A flatbed truck carries a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Market Street Park in Charlottesville. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Statues of Limitation
A German comrade
quipped, “When you
Come to Frankfurt
You’ll find bronze celebrating
Poets, painters, philosophers—
But you won’t find the
Führer’s face any place—
Bratwurst, beer and Jazz
in Berlin; but you’ll find
lime green leprechauns
before patinas of Goebbels,
and Goering glaring from
park and plaza pedestals…”
Italian bandmates chimed in,
“Come with us when we go home—
you won’t find Mussolini’s
mug in Milan, or Rome…”
And the Butoh dancer blurted
“And no Tojo in Tokyo!”
Why’d I softly reply,
“ Dixie—south of the
Canadian Border—sits
pock marked with 1,000
syphilitic statues of
Slavers, traitors, terrorists—“
Instead of screaming,
“Would you name your child
Jezebel Jackson,
Judas Jones,
Satan Smith, or
Sheriff Joe—
Would you call yourself
a nigger, bitch, or hoe?
Would you celebrate
Stonewall Jackson, or
Robert E. Lee—
Would you tell your Mother
You’re an SOB?”
Raymond Nat Turner © 2017 All Rights Reserved
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 and PayPal.
The United States got its hands on Alex Saab a second time in order to use him in its case against Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. succeeded in getting a guilty plea from Saab, but the current Venezuelan…
“The Iraq invasion greatly accelerated the process of U.S. imperialism’s decline.”
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…
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Colin Kaepernick.
The climate movement has been captured by a professional managerial class that prefers charity galas and virtue signaling to building power.
