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

Circus on Capitalist Hill (Comey don’t play that…)
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
13 Jun 2017
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

Big doings this week up there between the War House and the Rogues Garden. Our poet reports on the show, clowns, cloven hooves and all.

 

Circus on Capitalist Hill (Comey don’t play that…)

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

A senile clown questions the wind
Hearing what he’s heard
hundreds of times before:
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen
into the smoke and
mirror swamp, draining
Anything not nailed down

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen
to sideshow puppetry
Millionaire-billionaire buffoonery
Crooked clowns hiding behind corkscrews
Conniving clowns with
cloven hooves and horns
turning fruits of our labor
into ATMs

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen
suspend disbelief,
Don’t follow the money
pay No attention to
1% pickpockets
Working the perimeter

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen
enter the Capitalist Hill,
War House, Rogue Garden,
Offal Office, White
Supreme Court matrix—
Big Top, bleaching brains,
fooling fools and babies
Riding bareback and backwards
on donkeys and elephants
Babbling ‘bout “our democracy”

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen
See the greatest show on turf
pebbles posing as diamonds,
Fascism as ‘democracy’
with redacted rights…

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen
See the clown trick
Un-framing, freeing an Indigenous
Warrior caged four decades

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen
See the clown trick
sliding cells open pneumatically,
Freeing COINTELPRO, Black Power
political prisoners, prisoners of war—

“I didn’t think so— Comey don’t play that…”

Raymond Nat Turner © 2017 All Rights Reserved
Raymond Nat Turndr is an acclaimed poet and performance artist. find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.

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


More Stories


  • Freedom Rider: Churchill, Columbus and Leopold Fall Down
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Churchill, Columbus and Leopold Fall Down
    17 Jun 2020
    Millions of white people glorify mass murderers because their sense of identity and place in society is deeply tied to white supremacy.
  • The Rebellion Against Police Repression Must Guard Against ALL Enemies, Whether Red, Blue, or Green
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    The Rebellion Against Police Repression Must Guard Against ALL Enemies, Whether Red, Blue, or Green
    17 Jun 2020
    The terrain of struggle will need to expand for the movement to avoid a Democratic Party-induced slumber.
  • The State (For Cam and B) and Mo’ Foul Play
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    The State (For Cam and B) and Mo’ Foul Play
    17 Jun 2020
    Papa’s proud of you, handsome  Grandsons, for hand-lettered signs, for taking to the streets during your generation’s 10 days that shook the world!
  • Building Power to Win is the Revolutionary Approach to Bourgeois Electoralism”
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Building Power to Win is the Revolutionary Approach to Bourgeois Electoralism”
    17 Jun 2020
    We must make clear that it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream.
  • Say Its Name: Genocide!
    Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
    Say Its Name: Genocide!
    17 Jun 2020
    Unless we identify genocide as the common underpinning to all of the brutality directed against Black people in the US, we are talking about the wrong thing.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us