…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.
A KPFA reporter experienced violent encounters with police in Antioch, California and advocates on behalf of others.
Amazon donated $1.7 million to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation last year as it faced allegations of illegal anti-union work.
Thousands of migrants are trapped at the border as the United States and Mexico crack down on deportations—under Biden’s policies, many will be expelled.
What passes for leadership is always a joke played upon Black people. The high water mark of the CBC being the “conscience of the congress” is long gone. No one can look to them on the issue of…
African people are already battling against U.S. rightist forces - from the Trump/Republican supporters to the warmongering neoliberal democrats. It would be an affront to our history and people to…
