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

Can We Have A Talk With You?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
17 Feb 2016
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

Prescient, pertinent and pointed questions to each other, and to our alleged betters about what we have, what we are, what we deserve, and what we settle for, posed by BAR's poet in residence.

Can We Have A Talk With You?

by BAr poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

Can little you phone in plays for a big pro sport?
Can bought politicians run without your support?
Can they take over the schools and school board?
Can they make your children pray to their lord?

Can they wash millions of brains in a large box?
Can the get their Goebbels-walk on...on FOX?
Can they keep the masses asleep and uncritical?
Can they make a people, a-historical, apolitical?
Can they keep scaring you shitless in September?
Can they, then—presto—change after November?

Can they pay all Blacks less than whites?
Can they say that voting exercises rights?
Can fools unlearn voting is democracy?
Can cold figures not lie about plutocracy?

Can big money make pols into yes-men?
Can they then move about like chessmen?
Can they also lie like printing machines?
Can they even play Capone with marines?
Can they lie almost every time they speak?
Can they produce nearly a war each week?

Can they, uh,—oops—overtax you in error?
Can they use it fighting their ‘war on terror?’
Can they make trillions, uh, just, disappear?
Can they make killings on their wars and fear?

Can they give you more hope and change?
Can it come straight from the rifle range?
Can they shoot some blacks and belt beers?
Can they do it over again every four years?

Can they deliver change you can believe in?
Can you use more black clothes to grieve in?
Can they lace your rivers and aquifers with lead?
Can they just put six slugs in your child’s head?

Can they keep increasing peoples’ debt exposure?
Can they cause workers even more foreclosure?
Can they poison peoples’ drinking water in Flint?
Can they double— and even quadruple your rent?
Can they coolly ethnic cleanse your neighborhood?
Can they claim your home for the corporate good?

Can they send billions to the apartheid settler state?
Can they tell Motown that it will just have to wait?
Can they keep killing socialized medicine?
Can they keep conning—like Con Edison?
Can they forevermore lie about socialism?
Can the ‘white’ ‘race’ card stay the schism?

Can ‘white’ knaves know wealth Trumps all?
Can the black ones get over the Hil in free-fall?
Can some old fools, dupes, dopes even learn—
Hope and change is back and Feelin’ the Bern?

Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 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


  • U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 Libyan Civilians and Allies, Human Rights Groups Say
    Nick Turse
    U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 Libyan Civilians and Allies, Human Rights Groups Say
    05 Apr 2022
    A criminal complaint accuses a former commander at a U.S. airbase in Sicily of murder. But U.S. full spectrum dominance and its AFRICOM iteration are the true perpetrators.
  • Black Agenda Radio April 1, 2022
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio April 1, 2022
    01 Apr 2022
    Left Voices are Censored, The U.S. Crisis Plays Out in Ukraine, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson Nomination Brings Drama but No Substance
  • The American Crisis and Ukraine
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    The American Crisis and Ukraine
    01 Apr 2022
    Joe Biden travelled to Europe for NATO and G7 meetings one month after Russian troops entered Ukraine. Biden predictably condemned Russia but also suggested he was seeking regime change against…
  • Ketanji Brown Jackson and Political Spectacle
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Ketanji Brown Jackson and Political Spectacle
    01 Apr 2022
    Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson is the first black woman nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. Her confirmation hearings provided many opportunities for political performance.…
  • Black Left Media Under Assault from Big Tech/State Censorship
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Left Media Under Assault from Big Tech/State Censorship
    01 Apr 2022
    Censorship is supposed to happen in other places, not in the U.S. But big tech, in alliance with the state, is silencing Black and other left voices in the media. The war in Ukraine is bringing this…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us