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


  • BAR Book Forum: Symposium on Sarah Haley’s "No Mercy Here" 
    Dan Berger
    BAR Book Forum: Symposium on Sarah Haley’s "No Mercy Here" 
    20 May 2020
    What Haley crafts about the lives of incarcerated women is astounding in its archival literacy, analytical sophistication, and authorial courage.
  • BAR Book Forum: Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s “Becoming Human”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s “Becoming Human”
    20 May 2020
    Black people are without the shelter of rights and protection, whether invited into or locked out of ‘the human.’”
  • Pivot to Mass Struggle: A Lesson from Ferguson
    Ashton Rome
    Pivot to Mass Struggle: A Lesson from Ferguson
    20 May 2020
    We are entering a terrifying and daunting time that requires a change in approach and tactics.
  • Cancel the Rent 
    Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
    Cancel the Rent 
    20 May 2020
    We have to reverse the strange alchemy where markets turn land, concrete, steel, and glass into money, while turning people out into the streets.
  • A Universal Appeal for Humanity to End Militarism and Stop War
    Abdallah El Harif and Vijay Prashad
    A Universal Appeal for Humanity to End Militarism and Stop War
    20 May 2020
    A bloc of countries, led by the United States of America, is stubbornly persisting in using force to maintain and extend their global dominance.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us