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


  • The Dangers of Binary Politics for the African American Community
    Wilmer J. Leon III
    The Dangers of Binary Politics for the African American Community
    25 Mar 2020
    We have traded our interests in for “electability” and “anybody but Trump.”
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 23, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 23, 2020
    24 Mar 2020
    Black Trillion Dollar “Buying Power” is a Capitalist Hoax
  • Too Fast to Be a Woman
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Too Fast to Be a Woman
    24 Mar 2020
    When South African track star Caster Semenya won a silver medal at the 2012 Olympic Games, critics claimed “she was cheating and had no right to compete with other women” because she performed more
  • James Baldwin’s African Awakening
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    James Baldwin’s African Awakening
    24 Mar 2020
    Although famed writers James Baldwin never wrote a book entirely about Africa in his long career, his later works show him awakening to “the potential of Black internationalism” with the decoloniza
  • Black Trillion Dollar “Buying Power” is a Capitalist Hoax
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Trillion Dollar “Buying Power” is a Capitalist Hoax
    24 Mar 2020
    For decades, politicians and business people have claimed that, if only African Americans used their alleged trillion dollar consumer purchasing power wisely, Blacks would make great economic and p
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us