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

If all options are on the table…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
13 Feb 2019
🖨️ Print Article
If all options are on the table…
You mean ALL options on the table.... seriously???

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear filters usurping skull and
crossbones drinking water 400 times
before it flows from a single faucet
If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear boots on the
ground and on ladders, meddling smoggy
skies with windmills and solar panels

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear screaming propaganda of
Saws, and chants of Hammers, connecting
2x4s— Overthrowing tents, sleeping bags,
cardboard mattresses metastasizing as
Terror beneath bridges, freeways and
on cold streets across the country

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear stock market-like chatter,
Humanitarian Intervention making
medical appointments for millions—Free—
Toppling infant mortality, cancer, heart
attacks, strokes— Coup d’ etat blockading
buckets of weaponized chicken; Sanctioning super-sized
sugary cannons of colored water; Overthrowing dictatorial
Colonels and Kings … Removing millions of obese,waddling
overweight, malnourished Americans from harm’s way

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear Regime Change squealing and
giggling from public school playgrounds
Surrounded by well-supplied, well-paid
Public Teachers flashing strobe light
smiles, seconding emotions of children
If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear tellers counting currency
and ATMs belching backpay
at furloughed federal workers…
If “all options are on the table”
These are our appetizers… Otherwise, STFU
finger-pointing, posturing, ‘bout… ‘democracy!’

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

poetry

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: The Question of Compensation: A Third World Perspective, Norman Girvan, 1972
    20 Sep 2023
    Where are multinational corporations in discussions of reparations? The late Jamaican political economist Norman Girvan provides an answer.        
  • Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Getting Ethiopia Dead Wrong
    20 Sep 2023
    Rasmus Sonderriis's book is a thorough exposé of the West's destructively deceitful narrative about Ethiopia's two-year Tigray War.
  • BAR Book Forum: Celeste Winston’s Book “How to Lose the Hounds”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Celeste Winston’s Book “How to Lose the Hounds”
    20 Sep 2023
    This week’s featured author is Celeste Winston.
  • Understanding the White Supremacy at the Center of the 'Class Over Race' Debate
    Jon Jeter
    Understanding the White Supremacy at the Center of the 'Class Over Race' Debate
    20 Sep 2023
    Any talk of discussing class instead of racism is disingenuous in a country which uses every opportunity to indulge in anti-Black racism. The history of racism in the labor movement is just one…
  • Libya’s disastrous flooding… Causes and hope?
    Essam Elkorghli
    Libya’s disastrous flooding… Causes and hope?
    20 Sep 2023
    The U.S./NATO destruction of the Libyan state in 2011 was followed unilateral coercive measures, sanctions, which rendered that nation unable to maintain dams which failed during a recent storm.…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us