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

If The Shoe Fits...
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
05 Sep 2012
🖨️ Print Article

 

by Raymond Nat Turner

“In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Discover trails less traveled

Connecting us with sage spirits

Sampling James Brown with John

Brown”

 

If The Shoe Fits...

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

Shoe leather was once

Voting's egg, blood, its sperm...

Shoe's on the other foot, now

So, to vote, or not to vote

Is not the question---the

Commander even chided and

Derided us: Swap "bedroom

Slippers" for "marching shoes"

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Click our heels like children

Catching burnt orange and ebony

Butterflies filled with freedom to fly

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Conjure comets and name them

"Rebellion," "Underground," "Utopian,"

"Civil," "Survival" and celestial bodies coming...

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Scale the Shangri-la where

Seventy-five year olds march like

Twenty-five year olds and

Twenty-five year olds orate like

Seventy-five year olds,shoulder

To shoulder striking, sitting-in,

Picketing, teaching and taking 

Care of one another on filaments

Of shoestring budgets...

 

In our marching shoes, yes, we can

Discover trails less traveled

Connecting us with sage spirits

Sampling James Brown with John

Brown, disturbing the universe, questioning

Everything about a corrupt, rotten pyramid

Scheme stitched together with tear gas,

Bullets, bombs and LIES...

 

In our marching shoes, blisters and all,

We're the ones we've been waiting for---

Cast Prada, Nike, Reebok ballots

At bought and bossed footmen!

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at Raymond (at) upsurgejazz.com.

(c) 2012 All rights Reserved

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    COMMENTARY: The Shrinking American Empire, Glen Ford, 2009
    16 Sep 2026
    “The Iraq invasion greatly accelerated the process of U.S. imperialism’s decline.”
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Black Radicalism and the Return of the “Subversive Negro”
    16 Sep 2026
    NSPM-7 and the State Department's international campaign against "far-left political terrorism" represent new and more dangerous forms of domestic repression in the 21st century, while reconstructing…
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Colin Kaepernick’s “The Perilous Fight”
    16 Sep 2026
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Colin Kaepernick.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    A Climate “Movement” Homonym: (Or, How the Big Apple’s Annual Environmental Gathering Surfaces an Imperative Inquiry, Climate Week or Climate Weak?)
    16 Sep 2026
    The climate movement has been captured by a professional managerial class that prefers charity galas and virtue signaling to building power.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Find me another 11,780 votes?
    16 Sep 2026
    "Find me another 11,780 votes?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us