Store
by Raymond Nat Turner
I.
1984:
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
Crescendo chants arising from
Python-like picket lines, slowly
Circling shadows of South African
Pirate ship, Nedlloyd-Kimberly –
Leper loaded with loot off pearls of
Sweat, vampire apartheid violently
Sucked from Black African hides …
Eleven days sitting, quarantined, its
Booty untouched by Longshoremen’s
Mighty hands, or huge white horses –
I, like Reagan, “do not recall,” who
Called the picket, who organized the
Action, I remember one speaker only:
The deep, dark chocolate brown, booming
Baritone brother sportin’ black, Lenin-like,
Greek Fisherman’s cap, comin’ Coltranish,
Connecting dots, incendiary sharps and flats,
Mesmerizing, clarifying, Frederick Douglass,
Agitator tongues; no halting hemming and hawing,
Bureaucratic, clap-trap; just good old-fashioned
Gut-bucket Blues; no toned-down, detente trade
Unionism; just cut to the chase, cornbread and
Collard greens, proletarian prose; no milquetoast
Mumbo-jumbo; just straight-ahead, swinging
Soapbox, standing on shoulders of 1934 strikers –
Bloody Thursday Martyrs – whose crimson silhouettes
Still streak sidewalks of gentrified San Francisco…
The deep, dark chocolate brown, booming
Baritone brother sportin’ black, Lenin-like,
Greek Fisherman’s cap, comin’ Coltranish –
Natural notes eloquently crossing Black
Baptist preacher, Harry Bridges, Ella Baker,
Geraldine Johnson mojo with Mars-sized,
Working-class coat of arms he wore proudly,
Like a big fire engine red badge of honor …
II.
I do recall how right speech, right on speech of
The deep, dark chocolate brown, booming
Baritone brother sportin’ black, Lenin-like,
Greek Fisherman’s cap, comin’ Coltranish,
Stoked my gut and left me standing thirteen
Inches taller as a Black man, working-class
Man, daydreaming of meeting and be mentored
By this Black militant workingman and learning
About labor at his feet, as he surely learned as a
Young, second generation Longshoreman …
Acting out my dream, I bought a Greek Fisherman’s cap –
It had to be the cap – the history, the analysis in the cap?
I imagined I looked like him, sounded like him and walked
Through my work-a-day world like he walked through the
Reagan ‘80s, apartheid years of “constructive engagement,”
Capitalist offensive crushing communist and workers’ movements
III.
2004
Never would I dare dream mentorship dreams
Would come flying standby, two decades later …
Retired Longshoreman Leo Robinson – as retired
As Big Ben, or Old Faithful – eased his big white
Diesel pickup below the legendary marquee of
Oakland’s old Grand Lake Theater, right on
Time from his refuge in Raymond at the side
Of Ms Johnnie, his soul mate of many moons…
A fresh, young, historic thing calling itself the
Million Workers March, hurtled in to Leo’s orbit
Like Halley’s Comet, coming every seventy-six
Years, and firing up the ol’ working-class warrior
Like a crackling potbelly stove in Wisconsin winter …
This fresh, young, historic thing calling itself
The Million Workers March came spreading
Demands as contagious and timely as the flu:
“Slash the military budget”
“National living wage”
“Hands off Social Security”
“Stop Dismantling Public Education”
Demands the Dems, the tops, TUBs, AKA
Trade Union Bureaucrats, were dodging like
Dracula dodges crosses, and iron stakes, dodging
Using their same old songs, “Please, Please, No
October Surprise!” and “It’s The Right Thing,
But The Wrong Time, Brothers & Sisters …”
Sweetened with strings for dumping rank-and-file
Dollars down dark Democratic Party holes of imperialist
Politician Kerry’s in exchange for February 30th promises, promises…
Instead of taking the T-shirts sage advice and begin:
Mobilizing in our own name
The Million Worker March
The Lincoln Memorial October 17 2004
This fresh, young, historic thing calling itself the
Million Workers March came with demands on the
The Retiree formerly known as Leo Robinson: Time,
Like meeting more than four corners, 400 North Point;
Money: $50,000 from the Retiree’s and Ms Johhnie’s
Nest egg to take rank-and-file’s demands to D.C.;
Demands on the Retiree’s third eye, envisioning
Brown, beige, tan and ivory hands gripping one
Another’s wrists in unity, morphing into militant,
Moving circles, understood by even Kindergartners –
Leo’s logo on navy blue T-shirts, priceless!
