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


  • Letters from Our Readers
    Jahan Choudhry  Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers
    26 Aug 2020
    This week you discussed the Biden-Harris ticket and the country’s political prisoners.
  • BAR Book Forum: Liat Ben-Moshe’s “Decarcerating Disability”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Liat Ben-Moshe’s “Decarcerating Disability”
    26 Aug 2020
    Disability studies looks at disability as an identity and culture and not as a deficit to be corrected.
  • BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
    Hilary Malson
    BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
    26 Aug 2020
    The author examines literature that looks to sites of struggle to find the seeds of an alternative, more just future.
  • Obama, Harris and the Ruse of Racial Representation
    Nelson Maldonado-Torres 
    Obama, Harris and the Ruse of Racial Representation
    26 Aug 2020
    Racial liberalism attempts to shape the perspectives of communities of color through narrow ideas of national belonging, Manifest Destiny, and the American Dream.
  • Federal Judge Tackles Police Immunity Law
    Marjorie Cohn
    Federal Judge Tackles Police Immunity Law
    26 Aug 2020
    The Black judge listed the injustices of “qualified immunity,” which allows police and other government officials to escape liability for their law breaking.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us