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


  • mashing the state— Kristallnacht-style
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    mashing the state— Kristallnacht-style
    20 Jan 2021
    Kristallnacht came casting lead ballots, overthrowing Black elected officials and Massacring those that VOTED for them—  Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898;
  • Casualties of the Old Cold War Should Inform Opposition to U.S.’ New Cold War against China
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Casualties of the Old Cold War Should Inform Opposition to U.S.’ New Cold War against China
    20 Jan 2021
    The US share of the global economy has shrunk dramatically since 1
  • New Documents Suggest J. Edgar Hoover Was Involved in Fred Hampton’s Murder
    Flint Taylor and Jeff Haas
    New Documents Suggest J. Edgar Hoover Was Involved in Fred Hampton’s Murder
    20 Jan 2021
    Newly released FBI files provide direct documentation that the FBI chief and other high officials were involved in the raid and the coverup that followed.
  • Letters from Our Readers
    Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers
    20 Jan 2021
    This week the uprising in Washington and Du Bois’s writings on the Soviet Union were on your mind.
  • BAR Book Forum: L.H. Stallings’ “Funk the Erotic”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: L.H. Stallings’ “Funk the Erotic”
    20 Jan 2021
    We need a different relationship to and with time and temporality to imagine new worlds and to begin bringing those new worlds into being.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us