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

Embassy crawlers, kidnappers, Butchers and Boss Tweet…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
15 May 2019
🖨️ Print Article
standoff at the Venezuelan embassy
Standoff at the Venezuelan embassy

“The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.”
— Article 22 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961.

Whistles blowing, sirens blaring through bullhorns,
strobe lights flashing to pounding, banging rhythms
It must be the embassy medieval thugs mistook
for a butcher shop—or the one thugs entered to
kidnap towering truth-teller?

Instead, evening’s infested with
pot and pan-banging blue arm bands, Assault-Right
hipsters with Hitler haircuts; choreographed from
The War House and Capitalist Hill.

Ordinarily, big banner headlines splash
Post, Times, Wall Street Journal:
Americans Holed up in Foreign Embassy
surrounded by secret police blocking food,
medicine, supplies; shutting off electricity,
assaulting, arresting peaceful protestors:
Replacing rule of law with Law of Jungle;
Violating Vienna Convention, abdicating
responsibility
to
protect…

Ordinarily, Fox-box foot-soldiers/State Department
stenographers are on the ground grindin’— 24/7
with talking heads hopping mad—shit-fit, send-
in-the Marines-mad—for Boeing’s war of the week
versus strongman who became the wrong man!
Rogue state with redacted 1st and 4th amendments,
we wait for wet, cold, Wikileak words: “Live from New
York, it’s Saturday…”

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Our poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed performning artist, educator and an oficial of the National Writers Union.
Find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.

Venezuela

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


More Stories


  • Map
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley , Richard Medhurst
    Iran, Venezuela, Ukraine, Greenland, and the U.S. Heist of the World's Oil and Gas Supply
    05 Jun 2026
    Richard Medhurst discusses his latest investigative reporting, “The Petrogas-Dollar: The Secret US Strategy Behind the Iran War," an analysis of the latest iteration of U.S. hegemony. The U.S. is…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Denial is Not a River in Egypt, or in Venezuela
    03 Jun 2026
    The U.S. regime change plot against Venezuela succeeded and created a puppet state. Anti-imperialists must admit this reality and forge plans for fighting against it.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: To The Aircraft Carrier Intrepid, Pedro Mir, 1962
    03 Jun 2026
    Oh, carrier Intrepid/you in these torrid waters of Santo Domingo/only out of fear.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Fourth and Long: The Curious Juxtaposition of Jaxson Dart and Colin Kaepernick
    03 Jun 2026
    The same sports media that celebrate Jaxson Dart's endorsement of Donald Trump called Kaepernick's anti-police violence protest disrespectful. The racial double standard has not changed since the…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Short word problems: do the math
    03 Jun 2026
    "Short word problems: do the math" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us