Boots on the ground in Buffalo

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence

25 May 2022

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I.

He was happy to head East

picking up the birthday boy’s cake at

Tops.

Wasn’t Halloween. Was it Hollywood?

White boy? Long gun? Body armor,

Camera on helmet—horrible, hateful

eyes—Black side of town?

Last questions before Bushmaster’s barrel

popped-popped-popped…flashing false

Consciousness—fiery hate— ripping hot

into his happy head, leaving burgundy brain

tissue on the store floor

Family and friends gathered to sing “Happy

Birthday” to the birthday boy will never—

Ever—celebrate birthdays in the same way.

False consciousness flooded their homes with

Tears…

II.

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

star-spangled chest puffed out, locked and

loaded with semi-automatic shrink-wrapped

Words…

High-capacity magazine—thirty rounds of

“Thoughts and Prayers,” “Heavy Hearts—”

bursts of Dem doublespeak sprayed at

Buffalo’s mourning Black masses. Nearly mis

firing… babbling “Build Back Better-isms…”

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Watson-to-Sherlock-like—“Lone gunman armed

with a weapon of war— it’s a hate crime! White

supremacy’s a poison!”

Not nazi venom saturating settler-colonial-confederacy soil.

Not gunpowder-driven real estate deals with the Indigenous

Peoples. Not unpaid labor extracted from enslaved

Africans—

Teaching CRT: Charlottesville-style Racist Terrorism: Wild

Boers storming Capitalist Hill January 6; Officer Prodigy

walking in Wisconsin, spawning Kenosha copy cats; The slow

walking, wrist-slapping AG acting as Boss Tweet’s straight

man for Teflon Don acts…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

Healing/housing Scrooge, swiftly shipped billions

in weapons. Crowed ‘bout recipients

Naming children after Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin,

Northrop Grumman products!

If only the young gunman had driven seven

thousand Miles—instead of 300— poison’s

Cool in Kabul, Baghdad, Khartoum, Mogadishu, Tripoli…

He’d hear, “Thank you for your service,” boarding aircraft

before babysitters, teachers, nurses and food-workers…Or

have handcuffs, Glock, taser, baton, badge, pension—and

Impunity…

Mass shooting of the week—

Ol’ Schmo to Buffalo—

NO caravan of Brink’s trucks for the ten teary

Burials;

Bills, house and car notes, rent, tuition, student

debt. For inflationary food and fuel. For forever

Generational repair…

Today, they say, “Pray for Buffalo’s victims and

Their families…”

© 2022. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, 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 PayPal: paypal.me/towncrierRNT

Mass Shootings

Buffalo

white supremacy

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