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


  •  Democrats Remove Green Party from North Carolina Ballot
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Democrats Remove Green Party from North Carolina Ballot
    08 Jul 2022
    The Democratic Party succeeded in using voter intimidation and political pressure to remove the Green Party from ballot access in North Carolina. Tony Ndege is an organizer and co-Chair of the North…
  • Protesting for Jayland Walker
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Protesting for Jayland Walker
    06 Jul 2022
    The number of bullets used to kill Jayland Walker have sparked an outcry, but police kill one Black person every day in this country. If systemic change is not the demand all protest is for…
  • SPEECH: The Black Revolution is Part of World-wide Struggle, Malcolm X, 1964
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    SPEECH: The Black Revolution is Part of World-wide Struggle, Malcolm X, 1964
    06 Jul 2022
    Malcolm X reminds us of the deceit of liberals, the power of international thinking, and the coming of Black revolution.
  • Taiwan and the Making of an “Asian” NATO
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Taiwan and the Making of an “Asian” NATO
    06 Jul 2022
    The United States wants to turn Taiwan into an Asian Ukraine. The goal is to use it as a weapon against a China, a country that has been declared an adversary.
  • Slaveholders Who Signed the Declaration of Independence: Washington, Jefferson, and the People they Owned
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Slaveholders Who Signed the Declaration of Independence: Washington, Jefferson, and the People they Owned
    06 Jul 2022
    Black Agenda Report editors Margaret Kimberley and Ann Garrison discuss the personal and institutional hypocrisy which allowed those who said, "All men are created to equal," to be slaveholders.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us