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


  • Erica Caines
    The Persecution of Kaia Sealy and the Manufactured Crisis in Trinidad and Tobago
    03 Jun 2026
    Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister says she backs Trump's conservatism and capitalism, and the criminal case against a hairdresser paralyzed in a police shooting shows exactly what that partnership…
  • Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    Bolivia in Crisis: In Conversation with Evo Morales
    03 Jun 2026
    Former Bolivian president Evo Morales Ayma spoke with Black Agenda Report correspondent Clau O’Brien Moscoso.
  • Black Alliance For Peace
    Black Alliance for Peace Calls On International Community to Boycott the 2026 World Cup Games Scheduled for the United States
    03 Jun 2026
    The World Cup is meant to be a celebration of global unity, not a propaganda shield for a superpower waging genocide abroad and running detention gulags on its own soil.
  • Community Movement Builders - Newark
    CMB Newark Statement on the Delaney Hall Uprising
    03 Jun 2026
    The immigrants who revolted inside the Delaney Hall immigration jail are not criminals but prisoners of war, and their actions are those of resistance against a fascist detention system.
  • Abayomi Azikiwe
    Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak in Central and East Africa Causes Alarm
    03 Jun 2026
    Since early May, the World Health Organization and the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been working to contain the spread of a rare and virulent strain of Ebola virus disease.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us