…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.
The state of Georgia is using the RICO organized crime statute to crush Stop Cop City protests.
Socialists, organizers, and working class leaders in the United States describe the challenges the movement faces, and what is to be done to overcome them.
The petition process to put Cop City on the ballot in Atlanta continues, despite Atlanta public officials' insistence on building a so-called public safety training center that their constituents don…
Fani Willis' prosecution of Black teachers, gun violence and racism, and the challenge of securing exoneration in New York.
Shani Robinson taught in the Atlanta, Georgia public school system.
