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


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    How to Protest for Sonya Massey
    31 Jul 2024
    Sonya Massey’s brutal murder at the hands of the police has resulted in anguish and anger but no difference in how state violence is protested. Instead, we see surrender to the crumbs of condolences…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: In Our Hands: Thoughts on Black Music, Bernice Johnson Reagon, 1976
    31 Jul 2024
    For the late Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Black music was a tool in the struggle for Black liberation, and not what it has mostly become today: a retrograde appendage to neoliberalism and white power.
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist , Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Don't Believe the Hype: Venezuela is a Democracy
    31 Jul 2024
    Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report editor and columnist, discusses observing the recent elections in Venezuela and why the U.S. still seeks to undermine that democracy.
  • x
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Victims’ Pact: Rwanda and Israel
    31 Jul 2024
    Rwanda weaponizes the Rwandan Genocide to justify its violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), just as Israel weaponizes the Holocaust to justify its violence in Gaza and the West Bank.
  • Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
    Presidential Politics and the Palestinian Question
    31 Jul 2024
    The visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States highlights the role of imperialism in the genocide in Gaza.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us