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Lament for the Late, Great African-American People…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
05 Nov 2013
🖨️ Print Article

by Raymond Nat Turner

Stop our brothers from

Talking superfluous

Shit, gratuitous

Violence, fratricide…

Like Monsanto madmen,

Killing and polluting

Everything they touch…

 

Lament for the Late, Great African-American People…

by Raymond Nat Turner

 

Stentorian voices

Snuffed like birthday

Candles by alphabet

Assassins, ’63-’69…

Ebony toast of the

World being birthed,

Now the laughingstock

With star-spangled

Quislings running on

Alcohol, Geritol,

And protocol,

Huffing and puffing

Hot air in our name

 

Darling young people

I can’t claim, “You

Dropped a bomb on me,”

Chemical warfare

Using crack cocaine

To wipe out consciousness

Wasn’t your doing and

Of course you didn’t

Conjure tumbleweed

Ghost towns, rust brown, gut

Factories and shutter schools

 

You didn’t

Robo-steal homes with

Sub-prime loans from

Families living for

Four generations in them

 

You didn’t

Create death panels

Tearing tender flesh

Off babies baking on spreadsheets—

 

Still, I’m pissed and

Disappointed in you…

Sometimes I feel like

A simple infant,

A whining baby

Crying over and

Over again and

Again the same wants

Writing over and

Over again and

Again the same poem:

 

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

 

Wishing I was Trane

Or Wayne, turning licks

Inside out, outside in, up-

Side down, downside up,

Spinning straw into gold,

Lemons into fresh

Lemonade every night,

Splashing in your faces

Like wet, cold Wikileaks

 

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

 

Like lightening bolt, taser

Alerts through Dr Dre

Headphones wrapped ‘round

Your heads, through Snitch

Phone, tablet, notebook,

Game boy, Play Station

Stigmata burned in your

Anesthetized hands

 

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

 

Sistas step into

Fannie Lou panties—

Lysistrata licks—

No pussy for provocateur,

Black Klansmen running

Ruthless, like BP oil,

Killing and polluting

Everything they touch…

Stop our brothers from

Talking superfluous

Shit, gratuitous

Violence, fratricide…

Like Monsanto madmen,

Killing and polluting

Everything they touch…

 

Make them strap on their

Balls, pull up their pants,

Put down their pop guns,

Practice with Pumas,

Nikes and Adidas—

Scoring bull’s-eyes—not

 

Bullshit…

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE

WAKE UP BLACK PEOPLE…

 

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at upsurgejazz.com.

 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2013 All Rights Reserved

 

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