Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Birmingham On The Hudson
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
28 Aug 2012
🖨️ Print Article

 

by Raymond Nat Turner

“Another generation of Gordon Gekkos

Parasitic, psycho, thug CEOs

Funny money men, where anything goes

Republi-crats and Demo-con echoes”

 

Birmingham On The Hudson

by Raymond Nat Turner

Jazz Ballad Chorus

Headed for CUNY with dreams and hope

'Til gettin' swept up in Rope-and-Grope

Tuggin' down his testes on the street

Body-slammed, cursed and browbeat 

Meeting N-Y's finest's fists and feets

Given blurred vision of hoods and sheets

Bruised, bloodied victim of violent scam--

The Hudson banks on Birmingham

The Hudson banks on Birmingham.... 

Hip Hop Feel

Bull Kelly cut fire hoses and cattle prods

For Glockmiesters runnin' in death squads

Protecting and serving corporate masters

The privilege and supremacy of alabasters 

Guarding Merrill-Lynch and Killer Coke

Fighting crime's mirrors and smoke

Drivin' out the poor from dusk to dark

Like smashing Spring in Zucotti Park

 

After the Schultzes seized Native Land

Manhattan real estate rose in demand

They cashed the stolen land into rent

Maintained violently by the 1%

 

In this Age Of Metastasized Cash-ism

Wall Street's Kleptocratic Stash-ism

Mayor Bilbo's businesses blooming brisk

His real estate-driven Stop-and-Frisk

American-styled apartheid pass law

Bilbo's Gestapo's a blue cat's-paw

 

After the Schultzes seized Native Land

Manhattan real estate rose in demand

They cashed the stolen land into rent

Maintained violently by the 1%

 

Another generation of Gordon Gekkos

Parasitic, psycho, thug CEOs

Funny money men, where anything goes

Republi-crats and Demo-con echoes

Putting our lives and health at risk

Run these cons through Stop-and-Frisk

Provocateurs and pundits in cahoots

Will look hip in orange jumpsuits!

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at Raymond (at) upsurgejazz.com.

Raymond Nat Turner (c) 2012 All Rights Reserved

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Compliance Will Not Save Me
    Ibram X. Kendi
    Compliance Will Not Save Me
    29 Apr 2021
    American policing is defended as good despite its unmatched amounts of lethal violence.
  • Notes From the Underground
    Scott McLernee
    Notes From the Underground
    29 Apr 2021
    Richard Wright’s 1942 novel was testing the limits of what the white novel-reading public would have found imaginable.
  • “Anti-Blackness, Bioethics, and Public Health: 200 Introductory Resources for Community Study”
    Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent
    “Anti-Blackness, Bioethics, and Public Health: 200 Introductory Resources for Community Study”
    29 Apr 2021
    Writers, artists, community organizers and scholars have all contributed their analysis of the resource documents listed, below, and how they might be useful in assessing anti-Black structures arou
  • BAR Book Forum: Davarian Baldwin’s “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Davarian Baldwin’s “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower”
    29 Apr 2021
    Universities have become today’s companies and our cities their company towns.
  • Radical Black political actors played a leading role in making the Atlantic world
    Steven Hahn
    Slave Rebellions and Mutinies Shaped the Age of Revolution
    28 Apr 2021
    The Age of Revolution (1770–1850), bookended by the American and French Revolutions on the one side and the Revolutions of 1848 on the other, is widely viewed as the progenitor of the modern Euro-A
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us