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


  • Racial Capitalism and COVID-19
    Zophia Edwards
    Racial Capitalism and COVID-19
    17 Mar 2021
    States continue to reproduce inequalities based on race and citizenship through their COVID-19 relief and welfare programs.
  • Mumia Abu-Jamal's Health Emergency: The Only Treatment is Freedom
    The Jamal Journal staff
    Mumia Abu-Jamal's Health Emergency: The Only Treatment is Freedom
    17 Mar 2021
    An interview with Ricardo Alvarez, Mumia’s “movement” doctor. “The most important point of advocacy is for the release of all our elders in COVID prisons.”
  • More Surveillance Won’t Stop White Supremacy -- It Will Target Activists of Color
    Anoa Changa
    More Surveillance Won’t Stop White Supremacy -- It Will Target Activists of Color
    17 Mar 2021
    Violence from people of color and other marginalized groups – or even simply fear of such violence -- is dealt with immediately and with the harshest of consequences.
  • The Somali Election Impasse in Historical Context
    Abdirahman A. Abdalla
    The Somali Election Impasse in Historical Context
    17 Mar 2021
    Somalia’s current corruptionist comprador bourgeoisie has no independent socio-political base and is therefore totally beholden to Western imperialist interests.
  • Who’s Afraid of Hugo Chávez? Race, Empire, and Chavismo’s Revolutionary Subjectivity
    Lucas M. Koerner 
    Who’s Afraid of Hugo Chávez? Race, Empire, and Chavismo’s Revolutionary Subjectivity
    17 Mar 2021
    What is it about Chávez and the national-popular movement bearing his name that is so threatening to the US Empire to this day?
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us