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

…For Brother Glen
BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
04 Aug 2021
🖨️ Print Article
 …For Brother Glen
…For Brother Glen

…For Brother Glen 

“When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground…”

—African proverb (gender-adjusted)

 

I.

No bald “Build Back Better” slogans for

a burned Bruce library—

a Glen library gone—Pick up the ashes, 

Carry on… spreading them on new crops…

 

II.

I couldn’t breathe…

black cat dander, goober dust, rabbit foot

spook-ism; viral droplets of Madison Ave.

messaging: “Yes, we Can and bottle Jim

Jones Juice for regime Change you can

believe in…”

 

I couldn’t breathe…

droplets of dung from charlatans riding

bareback/backwards on donkeys

Every 2-4 years—Trapping Negroz in pigment

of their imaginations—whooping, hollering, 

Happy dancing on ice…for The Audacity of Dope

 

I couldn’t breathe…

Ecstasy/rhapsody of nodding icons—swept up

in rapture of Kool-Aided colonial euphoria—

Mentors becoming bus brutes when facts f-up

their highs…

 

I couldn’t breathe…

quarantined, on timeout, socially-distanced, isolated; 

Unappreciated—wasting away out West—killing me

softly for my words, my poem “**The Coming of Christ”

 

Yet, one slow blues Saturday a steel, velvet-wrapped

Voice of spirit-stirring

North Star stripe issued from the radio snapping me

to attention!

It possessed  thunderous timbre—Freedom’s Journal, 

Liberator, Emancipator tone snatching my collar!

It held Douglass DNA infecting my marrow! It had

Shedded—reading newswire copy on-the-air at age 11—

it harnessed horsepower even the Godfather of Soul

had to “Say it loud!” when rechristening it: “Ford!”

Ida B-like it commanded KPFA’s colossal signal—

showering ice-cold Wikileaks over 1/3 of the Golden 

State

It flared up in hot blue flames melting masks of mis-

leaders guarding freezers stuffed with corporate cash…

 

It possessed laser precision—surgically removing word

walls metastasized in the mind of a slutty professor; And

Taught lil’ Negroz in Teddy P-tones,“You gotta let him go,

if he looks like another Booker TKO—Or, more effective Evil!”

 

And it crescendoed from studios, stages, street corners, churches,

bookstores, bars, lecture halls, flatbed trucks—speaking truth to

The People 

igniting conscious explosions with its 4 word fuses:

“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!” 

“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!” 

 

Well done, Brother! May the Ancestors be pleased

with you kneeling near the 7 mounds; saluting the

7 trees guarding them on African Burial Ground; as

You leave Lower Manhattan, seeing Sun Ra, Saturn/beyond…

 

**https://youtu.be/XfHYkoMUOk4

 

 © 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Glen Ford

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • BAR Book Forum: Nadine Ehlers and Leslie Hinkson’s “Subprime Health”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Nadine Ehlers and Leslie Hinkson’s “Subprime Health”
    11 Sep 2019
    Race-based medicine in the US has solidified health inequality and is bound up with indebtedness.
  • BAR Book Forum: Joseph Drexler-Dreis’s “Decolonial Love”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Joseph Drexler-Dreis’s “Decolonial Love”
    11 Sep 2019
    Colonial relations of power and ways of classifying human persons that were essential to political colonialism have persisted.
  • Spikes of Violence: Protest in West Papua
    Dr. Binoy Kampmark
    Spikes of Violence: Protest in West Papua
    11 Sep 2019
    Papua and West Papua are subjected to violence and habitual repression from the Indonesian central authorities.
  • A Ferguson Organizer Reflects on the Aftermath 
    Tory Russell
    A Ferguson Organizer Reflects on the Aftermath 
    11 Sep 2019
    We figured out pretty fast that hashtags don’t move white supremacists, and petitions don’t change policy for Black lives.
  • White Supremacy Tried to Kill Jazz. An Interview with Gerald Horne
    Anton Woronczuk 
    White Supremacy Tried to Kill Jazz. An Interview with Gerald Horne
    11 Sep 2019
    Viewing musicians as exploited workers and as beleaguered contractors helps contribute to a better understanding of their art form and art more generally.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us