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


  • Cuba: From AIDS, Dengue, and Ebola to COVID-19
    Don Fitz
    Cuba: From AIDS, Dengue, and Ebola to COVID-19
    22 Apr 2020
    Before Cuba experienced its first COVID-!9 case it had already updated a plan to prevent and control the disease.
  • Mike Davis On Pandemics, Super-capitalism and the Struggles of Tomorrow
    Sharif Abdel Kouddous
    Mike Davis On Pandemics, Super-capitalism and the Struggles of Tomorrow
    22 Apr 2020
    Capitalist globalization means accepting a permanent triage of humanity and dooming part of the human race to eventual extinction. 
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 20, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 20, 2020
    20 Apr 2020
    Covid-19 and the Black Working Class
  • "Decolonizing" Science in Multi-Language Africa
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    "Decolonizing" Science in Multi-Language Africa
    20 Apr 2020
    South African communicator and journalist Sibusiso Biyela wrote an article on “decolonizing” science so that it is accessible to the country’s many indigenous language gr
  • Public Housing Neglect Creates Lethal Trap
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Public Housing Neglect Creates Lethal Trap
    20 Apr 2020
    “You have these areas that are not clean and, on top of that, you have folks that don’t have access to health care because of racism and capitalism,” said Philip McHarris, a Y
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us