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


  • Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 5, 2020
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Agenda Radio for Week of October 5, 2020
    06 Oct 2020
    Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House 
  • Economically Fading US Chooses Military Confrontation
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Economically Fading US Chooses Military Confrontation
    06 Oct 2020
    Unable to keep up with China economically, the United States is militarily encircling its rival and “creating the conditions of a New Cold War,” said Danny Haiphong, contribut
  • If Breonna Were White…
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    If Breonna Were White…
    06 Oct 2020
    In an essay titled “Breonna’s Deathbed,” political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal asks if the Louisville cops that killed Breonna Taylor would still be free if they had shot to
  • Anti-Blackness Throughout the Americas
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Anti-Blackness Throughout the Americas
    06 Oct 2020
    Anti-Blackness is the common denominator underlying Black people’s high rates of death from poverty, disease and police violence on both continents of the western hemisphere, said Jame
  • Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House
    06 Oct 2020
    For the 12th consecutive year, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will march on the White House, November 7, this time under the themes “Black Power Matters,
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us