Leo laughed at my crazy calls, punctuated with
Embellishments on my joke that Colin Powell,
Or Condi Rice, had contacted me asking that I
Ask Leo to call off the Million Workers March,
And Under-Secretary of Labor in Liberia would
Be Leo’s – post-election!
Crunch, crunch, crunch of my driveway’s gravel
Beneath the pickup’s tires signaled ends of our
Weekly jam session-conversations, during rides
From Million Workers March meetings – return tray
Tables to their locked position, seat backs to upright
Positions – prepare to jam, for another hour, or more …
Leo’s interests, like U.S. imperialism, spanned the globe,
Breadth of knowledge, youthful curiosity and that wise
Warrior twinkle in his eye, when workers were getting it
On good somewhere, separated him from lords of capital,
Separated him from many rank-and-file revolutionaries,
Leo’s grit and guts made him different, lion among Tomcats!
That same wise warrior twinkle in his eye, seven years later,
Welcomed the Occupy Movement as “new kid on the block,”
Seeing that Occupy’s short-lived, two months, puts us all
Two months closer to “… the final conflict …”
IV.
We’ve known Leo for a long, long time: those who know, know,
Long before any of us recall, Leo’s earlier lives were spent
Working on railroads spiriting enslaved Africans to freedom,
He kept Nat’s secret those August 1831 Virginia nights,
He helped at Harper’s Ferry under Captain Brown’s command
Grieving, mourners, maybe we can bring ourselves to beg
Evil, arch enemy, Monsanto, to splice Leo’s genes with
Egyptian canal workers, Nigerian, Iraqi and Venezuelan oil
Workers, Joe Hill and Mother Jones; dust his DNA in doorways
Of every working-class home in the U.S., then clone a hundred
Thousand Leo Robinson rank-and-file leaders and ship them to
Every port, dock, waterfront in the U.S.?
Monsanto’s Mengele-Frankenstein shit won’t be necessary –
For Leo lives, wherever, wherever, some worker risks his,
Or her, own life to pull a fellow worker from water to safety,
Leo lives in every navy blue or ash T-shirt with brown, beige,
Tan, ivory, hands circled in solidarity,
In every fiery speech during San Francisco strikes and
Port Of Oakland shutdowns, in fights for health care, cradle
To grave, in housing, library, post office and school struggles,
In good fights against fracking and in the Occupy Movement …
Leo lives wherever rank and file working-class folks
Dig deep in shallow pockets and weaponize their wallets
Leo lives wherever the “voiceless” are booming concrete
Stratagems in currency of courage and clarity,
Leo lives in London marches against war on Iran,
In Greek anti-austerity marches –
Wherever ranks are rising up against top-down
Corporate unionism, rising ‘gainst lil’ buddies, Jr.
Partners who golf and vacation with the bosses,
Leo’s Shreveport sound is embedded in bathrooms,
Woodwork and hallways of the hiring hall he’s haunted
Since ‘63 – tops, you’ve been warned …
Leo lives with Palestinian children resisting
Apartheid captors, stealing their jobs of day-
Dreaming with dolls and chasing soccer balls,
Leo lives in the Boycott Divestment and
Sanction movement, he lives, for there are
Other leper ships to be left unloaded …
Other fiery, militant speeches to be made,
Other younger men and women to mentor…
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
“Hey-hey, ho-ho, apartheid has got to go!”
Raymond Nat Turner © 2013 All Rights Reserved – Raymond Nat Turner, one of the Bay Area’s best known and loved poets, left recently for the East Coast, but judging from this poem, he seems to have left his heart in San Francisco. He can be reached at upsurgejazz@gmail.com.
