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
For Africans in the U.S., anger is an important first step in mentally emancipating themselves from empire and declaring war on it.
The peoples of this world will never see true liberation and peace until we are free of the shackles of U.S. and Western colonial domination.
The proposed 854-bed facility will be a hybrid jail, hospital and mental health and substance use treatment facility for people facing criminal charges.
No amount of verbal gymnastics can escape the simple truth that indigenous resistance is crucial to ending colonial atrocities.
Puerto Ricans protested Harris’ visit citing the ongoing US occupation of Puerto Rico and support to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
