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


  • Martin Luther King
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SPEECH: The Three Evils of Society, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
    17 Jan 2024
    Dr. Martin Luther King’s radical critique of racism, militarism, and poverty can never be bought, bridled, controlled, or compromised.
  • Map of Ethiopia, Somalia, in the Red Sea
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Red Sea Politics: Ethiopia, Somalia, and the US/EU/NATO
    17 Jan 2024
    An MOU pairing Ethiopia’s Red Sea ambitions with Somaliland’s secessionist aspirations heightens tensions in the Horn of Africa.
  • Libyan workers celebrating the blockade on American ships
    Essam Elkorghli
    When Arab Workers Stood Against Zionism
    17 Jan 2024
    In the 1960s Arab workers united and resisted reactionary regimes and the state of Israel.
  • Protest at Mother Emanuel AME Church
    Jacqueline Luqman
    Righteous Protest Was Drowned Out As Empire Was Worshipped At Mother Emanuel AME Church
    17 Jan 2024
    The controversy surrounding Joe Biden being interrupted at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina resulted from his cynical use of a Black church for political purposes.
  • Draymond Green
    Gus Griffin
    Draymond Green and the Israeli Defense Force: Bullies of a Feather….
    17 Jan 2024
    As Draymond Green continues his pattern of bullying behavior in the NBA, he has also aligned himself with a genocidal bully on the global stage.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us