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

Ol’ Red Jack Hirschman: He Weaponized Words
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
01 Sep 2021
Ol’ Red Jack Hirschman: He Weaponized Words
Ol’ Red Jack Hirschman: He Weaponized Words

Ol’ Red Jack Hirschman: He Weaponized Words

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” —Percy Bysshe Shelly

I.

Death comes in 3s they say. So maybe 6

months of San Francisco Poet Laureates

Ferlinghetti,

Mirikitani,

Hirschman

checking out counts as three???

 

I can’t quote Jack—except for, “Can’t speak

 for all, that’s the whole first point—” Yet, I

can wax into the wee hours on his arms

Embracing me as enemy combatant vs capital

                                                                                                      

II.

The rat-ta-tat-tat-tat of his typewriter weaponized

words enforcing dialectical laws… "Any means necessary:”

paintings, poems, collages, translations in Haitian Creole,

Russian, Spanish, German, Hebrew, French, Greek, Italian,

Albanian for foreign fighters daring to don red badges of

Resistance…

 

The rat-ta-tat-tat-tat of his typewriter weaponized

words ricocheting off Wall Street and Washington

warlords. Words echoing in hearts and minds of

of auto and postal worker children—paychecks

away from zoo bellies, no soap-waterless weeks

accompanying cardboard mattresses and tents

 

Revolutionary Poets Brigade internationalist

commandant, North Beach head dug in at Café

Trieste, his guided missiles questioned lunacy.

Some even struck where little cable cars climb half

way to the stars, carrying confederate sympathizers

belching benzene, coughing COVID droplets on operators

 

Revolutionary Poets Brigade internationalist

commandant, North Beach head dug in at Café

Trieste; Fishbowl escapee drinking cigarettes/smoking

Jack Daniels, living hand-to-mouth on poet’s minus six

figure salary

No mas… Red Jack Hirschman—Presente!!

 

© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
 

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, 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: https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-town-criers-big-tooth-fund

PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

 

Jack Hirschman

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


More Stories


  • Hanna Eid
    Mariategui and American Labor
    02 Jul 2025
    Capitalism’s accelerating crises demand a pan-American labor revolt against Trump’s plundering, bipartisan imperialism, and the neoliberal NAFTA. José Carlos Mariátegui’s century-old warnings are…
  • Essam Elkorghli , Matteo Capasso
    Fabricating Enemies in Times of Decline: NATO 2025 Summit
    02 Jul 2025
    The 2025 NATO summit exposed a dying empire escalating wars and austerity to hide its collapse while backing genocide in Gaza and illegal attacks worldwide.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Did New Yorkers say, No Mo Cuomo; No Mo Turkey Trot with Papa Cop?
    02 Jul 2025
    "Did New Yorkers say, No Mo Cuomo; No Mo Turkey Trot with Papa Cop?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Terrible Origins of July 4th
    02 Jul 2025
    The causes of the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence are rarely taught in this country. The American colonists chafed under British rules limiting their settlements and feared they would end…
  • Adam Mahoney
    From Watts to D.C.: How 500 Black Neighborhoods Vanished in 45 Years
    02 Jul 2025
    America’s gentrified neighborhoods have lost 500,000 Black people, while gaining residents of every other race, a study finds.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us