by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Why does San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick choose to sit when the Star Spangled Banner is played before football games? Evidently he is one of many who know the real intention and import behind those bombs bursting in air...
Anthem of Banksters & War Profiteers…
by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
“I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
—Marine General Smedley Butler at his retirement, 1933
I.
No Iroquois or Seminole National Anthem,
No Hawaiian or Mexican National Anthem,
Before bombers fly over stadiums schools and
social services were sacrificed for on altars of austerity;
No Ohlone or Navajo National Anthem,
No Iroquois or Seminole National Anthem,
No Hawaiian or Mexican National Anthem,
Before rockets red glare/bombs bursting in air
Over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bosnia, Libya,
Panama, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen…and
Others, soon to be announced…
II.
The bleeding baby with blown off arms and stumps for legs
Dies in a ‘surgically struck’ hospital while you drain kegs?
Commander’s quarterback, bloody band wrapping his wrist,
Running old red zone, war-profiteer plays from his kill list?
Are other peoples’ children ‘collateral damage expendable—
Like leftovers lost when your fridge became undependable?
Why’s the fight for ‘our freedom’ usually where there’s oil?
Why’s it where mineral wealth’s buried beneath foreign soil?
How about freedom fighting without tanks, planes and boats—
Freeing: Fitzgerald, Peltier, Gilbert, Bell, Jamal, Shoatz…?
Ain’t ‘Incarceration Nation’ Slave State, by its other name—
Ain’t it the darker side of a barbaric, brain-damaging game?
Black players: interception, sack, fumble, loss from N-word
Inches from lynching by the intoxicated mob, the racist herd—
Of Hitler-loving, hair-trigger thugs, masquerading as fans…
Always seconds away from true team colors of their klan’s!
Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 All Rights Reserved
Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performance artist. Find more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
The Fourth Pan-African Congress in New York in 1927 was the first held in the Americas, and the first organized by women.
Ann Garrison ends her reporting from the Horn of Africa with updates on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the conflict between Ethiopia and the TPLF.
Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic of rifles (for Uvalde and other schools…)
BAR Book Forum editor Roberto Sirvent and Julian Akil Rose discuss community organizing, Black Queer Feminism, the struggle for police and prison abolition, and an end to militarism.
"From May 26 to May 31, I was in Cali, Colombia serving as an election observer with an international delegation of mostly Black women. This is a preliminary report."
