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


  • Cleveland Mayor Breaks Campaign Promise on Community Control of Police
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Cleveland Mayor Breaks Campaign Promise on Community Control of Police
    02 Dec 2022
    Taru Taylor is a freelance journalist based in Cleveland, where he focuses on the issue of police reform. He recently wrote an op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about that city’s mayor,…
  • Worthy and Unworthy Protest on the Critical Hour
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Worthy and Unworthy Protest on the Critical Hour
    02 Dec 2022
    Margaret Kimberley appeared on the November 30, 2022 edition of Sputnik's The Critical Hour with co-hosts Garland Nixon and Dr. Wilmer Leon. They discussed her latest Black Agenda Report column,…
  • WINTER IS COMING for Ukraine and Taiwan with Garland Nixon, Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist , Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    WINTER IS COMING for Ukraine and Taiwan with Garland Nixon, Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong
    30 Nov 2022
    Margaret Kimberley and Garland Nixon join Danny Haiphong on The Left Lens discussing social media censorship, Ukraine, China, and the contradictions of US imperialism
  • EXCERPT: Brussels Conference Act of 1890
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    EXCERPT: Brussels Conference Act of 1890
    30 Nov 2022
    The 1890 Brussels Act provided Europeans with the legal and humanitarian justification for the colonization of Africa. Why have so few heard of it?
  • Worthy and Unworthy Protest
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Worthy and Unworthy Protest
    30 Nov 2022
    Protesters in some nations are celebrated. Others are ignored. Protest is a human right to be respected but instead can be used as a pretext for nefarious motives such as regime change.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us