme came
Singing “Stop In The Name Of Love!”
by way of Brandeis/Bombing-ham—
hitting Dynamite Hill high notes
The 4th Supreme came
Singing “Reflections”
in silver bracelets, on a
Newsweek cover captioned:
“Red, Black and Wanted!”
Hoover hated her harmonies with millions…
But I heard, “Set me free, why don’t you, babe?”
Rocking me to “ …Try Something New:”
Dialectics…
The 4th Supreme came
Singing, “I Hear A Symphony—”
“No Matter What Sign You Are,”
in ’08—but I
forgive her and comrades
and friends for singing flat
Madison Avenue smash hits: “Yes,
we can and bottle Jim Jones Juice;”
“regime Change you can believe in—”
delivering “Nothing But Heartaches” to
Honduras, Libya, Syria, Mother Africa…
© 2018. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner, our poet in residence, is an accomplished performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
The Stokely Carmichael of the 60s continued to politically and ideologically evolve while in Africa where he adopts the names of his political mentors Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah.
The great revolutionary foresaw the need to “rapidly switch from a national consciousness to a social and political consciousness” committed to the “distribution of wealth and social relations
Having endured 50 years of incarceration, Fitzgerald was California’s longest-serving former Black Panther.
The media focus on Black-Asian “tensions” promoted the misleading idea that Black people are the main perpetrators of anti-Asian attacks.
It is not up to the US to demand or dictate that Eritrea withdraw from Ethiopia -- it is Ethiopia’s and only Ethiopia’s call to make.
