POETRY: Hair in the game…

Thousands turn out in Melbourne to stand in solidarity with protests that have broken out in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the country’s brutal dictatorship and its ‘morality’ police, Sept. 22, 2022 (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

Heard it… Heard it… Heard it…
Rhythms of swishing
scissors shearing sable curls; wavy brown manes;
straight tresses salt and pepper; shearing locks of
sundry shades of grey and white.
Harmonizing shouts of “Death to the Dictator!”
morph from cries for
Equal rights and explode in red sea streets…

Iranians are rising—again! Rising in
Movements… Maybe a flashback? 1909?
Maybe a Mosaddegh moment? Maybe more?
Maybe this is it? Maybe the next one?

Some of us remember Iranian demonstrations—
circa late 70s. Brilliant/militant feats of flesh and
Blood engineering…
Young and strong. Marching all night long—
thru twists and turns—
Playing cat and mouse, in and out, cul-de-sac traps
set by San Francisco’s political police. Truncheoned
thugs whose hand-eye coordination with the Shah’s
SAVAK intelligence tentacles reached out from icy fog

Some of us remember marchers’ names: Firouz, Mansour,
Mahdi, Azad…
Remember that they spoke English—Yet read the Germans
in Farsi.
Some of us remember standing in solidarity
as the peacock throne imploded—collapsed—
Under weight of street heat/fire of millions of
Feet in the street.
Some of us remember rapture of comrades and friends—
Rushing home, rejoicing—
Never to be heard from again…

We stand in solidarity today with women having hair in the
Game—Women marching through
Mushroom clouds of teargas; tsunamis of lead—red seas of
Death—Women resisting misogynist mullahs/murderous “morality”
Police…To topple theocratic thugs swaddled in silk robes of graft
Today we stand in heart/soul/spine solidarity with the Iranian
People:
Common mothers, daughters, sisters, wives of warehouse workers—
bus and truck drivers, train operators—fierce fighters—
again on the long, winding road of revolution…
lubricated by oil workers hurling themselves into the swelling
Resistance

And Mahsa Amini’s the Rock of Gibraltar bloodthirsty clerics
lifted
only
to
drop
on
Their own crimson-stained sandals and combat boots—Instructing
Us on how we must take our own Texas Taliban/Florida fundamentalists…on

© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Raymond Nat Turner

Raymond Nat Turner is Poet-in-Residence at Black Agenda Report and former Co-Chair of the New York Chapter of the National Writers Union. He was privileged to read at the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium and has appeared at numerous festivals and venues including the Monterey Jazz Festival and Panafest in Ghana, West Africa.