The acrobats are back…(gimme a bleepin’ break!)

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence

12 May 2021

The acrobats are back—riding bareback and backwards on
Donkeys! They’re back juggling hocus-pocus focus groups;
Back, spinning Wall Street straw into fools’ gold for the war-
mongering mouth of a punch drunk politician. Back hallucinating
on FDR Fairytales. Back somersaulting over scarlet streets, strikes and
factory seizures; back vaulting over violence/militant eviction resistance

The acrobats are back—Lilliputian left-Munchkin Marxists—juggling
Classless analysis; doing back-flips erasing millions; Tumbling above
herds of handcuffed communists, socialists, anarchists, trade unionists
who waged pitched battles with Pinkerton-police-national guard-gun thugs.
The acrobats are back turning cartwheels; Flipping history on its head—
Landing squarely in the laps of generals and statesmen…

The acrobats are back—flipping LBJ minus 34 dead and smoke-filled skies
over Watts/43 dead in Detroit/27 dead, 1400 arrests in Newark; LBJ minus millions
marching NO to Jim Crow, war/women’s oppression; Minus martyrs—whose M’s
include Mickey, Medgar, Malcolm, Martin… The acrobats are back,
dancing in donkey dung down the Yellow Brick Road for the Emerald City
Intersectional Empire—strangely resembling the Pentagon…

The acrobats are back—daredevils who dangled dangerously for 8 yrs. from
the Drone Ranger’s dick. They’re back—Capitalist Hill cartwheels and flips—sticking
stealth socialist landings as Comrade Schmo plays them like The
Great Oz—ominously warning: “Pay no attention to Wall Street-War-Profiteer-
Big Pharma/Fossil Fuel-Credit Card Companies behind my thin blue curtain of
Promises!” Then he quietly pulls his pistol and mumbles,”What’s in your wallet?”

BAR’s poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished performing artist. You can find much more of his work at https://www.youtube.com/user/zigilow

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