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.
"Spinning Half-truth straw into big lie gold…" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
True environmental liberation demands south-to-south solidarity against racial capitalism, linking the struggles of oppressed communities from Palestine to Louisiana under a shared framework of…
While politicians debate legal procedure, residents of Washington DC live under a sustained military deployment, exposing how both federal and local power collaborate against them.
The A.I. revolution has a hidden cost. Its massive data centers create huge amounts of waste and decimate labor and humanity.
The Trump 2.0 administration is demonstrating the logical endpoint of a state project built on racial oppression. Trump’s actions show continuity with past history.
