A Warning

By Ian Scott

after Amiri Baraka, to the tune of “Equinox” by John Coltrane  

[boo-dee-daaa, boo-deeee-da

boo-deee-daaaa, boo-dee-daa]

Some day, it will be your turn.

We will wake up and realise 

protest and poems are insufficient 

mediums of exchange when

buckshot and armour-piercing rounds

are sitting right there.

Some day, it will be your turn 

and you will realise how 

badly you fucked up 

putting all the military’s surplus and spy gadgets on 

online market places.

You just couldn’t kick your power fantasies and now

mouse clicks will give way to 

the staccato TEC-9s and tommy-guns and

the booms of bombs falling like heavy mallets on the drum 

in the percussion of People’s War.

Some day, it will be your turn 

to live underground,

checking over your shoulder and 

under your bed. You will talk 

in hushed whispers and codes,

not knowing where it is still 

safe to speak of killing niggers.

You will mistake every sound for

the click-clacking rifles,

tremble at every creaking floorboard,

and even then,

you still won’t be ready

when the door is kicked in without a knock.

[ba-ba-ba-baaa, ba-da-da-daaa-da]

Some day, it will be your turn 

and we will not need badges and high salaries and delusions of grandeur 

to know we’re the good guys.

We won’t need to make excuses 

about reaching for the wrong holster 

or suspecting the wrong pig.

Prestige will have fallen away and pretty words

will be meaningless. All that will remain 

is the certainty of action and the solace of history.

Some day, it will be your turn 

and there will be no monuments 

to mark where you died, 

no one to decry your innocence,

no flag to bear your memory.

It will all be ashes and food for worms.

Some day, it will be your turn 

and you will remember your body is soft and fragile and 

it was never impunity that you acted with. 

Only consequence forestalled.

Some day, some day soon, it will be your turn 

and you will be afraid.

You will run, you will cry, you will curse fate, and 

kick and scream and shit yourself and 

you will still be looking for a way out 

as your eyes scan the wall, strain against the blindfold, meet the gun barrel,

and everything goes red.

And we will be free. 

[boo-dee-daaa, boo-deeee-da

boo-deee-daaaa, boo-dee-daa

ba-ba-ba-baaa, ba-da-da-daaa-da]