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


  • Indoctrination Nation: The Institutionalization of US Imperialism
    Solomon Comissiong
    Indoctrination Nation: The Institutionalization of US Imperialism
    19 Feb 2020
    Crimes that earned their perpetrators capital sentences at Nuremberg are celebrated as the sacred patrimony of the United States.
  • How Corporations Are Forcing Their Way Into America’s Public Schools
    Jeff Bryant
    How Corporations Are Forcing Their Way Into America’s Public Schools
    19 Feb 2020
    Public school students are being “trained” for jobs at specific corporations rather than educated for a lifetime in a changing world.
  • New York Schools Gang Unit Pushes the Criminalization of Children
    Alice Speri 
    New York Schools Gang Unit Pushes the Criminalization of Children
    19 Feb 2020
    A school handbook paints a picture of youth criminality that is steeped in law enforcement lingo and appears to have been written by police rather than educators.
  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of February 17, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of February 17, 2020
    18 Feb 2020
    US Must Build Housing on a Bigger Scale than the New Deal
  • Mumia Marks Release of Chuck Africa
    Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
    Mumia Marks Release of Chuck Africa
    18 Feb 2020
    The nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, was jubilant at the release of Chuck Africa, at 59 the last of the Move 9 members to leave prison after conviction
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us