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
  • omnibus

Disposable Killing Machines R US
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
01 Oct 2013
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner

The wakeful sleep of the 1% is

Haunted by long shadows of

Conscious soldiers, progeny

Of militant mass movements —

 

Disposable Killing Machines R US

by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner

 

12, 23, 32, 300, 3,000;

Long gun, handgun, back

Pack, Ryder rental truck;

Shopping mall, movie-theater,

Naval facility, army base—

A thousand to choose from—

D.C., VA, CT, CO, CA, Texas;

Aaron, Adam, James, Timothy,

Nidal, disposable killing machines…

 

Nightmares looped over

Murder manuals memorized,

Looped over recorded command voices,

Looped over clanging pots and pans

Piped through vents, driving

Pharma’s sleep deprivation

Psychotropic drug playthings mad!

 

Disposable killing machines

Sometime short-circuit, suffer

Insomnia, anxiety, depression

Hurting themselves with

Programming for hurting

“Bug splat,” “sand nigger” others

 

The wakeful sleep of the 1% is

Haunted by long shadows of

Conscious soldiers, progeny

Of militant mass movements —

Avatars of Aaron Alexis,

Christopher Dorner, Timothy

McVey and other disposable

Killing machines, morphing

Into Marilyn Buck, Geronimo

Ji-Jaga, John Brown action-

Figures, armed with semi-

Automatic Marxist analysis,

Weapon of mass instruction,

Trained to “drain the swamp”

Of its sulfur stench and war

Criminal curriculum, gassing minds…

 

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at upsurgejazz.com.

 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2013 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


  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: This is Criminal, Malik Rahim, New Orleans, September 1st, 2005
    27 Aug 2025
    “It’s not like New Orleans was caught off guard. This could have been prevented.”
  • Jon Jeter
    From Jim Crow to Katrina to Gentrification, Tracing the Rise and Fall of New Orleans Working Class
    27 Aug 2025
    A forgotten history of cross-racial labor solidarity in 1890s New Orleans offered a glimpse of a potential future. Its deliberate destruction set the stage for the city's modern transformation into a…
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Synergy of the Sacrificed: Katrina and the Praxis of Imperial Domination
    27 Aug 2025
    Twenty years after Katrina, the disaster stands not as an anomaly but as a blueprint. Its aftermath reveals a template for imperial domination, where "natural" disasters become pretexts for…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    "Inequality in Kenya: View from Kibera" Documentary Premieres August 28
    27 Aug 2025
    Join political activist and Black Agenda Report’s contributing editor Ajamu Baraka and members of the Communist Party Marxist-Kenya on a trip to Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Ethnic cleansing called Katrina
    27 Aug 2025
    "Ethnic cleansing called Katrina" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us