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Ancestral Thoughts, Aloud…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
01 Feb 2017
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

The first full week of the Trumpacolypse behind us, our poet consults the ancestors...

Ancestral Thoughts, Aloud…

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

Grateful

catching snow cone cars crawling up St. Nic…

Eyelid levees breached by hot tears

Flowing with WBAI evening news

This storm and stress period…

Thinking out loud how

Robert Knight might be writing

Reports into tiny morning hours—

“the Knight has a thousand eyes…”

Thinking out loud how

Pete Seeger, well worn voice, metallic twanging

banjo strings might ‘kettle’ ten thousand of us,

singing just octaves below the better world in birth

Thinking out loud how

Amiri Baraka might split our sides showing

No regard for Beauregard, his Cheeto Bandito boss,

and bottom-feeders drained from the swamp—

A Low Coup, or Who coup upped Amerikkka?

Thinking out loud how

Jayne Cortez might drill marching women:

“Find your own voice, use your own voice;

Find your own voice, use your own voice…” in

Independent politics denouncing Dem body snatchers

looking through the women into 2018—seeing 2020…

Thinking out loud how

Michael Ratner might give

Litigation Sensation to any administration—

Filing fifteen suits—one for every day

Boss Tweet/$cammany Haul have

Occupied the offal office, stonewalled hearings on

capitalist hill and recklessly eyeballed the

white supreme court with bloodshot eyes

Thinking out loud how

cranky Odetta might be ‘bout “Jim Crow Blues”

But, singing it, steeling us and casting a spell

on the apprentice devil, foppish Führer




Thinking out loud how

the Zinn master might remind those tired of

Traveling by mule that they can’t

“be neutral on a moving train”

Friendship Train, solidarity train

Thinking out loud how

Oscar Brown, Jr.’s demand for:

“40 Acres and A Mule” might go well with

Single-payer—or, how he might just call

Tomfoolery of Price, “Bullshit!”

Thinking out loud how

an Abbey Lincoln release from tension—

“I Got Some People In Me”

A Kleenex-snatching “Down Here Below”

”Brother Can You Spare A Dime” might

Steel our spirits for class war—and

Thinking out loud how

Confucius might say,

“Man who grab pussy, turn Tiger loose…”

Raymond Nat Turner (c) 2017 All Rights Reserved

Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performance artist. Find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com

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