by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Our poet in residence muses upon the collective madness engendered by the quadrennial presidential election.
Breathe the Bern…
by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
Right around this time ‘left’ pundits and
Pontificators hitch worn star-spangled
suspenders to an ol’ mule and pretend they’re
Alcoholics— invoking the serenity prayer:
“God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things that I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.”
They claim theirs is the highest form of self-
discipline; like a form of Yoga, a sacred set of
Breathing exercises in 4yr-cycles—foundation of
their practice is regulation of oxygen to brain cells…
But it looks like the Hokey-Pokey:
You clamp your left nostril down,
Until it feels like you’ll drown…
You clamp your right nostril down,
Until your ‘hood’s like Jonestown—
Then you do the shit again in 4 yrs
As the wily 1% stokes your fears…
Set yourself back another decade
With the practicing of this charade…
Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 All Rights Reserved
For the past 30 years, no matter which party has been in power, the US economy has produced more and more “bad” jobs – because the Race to the Bottom is ruling class policy.
It is true now just as when Glen Ford wrote these words in 2019. In any alliance with corporate oppression and militarism, Black America squanders reservoirs of respect among the Earth’s peoples.…
The U.S. has used its influence to steal another country’s oil revenues. Venezuela is in the crosshairs because it dares to be socialist in the hemisphere the U.S. claims as it’s “backyard.”
The late Glen Ford would probably refer to events in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and elsewhere as the “blowback” from France’s colonial past.
“The structural crisis of capitalism in its neoliberal form has created a legitimacy crisis for the capitalist rulers, making the use of force a permanent strategy for maintaining their dominance.”
