War Crime Cafe | Black Agenda Report

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence

25 Mar 2026

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“War is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable,
surely the most vicious.”

— Major General Smedley Darlington Butler

“War is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable,
surely the most vicious.”
— Major General Smedley Darlington Butler

BOOM — blows up — SNAP
Medicare; Medicaid; Meals On Wheels; WIC
Section 8; and even the VA. It vaporizes multi-
billions of dollars each day as TV warriors cosplay

Let ‘em eat WAR til they pass out on the floor! Barbecued
Boots On The Ground. Let ‘em eat Lockheed Martin Lasagna,
Boeing Burgers, Raytheon Roast Beef w/Northrop Grumman
Goulash. Let ‘em top it off with General Dynamics Desserts

Let US schools echo US multiplex theaters of WAR. Let
School Shootings Du Jour become teachable moments. Let
holstered Glocks ride up hips of teachers lecturing with long guns.
Let body armor and ballistic blankets become back to school fashion

Let rogues ‘run’ our country like a trillion dollar-budgeted WAR-
profiteer merchant of death cafe. Let killer cuisine flow from
capitalist kitchens and militarist menus 24/7. WAR of choice served
with entrées. Dozens of dead bodies daily. Extrajudicial killings on request.

Let fighters, bombers, carriers serve bloody backpacks with little girls
shredded bodies on beds of rubble. Let shrapnel soups, sadistic desserts from
moans and wails of grieving mothers grace oak tables. Let servers serve up
whole families on platters of profit. Let waiters liberate Kuwait while you … wait

Reservations are required. Wait times are generations (though they will say
two-four years) They don’t serve the disabled, the sick, the unhoused, the
unemployed, low-wealth, low-income, or fixed income folks. Oh, a surly
server just said, they’ve just “run out of rights and are fresh out of freedoms!”

Let them tell it, “all options are on the table.” Except Operations overthrowing
cancer and coming under universal single-payer healthcare for all. Except the
patriotic construction of 100,000 units of affordable housing annually. Except
universal pre-K education and free education and student debt cancellation …

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 and PayPal.

War

imperialism

state violence

weapons contractors

repression

war profiteering

militarism

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