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


  • DOCUMENT: Covert Action Exploitation of Cuban Involvement in Angola, 1977
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    DOCUMENT: Covert Action Exploitation of Cuban Involvement in Angola, 1977
    06 Apr 2022
    A declassified CIA document outlining their strategies for covert action in Angola in the 1970s offers lessons for the present.
  • Joe Biden Can't Slap His Way Out of his Legitimacy Crisis
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Joe Biden Can't Slap His Way Out of his Legitimacy Crisis
    06 Apr 2022
    Biden's popularity continues to decline. And unlike Will Smith, the "Build Back Better" President has shown little indication that he can generate the enthusiasm needed to reverse course.
  • Hearings...
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Hearings...
    06 Apr 2022
                                                           …
  • BAR Book Forum: Interview with Kathryn Benjamin Golden
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Interview with Kathryn Benjamin Golden
    06 Apr 2022
    This week’s featured scholar is Kathryn Benjamin Golden. Golden is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at University of Delaware.  Her article is “‘Armed in the Great Swamp’: Fear, Maroon…
  •  BAR Book Forum: Carole Boyce Davies’ “Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Carole Boyce Davies’ “Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment”
    06 Apr 2022
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Carole Boyce Davies. Davies is the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us