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


  • A Reckoning for Al Sharpton and the Black Misleadership Class
    Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    A Reckoning for Al Sharpton and the Black Misleadership Class
    11 Apr 2019
    With support for “socialism” rising, the political fate of Al Sharpton and the rest of the Democratic party’s Black corporate minions is in doubt -- and they know it.
  • this is what solidarity looks like
    Raymond Nat Turner , BAR poet-in-residence
    …solidarity sounds like…
    10 Apr 2019
    I’m a Seoul Man, da-da-da—dat-da-da-da I’m a Seoul Man, da-da-da—dat-da-da-da I’m also a Pyongyang, Managua, Manilla, Teheran Man, too—As opposed to despot As I am to coup!
  • Freedom Rider: Scoundrels and Reparations
    Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Scoundrels and Reparations
    10 Apr 2019
    Reparations should not be a topic for national discussion until there is something akin to a consensus among black people about what to demand and how to do it.
  • Another African Convicted in Another Racist, Chauvinist Western Court
    Ann Garrison , BAR contributor
    Another African Convicted in Another Racist, Chauvinist Western Court
    10 Apr 2019
    Western propaganda about the Rwandan Genocide has been so triumphant that a Rwandan Hutu on trial in the West faces inevitable jury bias.
  • The International Struggle Against the Fake News of the U.S. Empire: Remarks at the National Writers Union 
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    The International Struggle Against the Fake News of the U.S. Empire: Remarks at the National Writers Union 
    10 Apr 2019
    The Mueller Report’s conclusion cannot reverse the damage that has been done to left journalism and activism by the fake news witch hunt.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us