Stable working class neighborhoods are the bane of speculators, developers and capitalist politicians.
Lording over the landscape like giant
Insects sucking soul, blood, chocolate
into multi-colored mushrooms
Metastasizing citywide.
Officers ordering vacant storefronts,
lined up like soldiers, to make money,
while brothers with cupped hands
platoon on plastic crates at entrances to
$4-a-cup coffee shops with belligerent baristas.
Beneath fiery crimson skies,
afternoon freeways are fuming parking lots.
Capitalism’s poisoning water and air,
and ignorant exploiters don’t care!
Pyramids and huts; tuxes and tails,
unwashed butts—tents and jails.
First come the cranes—then the
Tents, skyrocketing mortgages—then the
Rents… money, money, money for military
Bases in far off places—but, it’s “Pie in the
sky,” to demand affordable living spaces!
Basketball team’s outgrown The Town,
football team’s slipping off to Sin
City after slurping at the trough…
Capitalism’s poisoning water and air,
and ignorant exploiters don’t care!
Pyramids and huts; tuxes and tails,
unwashed butts—tents and jails.
First come the cranes—then the
Tents, skyrocketing mortgages—then the
Rents… money, money, money for military
Bases in far off places—but, it’s “Pie in the
sky,” to demand affordable living spaces!
And we play dress-up in grown folks’ clothes—
Tiny red, white and blue stickers— pretending
we’re fixing it in 20 minutes… every 2-4 years …
© 2018. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performing artist. You can find much more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com.
Dear Mr. Cole:
Despite the quickening decline of the “West,” the US and its junior partners in imperialism are determined to hold humanity hostage to terminal capitalist greed and violence.
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-
The U.S. can never be reformed to render justice to its African residents. “Our struggle must have Africa at its core.”
Detroit’s wanton killing of hundreds of Blacks in the civil right era shows why most of today’s proposals to make police more accountable are bound to fail.
