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

Boots on the ground in Buffalo
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
25 May 2022
🖨️ Print Article
Boots on the ground in Buffalo

                                                                                      Boots on the ground in Buffalo

I.

He was happy to head East

picking up the birthday boy’s cake at

Tops.

Wasn’t Halloween. Was it Hollywood?

White boy? Long gun? Body armor,

Camera on helmet—horrible, hateful

eyes—Black side of town?

Last questions before Bushmaster’s barrel

popped-popped-popped…flashing false

Consciousness—fiery hate— ripping hot

into his happy head, leaving burgundy brain

tissue on the store floor

Family and friends gathered to sing “Happy

Birthday” to the birthday boy will never—

Ever—celebrate birthdays in the same way.

False consciousness flooded their homes with

Tears…

II.

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

star-spangled chest puffed out, locked and

loaded with semi-automatic shrink-wrapped

Words…

High-capacity magazine—thirty rounds of

“Thoughts and Prayers,” “Heavy Hearts—”

bursts of Dem doublespeak sprayed at

Buffalo’s mourning Black masses. Nearly mis

firing… babbling “Build Back Better-isms…”

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Watson-to-Sherlock-like—“Lone gunman armed

with a weapon of war— it’s a hate crime! White

supremacy’s a poison!”

Not nazi venom saturating settler-colonial-confederacy soil.

Not gunpowder-driven real estate deals with the Indigenous

Peoples. Not unpaid labor extracted from enslaved

Africans—

Teaching CRT: Charlottesville-style Racist Terrorism: Wild

Boers storming Capitalist Hill January 6; Officer Prodigy

walking in Wisconsin, spawning Kenosha copy cats; The slow

walking, wrist-slapping AG acting as Boss Tweet’s straight

man for Teflon Don acts…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Healing/housing Scrooge, swiftly shipped billions

in weapons. Crowed ‘bout recipients

Naming children after Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin,

Northrop Grumman products!

If only the young gunman had driven seven

thousand Miles—instead of 300— poison’s

Cool in Kabul, Baghdad, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Tripoli…

He’d hear, “Thank you for your service,” boarding aircraft

before babysitters, teachers, nurses and food-workers…Or

have handcuffs, Glock, taser, baton, badge, pension—and

Impunity…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

NO caravan of Brink’s trucks for the ten teary

Burials;

Bills, house and car notes, rent, tuition, student

debt. For inflationary food and fuel. For forever

Generational repair…

Today, they say, “Pray for Buffalo’s victims and

Their families…”

Š 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.



Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet;

BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

You can Vote for his work at: GoFundMe PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

Mass Shootings
Buffalo
white supremacy

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


Related Stories

Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: The King Alfred Plan, Gil Scott-Heron, 1972
10 September 2025
“...white paranoia is here to stay/The white boy's scheming night and day/What you think about the King Alfred Plan?”
Hurricane Katrina man on car
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Why We Remember Katrina
27 August 2025
Twenty years ago, the world witnessed more than the suffering of hurricane Katrina's victims.
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Katrina: The Rich Folks' Opportunity and Our Dismal Failure
27 August 2025
"Racism showed its ass in the days after August 29, 2005."
Jon Jeter
As the State’s Complexion Darkens, Minnesota’s Liberalism Wanes
18 June 2025
Minnesota’s progressive myth shatters as its racial gaps in income, education, and housing eclipse even Deep South states, and right wing white
Alina Selyukh
Skulls Once Subject to Racist Study in Germany are Laid to Rest in New Orleans
04 June 2025
Looted African skulls come home after a century in German labs, exposing colonialism's history of dehumanizing "race science." 
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Southern Panther Malik Rahim
14 May 2025
In “A Southern Panther,” movement elder Malik Rahim talks about his lifetime of battling ra
Terri Frick
Black People, Palestine, and the Maintenance of Empire
14 May 2025
Black support for Palestine underscores the fight against empire, revealing how Israel’s violence in Gaza serves U.S.
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
07 May 2025
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
SPEECH: White Supremacy in U.S. History, Theodore W. Allen April 28, 1973
09 April 2025
“The principal aspect of United States capitalist society is not merely bourgeois domination but
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
LECTURE: A Humanist View, Toni Morrison, 1975
26 March 2025
Toni Morrison on art, archives, knowledge, and the long history of white supremacy in the United

More Stories


  • Business Ghana
    Haiti, Africa, And the Unfinished Project Of Black Sovereignty
    15 Jan 2025
    In excerpts from a speech given in Accra, Ghana, BAR editor and contributor Dr. Jemima Pierre highlights the United Nations’ involvement in the 2004 coup d'ĂŠtat and the subsequent…
  • Pan-African Community Action PACA
    The DC Bus Fare Evasion Crackdown: Targeting, Detaining, and Surveilling the Black Working Class
    15 Jan 2025
    Washington, D.C., is implementing a new campaign intended to crack down on fare evasion. This bill, like many others of its kind, will serve as a tool deployed in the ongoing war against the…
  • Youth pose behind a Mozambique flag
    Black Alliance for Peace US Out of Africa Network
    AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #54
    15 Jan 2025
    Mozambique is experiencing a period of unrest provoked by recent elections. After unending suffering under neoliberal austerity measures and the encroachment of AFRICOM, the â€Ś
  • Black Alliance for Peace
    Los Angeles Fires: The Santa Ana Blowback of Capitalist Climate Change Neglect
    15 Jan 2025
    The fires that have been raging in southern California for days are destroying the cities and homes of tens of thousands of people. This disaster, driven by the worsening climate crisis, is…
  • Pavan Kulkarni
    The DRC’s Historic Case Against Apple Over Blood Minerals in its Supply Chain
    15 Jan 2025
    The war-torn country has accused the US-based global tech giant of war crimes, forgery and deception by using illegally extracted and smuggled minerals in its products.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us