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


  • Where Trumpism Lives
    Jacob Whiton
    Where Trumpism Lives
    27 Jan 2021
    Support for pro-Trump Republicans remains driven by relatively well-off whites in fast-growing, rapidly diversifying suburbs – not by economic despair in rural America.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. and the Socialist Within 
    Stephen Joseph Scott
    Martin Luther King Jr. and the Socialist Within 
    27 Jan 2021
    Each year in January as King is honored in the eyes of the public, there is little mention of the demands of the man and his mission: his fight for economic justice.
  • Amazon Launches Anti-Union Website to Derail Alabama Union Drive
    Lauren Kaori Gurley
    Amazon Launches Anti-Union Website to Derail Alabama Union Drive
    27 Jan 2021
    The drive at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama marks one of the few times in the company's history that workers will have the opportunity to vote in a union election.
  • France Vows 'Symbolic Actions' but No Apologies for Colonization of Algeria
    Adlène Meddi 
    France Vows 'Symbolic Actions' but No Apologies for Colonization of Algeria
    27 Jan 2021
    Between 500,000 and 1.5 million Algerians died in the war for independence, but the French don’t like to talk about it. 
  • Still Can’t Breathe
    Topher Sanders and Lucas Waldron
    Still Can’t Breathe
    27 Jan 2021
    NYPD officers continue to use chokeholds on civilians without any meaningful punishment.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us