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
  • omnibus

Redouble our efforts…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
22 Apr 2014
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner

When our giants go down, our spines must straighten up and create new beginnings.

 

Redouble our efforts…

(For Robert Knight, Chokwe, Amiri,

And others known and less known…)

by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner

 

When our Knights are captured 

Or fall on battlefields, as they 

Surely must, and we lose their

Brilliant lights and we are

Scrambling to pry pens,

Swords, spears, bread and

Roses from stainless steel 

Grips of their icy hands—

Scrambling to hoist our 

Fallen banners, temporarily

Mired in mud and blood, 

Even higher, scrambling 

To staunch rivulets of

Brine from our sweetly

Shattered hearts…

 

When our giants — in 

All sizes — go down, 

Our spines straighten

Honoring, immortalizing,

Their legends, burnished 

Names, by divvying up

Cosmic, ancient, work

Creating them in the 

Beginning…

 

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at upsurgejazz.com.

 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2014 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


  • Libya
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    How the Libyan People Are Still Impacted By the U.S./NATO Destruction of Their State
    23 May 2025
    Our guest is Dr. Abdelkarim Kashkar. He is a physician and author who writes about politics in Libyan newspapers. He joins us from Benghazi, Libya, to discuss how the United States impacts the people…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Biden's Fate and Israel's Sadistic Revenge
    21 May 2025
    Israel is starving Gazans to death and continuing its bombing attacks on civilians. Israel also specializes in personal revenge, targeting men, women, and children who might be the subject of…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Towards Lasting Peace, Shirley Graham DuBois, 1970
    21 May 2025
    Shirley Graham Du Bois on the liberation of Palestine.
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Propaganda Watch: Kagame Is Not Traoré
    21 May 2025
    A recurring social media trope casts Rwandan President Paul Kagame as a defiant African hero, like Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, resisting the West’s dictates, but nothing could be further from the…
  • Jon Jeter
    In DC, A New ‘Mayor 1 Percent” This Time in Blackface
    21 May 2025
    Muriel Bowser is proving that Black faces in high places don’t break systems, they grease them. While slashing wages for tipped workers and handing billionaires stadium deals, D.C.’s mayor is the…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us