Music in Montreal: Our song, “The Internationale!”
The world was pregnant
with two revolutions—fraternal twins—
Newborns cresting, crowning—pushing violently
from contracting wombs…We rejoiced, showering
them with
Revolutionary love!
Morphing, miraculously in tune;
the hungry hundreds’ voices rose
on salt swollen feet
In French, Farsi, Spanish, Russian, Tagalog,
Arabic, Hindi, Punjabi, Portuguese, Japanese,
Mandarin, Cantonese, Creole, Korean, English, etc.
Piston fists pumping to sun, stars, moon—
Our universe. Majestic incantation, “We have
been naught,
We shall be all…” Multilingual blending, crescendoing
like tympani spreading spinal chills—Then snatching
breath from our chests with mighty, wow finish:
“The Internationale shall be the Human race!!”
Too soon we’d see these infant revolutions ripped
from their cribs—from their
Mothers’ and
Midwives’ lactating breasts—And inexperienced
Arms…
And, yet, our song still resounds in jungles,
clandestine forests, barren deserts. Still echoes
off barbed wire and blackened bars of torture
chambers in filthy hellholes…
Our song’s polyglot harmony occasionally rising in
Surprising spaces;
belted out sometimes over orchestration of the world’s
‘richest’ men’s space boy-toys. Over Intelligence
Kings of white nationalist internationals’ Multi-polar
missile music/nuclear nightmare suites conducted by
Truncheon.
Our song still cuts through capitalist-roader nights
with a thousand eyes and facial recognition. Surveillance
state symphonies composed on elephant-eared walls and
eagle-eyed streets, scored on bloodstained rectangular rags
Our song still cries out, “Arise ye prisoners of
starvation…” Not, “ye yachtsmen flying the Jolly Roger for
spheres of Influence…”
Not, “ye capitalist-roaders becoming billionaires on pearls of
Toilers’ sweat…”
Our song still cries out, “A better world’s in birth…” And
“ The earth shall rise on new foundations…”
suggesting cooks can govern—the “human race” includes
Women, Black, Brown, LGBTQ+-And
Toilers must be deciders!
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 late Dr. Johanna Fernández left an awesome intellectual and activist legacy that includes her 2010 documentary film “Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
The climate movement will never be effective as long as it refuses to confront white supremacy within its own organizations and as a belief system which is unconcerned about Black and brown death.
"They Wear The Masks" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
Fisk University, an HBCU, is presenting a $400 million A.I. data center as progress for the North Nashville community. In truth, it means more pollution, more surveillance, and another chapter in a…
The mass incarceration system demands thousands of Black bodies behind bars. That system is maintained by prosecutorial misconduct which goes unpunished. That impunity is integral to keeping the…
