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a place…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
23 Sep 2015

by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner

I know a place where there’s more law in muzzles of Glocks and Tasers than in Supreme Court decisions; a place where gunmen, triggermen turn traffic tickets into death sentences

a place…

by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner

“do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you…”—Jesus, Sermon on the Mount

 

I know a place where

Failed jocks and bullies

go and act out Night Train

Lane, LT wannabe fantasies

Tackling unsuspecting cyclists,

Tackling citizens standing in front

of hotels, and on sidewalks; A

place where sadists pepper-spray

Peaceful protestors, straddle women

and beat them on sides of freeways

 

I know a place where

reporter/stenographers suck up, mayors

fear to tread, and Duncan’s is hog heaven

for surly bodyguards of Homelessness,

Poverty

and Unemployment, robotically jamming

knees into backs and necks, smashing fists

into faces and feeling the bones shatter; 

and breaking arms over knees.

A place superior size and strength are

Useful for intimidating and carrying out cruelties

Against smaller, weaker, people; a place where

grunts, barks and mad howls of poisonous slurs,

venomous epithets are spat day and night, like a

leaky faucet oozing patriotic pus—stinking raw

Sewage; a place where pulling pranks,dirty tricks

monkeyshine-shenanigans, mocking, taunting,

Tormenting, harassing, persecuting, the aggrieved,

Injured and dead is 'policy.'

 

I know a place where

Walking law suits, frat-boy klansmen with bigger

Budgets—less accounting and accountability— 

Loiter; a place where troublemakers look for and

Make trouble, conjure chaos and instability—start

Shit, to stop it. A place where they speed, drive 

Recklessly, and view people paying them as 

subhuman, ‘perps,’‘vics,’ walking ten-ring targets—

Bulls-eyes—a place to dis the mayor and draw a check; 

A place where, as

Crime is spiraling downward like dirty dishwater down 

the drain, jobs look more and more museum-like, like

Stagecoach drivers and Pony Express riders…

 

I know a place where

Loma Prieta, Katrina, Sandy, and rag-tag bands of

Occupy, exposed how tits-on-bullish breaking into

Peoples’ homes planting cameras looking, listening to

Love, shouting, arguing is; how tits-on-bullish

Robbing drug-dealers, stealing and selling evidence on

the streets is; how tits-on-bullish carrying ‘war bags’—

Dope, stolen guns,  filed-off serial #s for demolishing

Dreams, destroying lives, families, communities, one 

False charge at a time is; and how, tits-on-bullish, 

Chuckling, and belly laughing at sociopathy is…

 

I know a place where

there’s more law in muzzles of Glocks and Tasers

Than in Supreme Court decisions; a place where

Gunmen, triggermen turn traffic tickets into death

Sentences; a lawless place where confederate

commandoes fire flash-bang grenades into baby

Cribs, slaughter seven-year-olds in their sleep, then get

Two weeks on the beach, with pay; a place where ‘roid-

raging death squads bring bloodlust back from Iraq,

Afghanistan, Vietnam, Guatemala, The Philippines—

firing forty-one shots at wallets, fifty, or135— 

Pick a number—at cars; shooting men sprinting away,

Summarily executing homeless and mentally ill men and

women for felonies of poverty; a place like killing floors for 

Leaving

Human beings blooming blood pools, bleeding out,

Twitching like cockroaches or rats, last flickers of light

Fading; a place so fuckin’ cool for shooters putzing around with 

Yellow tape and

Harassing humanitarians, good samaritans and medical professionals 

About 'Golden Windows' and serious business of saving lives…

 

I know a place where all of this is possible—if only you chant five

Magic words—like the Buddhist chant 'Om:' “I feared for my life—”

Oink, if you know this place!

 

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at upsurgejazz.com

 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2015 All Right Reserved

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