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


  • Bruce Dixon
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Democrats Complicit in Israel’s Crimes
    23 Aug 2024
    We revisit this piece from the late Bruce Dixon, BAR Managing Editor and co-founder, where he explained that there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans on the issue of Palestine and…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    KHive Snitches, Right Wing Liberals, and Palestine
    21 Aug 2024
    The allegation that only Trump threatens democracy is a useful ruse for the Democratic Party. They continue their support for genocide and ethnic cleansing and fiercely attack anyone who dares to…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist , Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    From Pan Africanism to Afropessimism: Palestine and the Degeneration of Black Politics
    21 Aug 2024
    For decades, most Black political commentary has expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people. Recently, a new phenomenon has appeared, particularly on social media platforms, which accuses all…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: Apologies to All the People in Lebanon, June Jordan, 1982
    21 Aug 2024
    June Jordan’s painful apology for US complicity in zionist terrorism in Lebanon, and against the Palestinian people.
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Dan Kovalik on Israel's War on Gaza
    21 Aug 2024
    Ann Garrison caught up with attorney, journalist, and author Dan Kovalik just as the Coalition to March on the DNC stepped off from Chicago’s Union Park on the first day of the Democratic National…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us