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We can no longer …
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
08 May 2024
Protest sign saying "resist"

We can no longer…

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” 
—Honoré de Balzac

I’m not a nuanced
Negro
Complicating,
Contextualizing, centering,
Unpacking, drilling down
Inter-sectionally into the
weeds beneath capitalism’s
‘Hood …

Yet, point blank,
full stop— I say:
We can no longer
Afford the rich …

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their Wars of the
Week! Their bloodletting beheading babies;
blistering bodies like hotdogs on exploding 
hospital grills! Their turning the world’s streets
into crimson rivers/salt ponds of tears—Their
Fattening vampire shareholders’ profits Q1-Q4!

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their School Shootings du Jour served
in absurd sauces! Like ‘strapping’ overtaxed 
Teachers in paper-starved/pencil-depleted
classrooms! Growling belly symphony classrooms; class-
rooms prostrate beneath obscene profits of High Priests of Violence!

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their champagne-caviar frivolity—Forgetting how many 
Houses they have—while tarps and tents are popping up like
pastel mushroom clouds … And the capitalist cancer of card-
board mattresses metastasizes … Skid Rows across the country …

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their $campaigns and $elections infesting
Capitalist Hill with larcenous lobbyists, sleazy
senators, corrupt congress members. And their
stuffing White Supreme Court slots with bought and
Bossed black-robed klansmen—Tali-banning abortion—
Otherwise partnering with War House genocidal geriatrics

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their bomb trains hurtling over rickety tracks encircling
our homes! Their chemical warfare/fiery explosions/flaming
faucets/exploding wells! Their weaponized pollutants poisoning
Our rivers/oceans; pumping plastic/lead into our children’s brains

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their supply-chain fairytales for food price-gouging …
Their class war on poor working-class children of Africa—
Their ruthless, bloody, monkey business extracting coltan and
cobalt sweat beads, powering PCs and EVs of comfortable ones

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And their standing armies of strikebreakers; free speech
suppressors; freedom of assembly bashers— 1st and 4th
Amendment redactors … Truncheon-taser-wielding thugs 
Draining city and county coffers …

We can no longer
Afford the rich …
And must disarm them:
Snatching our
Minds from their bloody hands—
and announcing, "Normal don't
Live here no mo’, Mr. Mutha-Fukkka, 
And Business As Usual took off
running—moment he heard our …
Our footsteps!"

© 2024. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; BAR's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. You can Vote for his work at GoFundMe and PayPal.

War and Empire
imperialism
Capitalism
Class struggle

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