Raymond Nat Turner reads "Hair in the Game" and "Pentagon Pimpin"

Raymond Nat Turner, Bay Area's "Town Crier", joined IEC's October 17, 2026, poetry reading at The Starry Plough Pub in Berkeley, CA. Lyrics to the first poem, published with his permission: Hair in the game… 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