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Justice Is Served
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
04 Sep 2014
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner

Justice is served
A la Carte, chokehold-style, or
Fifty bullets, forty-one, or one
Or two well placed headshots
From killing-machine chefs

Justice is served…

by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner

I. 24-7, 365

Justice is served
Daily, carrot and stick,
A few bad apples,
From rotten orchards,
Iron fists beneath
Velvet gloves…
‘10-ring’, powder-burned,
Point blank range, by thugs
Hopped up on thin blue lines of
‘White’ $upremacy, Vitamin S,
Nips & Nazi-false consciousness

Justice is served
Piping hot from ‘war-bags’—
‘Throw-down guns’ and dope
For frame-ups & shake-downs—
Ramparts Restaurant and 77th
In L.A., Stonewall Jackson’s Joint
In Ferguson, franchises in Philly,
Motown, Chitown, Albuquerque,
Oaktown, NOLA, NYC, nationwide
Justice is served
Rider, Viking, Cowboy, Klan-style
By CRASH, STRESS, SWAT chefs—
Chef Siapano was called the
‘Foot Doctor’ ’cause he beat
‘Suspects’ feet so badly they
Couldn’t walk West Oakland
Streets after a serving of his
Dish, Chef Vasquez was called
‘Choker’, Chicago’s Chef Burge
Is famous for cigarette burned
Brown flesh, blackened testicle
Confession casserole—Philly’s
As famous for Frame-up Soup as
It is for Philly Cheese Steak…

Justice is served
A la Carte, chokehold-style, or
Fifty bullets, forty-one, or one
Or two well placed headshots
From killing-machine chefs—
Different dishes, same menu:
Iron Fist + Velvet Glove,
Speak softly, garnishing
Big Stick, Mike & Ike =
Good Cop/ Bad Cop—
Force teeming with deception…

Justice is served
Twenty-four/seven
Chefs coming by tens,
Small hours of morning,
During deepest sleep cycles,
Kicking down doors, scrambling
Belongings, barking orders, jamming
Glocks to grandmothers’ heads, hog-
Tying 12 year-olds and taking ten year-
Olds away for 30 days because, allegedly,
A Snickers bar was stolen…

Justice is served
Reversed buffet of fees and fines, of
Nickels and dimes, hearty potpourri of
War on poor youth and working people—
Ears and eyes of snitches and spies, vulture-
Eyed poles, elephant-eared walls, Venus-fly-
Trap computers seizing keystrokes, expanding
Secret files, code names and camps…

Justice is served
Whitewashed in stainless steel bowls
Throttling truth-tellers, town criers,
Whistleblowers with warmed over
Investigations, reheated hearings, testi-
Lying heard a hundred thousand times!

Justice is served
Like shriveled hors d’oeuvres by foundation-
Corporation wired, battery-powered preachers,
Pundits and operatives on mules with small
Carbon footprints, leading back to side-door
Servings at the Big House voting booths!

Justice is served
Heated slowly, clarified gently, like butter:
The STATE, said Marx, Engles and Lenin,
Is a “Special body of armed men…
Police and standing armies,” backed up by
Courts, judges, prosecutors, prisons, legislators,
Bureaucrats, flunkeys and hangers-on that
Protect and serve
Looters who don’t snatch diapers, beer,
Red Bull, cigars, 99 cents bags of chips,
Looters who don’t grab wigs, weaves and
Extensions from Mom & Pop beauty shops…

II. ‘ROUND THE WORLD

The STATE is a special body of armed men—
Gunmen: SWAT, CRASH, STRESS, Savak,
Stasi, Gestapo, Tonton Macoute, Riders, SOBs—
Sons of Bull, Sons of Beauregard, Sons of Byron
Standing armies backed by black sites, Abu Grahivs,
Atticas, Guantanamos, Angolas; San Quentins, Bagrams,
Courts, judges, prosecutors, attorney generals and
Alcohol, Geritol, protocol, hot air talk shops that:
Protect and serve
Looters snatching continents, countries, islands and
Cities, ask Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek
Ask Haitians, Hawaiians, Mexicans and Cubans…
Looters kidnapping and strong-arming sweat from Ibo,
Ashanti, Fanti, Fulani, Mandingo, Yoruba, Wolof, Hausa!
Looters grabbing coltan from the Congo, oil from Libya,
Nigeria and Iraq; gas from Afghanistan, bauxite from Haiti,
Diamonds from Azania; looters blowing off mountaintops,
Dumping coal dust in streams, looters mowing down ancient
Trees and snatching them like pickup sticks, looters leaving
Alaska a gooey, black loo, like they left the gulf!

The STATE is a special body of armed men to
Protect and serve
Looters snatching post offices, hospitals, schools
Museums, parks, water—anything not nailed down—
Marauding, low-life looters, like vampires in blood
Banks, sucking up pensions & 4O1ks; sub-prime
Looters with computers, predators in Brooks
Brothers suits, stealing homes, snatching
Generations of wealth—even stealing lives of
Entire families in Palestine—vile person-
Hood looters…more hood than person…
Looters too big to fail, looters too big to jail,
Though we know the muthafuckas Wall Street
Gang names: BP, Exxon, Countrywide, Wells-
Fargo, Bank of Amerikkka, Wal-Mart, Monsanto,
Aetna, Humana, Haliburton, Boeing, Raytheon—
Cayman Island paymasters of blue torpedoes

The STATE

Protects and serves
Looters hiding behind rectangular rags,
Prayer books, skin shrouds, grabbing
Pesos, Euros, Rupees, Rand, Yen, dollars
Gushing from sweatshops, slippery, slimy
Slaughterhouse floors, dangerous mines,
Finger-eating machines, distended stomachs,
Dirty water—not enough rice, corn, cooking
Oil, or fertile black soil to plow … Looters

Smelling of sulfur in Gaza, the West Bank,
Mid-West Bank: Ferguson, Manila, Mexico City,
Citi Soeili, L.A., Bombay, Delhi, Bejing, Lagos,
Rio de Janiero, Johannesburg, Chicago, London,
New York, Santiago, Tegucigalpa, Teheran, Paris…

 

III RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE

Lights blaring, music blasting, like rhythms of
Rifle butts smashing skulls…special bodies of
Armed men, sadists smelling of sulfur, like
Their bosses, snarling, growling, and sneering
Thousands of years measuring success in broken
Bodies and spirits—‘breaking’ resistance—breaking
Resistance at the wheel, drawing and quartering it,
Burning resistance at the stake, with cigarettes,
Tarring and feathering it, skinning it alive, thumb-
Screwing it away, stoning it, clubbing, caning, chopping
It away with axes and guillotines, raping it away, shocking
It away with electric chairs and car batteries wired to genitals,
Strangling resistance with nooses and garrotes, shooting it
With firing squads, death squads, Hellfire and Tomahawk Missiles,
Bombing it with Apache Helicopters and F-16 jets, poisoning it with
Potassium chloride and pentobarbital cocktails—but resistance is a
Savory, served seasonally, or year-round; served like shish kebabs
Blackened on bayonets, fiery flavor on shards of plate glass, shoe
Leather, leaflets, door-to-door, marches, mass meetings, boycotts,
Molotov Cocktails, picket signs, picket lines, sit-ins, teach-ins, a
Justice salad— by any means necessary…

Raymond Nat Turner Š 2014 All Rights Reserved

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