Tehran students in 1971. (Photo: Kaveh Farrokh/foreignpolicy.com)
Hair in the game…
Heard it… Heard it…Heard it …
Rhythms of swishing
scissors shearing sable curls; wavy brown manes;
straight tresses salt and pepper; Shearing locks of
sundry shades of grey and white.
Harmonizing shouts of “Death To The Dictator!”
morph from cries for
Equal rights and explode in red sea streets…
Iranians are rising—again! Rising in
Movements…Maybe a flashback? 1909?
Maybe a Mosaddegh moment? Maybe more?
Maybe this is it? Maybe the next one?
Some of us remember Iranian demonstrations—
circa late 70s. Brilliant/militant feats of flesh and
Blood engineering…
Young and strong. Marching all night long—
thru twists and turns—
Playing cat and mouse, in and out, cul-de-sac traps
set by San Francisco’s political police. Truncheoned
thugs whose hand-eye coordination with the Shah’s
SAVAK intelligence tentacles reached out from icy fog
Some of us remember marchers’ names: Firouz, Mansour,
Mahdi, Azad…
Remember that they spoke English—Yet read the Germans
in Farsi.
Some of us remember standing in solidarity
as the peacock throne imploded— collapsed —
Under weight of street heat/fire of millions of
Feet in the street.
Some of us remember rapture of comrades and friends—
Rushing home, rejoicing—
Never to be heard from again…
We stand in solidarity today with women having hair in the
Game—Women marching through
Mushroom clouds of teargas; tsunamis of lead—red seas of
Death—Women resisting misogynist mullahs/murderous ‘morality’
Police…To topple theocratic thugs swaddled in silk robes of graft
Today we stand in heart/soul/spine solidarity with the Iranian
People:
Common mothers, daughters, sisters, wives of warehouse workers—
bus and truck drivers, train operators—fierce fighters—
again on the long, winding road of revolution…
lubricated by oil workers hurling themselves into the swelling
Resistance
And Mahsa Amini’s the Rock of Gibraltar bloodthirsty clerics
lifted
only
to
drop
on
Their own crimson-stained sandals and combat boots— Instructing
Us on how we must take our own Texas Taliban/Florida fundamentalists…on
© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe and PayPal.
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At the 1972 event, Walter Rodney proclaimed that “black unity must be international because we live on every continent, through no choice of our own.”
2020’s hindsight—frost in the rearview mirror. Miles Ahead… I’m Sheltered in Solidarity with National Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month— April in Boston—warm cider
The critics want to wipe clear the actual history of racial oppression that is baked into the social and economic structures of the US.
The police as they exist today need to be abolished, there’s no question. “Diversity doesn’t change the fundamental dynamics of policing.”
