Police Terror = “Support The Troops!”—1,000 x in ________
Police Terror = “Support The Troops!”—1,000 x in ________
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR Poet-in-Residence
And you keep wondering how they kill your sons and daughters
Daily; leaving them lying in city streets for 4 hrs ‘bleeding out?’
You keep crying the system is “broken” and I keep screaming
it’s as broken as a Bentley; hear it purring like a Lamborghini?
Before they fire thousands of rounds protecting puppets;
Before they patrol plantations, policing pipelines and mines;
Before they raze blocks; slaughter families; Before they kill in
Kabul, Baghdad, Mogadishu, Port-au-Prince, Da Nang, Hanoi
and Hue; Before they kill in countrysides for sport—cutting off
fingers of the fallen and urinating on their bodies… Before they
kill from helicopters to relieve boredom; and from consoles in
air conditioned spaces making ‘bug splat’ of poor farmers,
children and grandmothers gardening okra…Names we’ll never
Know—let alone say—And before they’ve ever killed a thousand
times in their minds…
We let lethal language
into our mouths:
“support the troops…”
“in harm’s way…”
“boots on the ground…”
“protect our freedoms…”
“make us safer…”
“Thank You for your service!”
We parrot war-profiteer propaganda:
“enemy combatants…”
“high value targets…”
“civilian casualties…”
“collateral damage…”
And we murder our minds:
“signature strikes…”
“extraordinary renditions…”
“enhanced interrogation techniques…”
“ghost detainees…”
“Gitmo”
When their killsets are perfected, they return: six-figure assassins—
Hitmen with pensions, medical, dental. Killing in yards, alleys,
streets, jails, prisons. Killing in living rooms. Killing their ways
to paid vacations and desk duties…”Thank you for your service!”
© 2021. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.
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
COMMENTS?
Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport
Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com
for Aiyana, for Tommie, for Jordan.
In excerpts from a speech given in Accra, Ghana, BAR editor and contributor Dr. Jemima Pierre highlights the United Nations’ involvement in the 2004 coup d'état and the subsequent…
Washington, D.C., is implementing a new campaign intended to crack down on fare evasion. This bill, like many others of its kind, will serve as a tool deployed in the ongoing war against the…
Mozambique is experiencing a period of unrest provoked by recent elections. After unending suffering under neoliberal austerity measures and the encroachment of AFRICOM, the …
The fires that have been raging in southern California for days are destroying the cities and homes of tens of thousands of people. This disaster, driven by the worsening climate crisis, is…
