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


  • Black Oakland Demands in Light of COVID-19 and Rates of Black Death
    Black Oakland Leaders and Allies
    Black Oakland Demands in Light of COVID-19 and Rates of Black Death
    29 Apr 2020
    Unless Black people are healthy and safe then no community is healthy and safe.
  • As Coronavirus Spreads Through Prisons, States Are Failing Incarcerated People
    Victoria Law
    As Coronavirus Spreads Through Prisons, States Are Failing Incarcerated People
    29 Apr 2020
    Although prisons have become hot spots of the pandemic, most of the penal overseers have taken only token measures, if any, to evacuate inmates.
  • ​​​​​​​Cuban-Trained Doctor Fights Pandemic in The Bronx
    Granma International Staff
    ​​​​​​​Cuban-Trained Doctor Fights Pandemic in The Bronx
    29 Apr 2020
    In the South Bronx, Dr Melissa Barber battles COVID-19, putting into practice the lessons she learned in Cuba, at the Latin American School of Medicine.
  • Debating Black Freedom
    Robert Greene II 
    Debating Black Freedom
    29 Apr 2020
    Time and again, Black radicals have pressed for an expanded scope of political and economic freedoms, for Americans at home and for people abroad.
  • Puerto Rico, Protest, Prison: Johanna Fernández and Jose Saldaña on The Young Lords 
    Susie Day  
    Puerto Rico, Protest, Prison: Johanna Fernández and Jose Saldaña on The Young Lords 
    29 Apr 2020
     “There’s something profoundly liberating for people who’ve been told all their lives that they ain’t shit to stand up.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us