Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

9/11... My lil’ 1.5 cents: What’s Trump Got To Do With It?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
16 Nov 2016
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet ion residence Raymond Nat Turner

Hope. Change. Yes we can. I'm with her. Or maybe not. Make America Stronger Together Again....


11/9
My lil’ 1.5 cents: What’s Trump Got To Do With It?

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

I.

They were 8-18

When “Hope and change” came: shouting

“Yes, we can”—and bottle Jim Jones Juice—

Waking, hung over from head-fixing: PSYOP

$campaign $elections—24 mos. cruel and

unusual punishment:

Three thousand down Broadway, in Oaktown;

5,000 through the loop, Chitown;

Ten thousand stepping off Union Square, NYC;

3,000 Capitol Hill, Seattle; The Common, Boston;

Streets in Austin—so on and so forth—

sundry tongues, tribes, nations, ages;

Rainbow beauty, International Working-

Class, Everyday People—majesty of the 99%,

one rainy day… division, math retarding us!

Instead of schooling children on how

Classes are lead by political parties—the

1% has 2 parties—we have none—and how

Politics Is War By Other Means:

muscle demanding more than

5min. Exercise Every 4 yrs.—

Dem in the War House—old fools, dupes, dopes

Discarded No-Doze and shut shutters like

Rip Van Winkles, 8 yrs on7 wars—cheering

Bombing from deep sleep…

11/9

Mule-headed, they awakened hysterical,

hand wringing, organizing yard sales, purchasing

one way tickets to drone-less, deportation-free utopias;

Political-prisoner-less paradise; Ignoring

the beloved Buddha’s teaching:

“…do not dream of the future, concentrate

the mind on the present moment…”

(Your Commander has 5 Tuesdays left…)

Delusions of democracy, devils doubling down on

Depravity—banana republic on the down low—

citizens blind to continuity of mass murder—

Unbroken thread of U.S. rule removing

The wrong man—installing the “strong man”—

The right man for the white man: chessmen,

Yes-men on the Devil’s chessboard:

Mobutu, Marcos, Shah, Somosa, Papa Doc,

Baby Doc, Batista, Pinochet…

Shock and Awe/Hope and Change—War House

Shots are Wall Street things called by Generals

Dynamic, Electric; Haliburton, Boeing, Raytheon, et al…

The 5th Fleet is still in Bahrain where killers train; Bases

are in nine hundred places like Baghdad, Basra, Qatar and

Kuwait while you wait…for consciousness to catch up…

II.

You must understand

That it’s more than this man

To the attack

Unity’s required

for a sustained fight-back

It’s systemic, we must act quick



We cannot ignore

The raging class war

We can’t be confused by strategy of the 1%

Resistance requires unity in our own big tent

We must admit that we don’t know shit

‘bout how $elections work

‘Cause we know too much about some pop star’s twerk—

What’s Trump got to do with it?

What’s Trump but a figurehead for Wall Street?

What’s Trump, but a racist thug and tax cheat?

They need a Trump where Forked Tongue is spoken

And the thread of class war is unbroken

What’s Trump got to do-got to do with it?

What’s Trump but a figurehead for Wall Street?

What’s Trump, but a racist thug and tax cheat?

III.

Power-down devices, turn off Fox-boxes—

Get Supreme, hands up, saying:

“Stop In The Name Of Love!”

Stop mourning Benito-Tojo Tribesmen fluent in

Forked tongue and bailing out

banksters; spinning “Drill, baby, drill”

Crowing, “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”,

Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia…

Keeping “clean coal” on the table—single payer off;

“surges”, “black sites”, Black Lives, and “boots on the ground”—

Defending beanbag, rubber bullet, pepper spray, democracy…

Honor Ancestors: remember Mama Harriet, Nat, John Brown,

Douglass, Robeson, Rosa Luxemburg, Liebknecht,

Medgar, Malcolm, Martin, Fred Hampton;

Recite our political prisoners’ names ten times:

Jamil El-Amin, Peltier, Dave Gilbert, Maroon Shoatz, Abu Jamal, Chip Ftzgerald, Herman Bell, et al—

Since your phones are so fuckin’ smart—

Search their names before they die

Forgotten in gulags. We aren’t free until they are!

Unshackle superstition, goober dust,

black cat dander before your first suicide—

Smile, wink, nod; make eye contact. Say,

Salaam, Namaste, Kamusta, Hola, Hi, Whazzup?

Take Mental Health Months—52-weeks— from worthless ones:

War House, Capitalist Hill, White Supreme Court;

Note: checks and balances is checking

Swiss bank account balances for bribes.

Go Jehovah knocking on neighbors’ doors:

Assume a Lotus posture. Practice Kapalabhati breaths—

Think of Eric Garner

Put universal healthcare back on “the table”

Dialogue, discuss the Patriot Acting police state

Hug, lock arms, march in lockstep, supporting one another…

Act as thinkers, think as actors. Put forehead to socialism,

Shaping things to come…

If they stink of mule shit

Put boots up “leaders” asses of as far as legs allow—

For they are traitors—check their embalming fluid later!



Despite pomp, puffed out chests, shallow vanity

The prancing peacocks’ time’s short—like Third Reich

Thousand years, boiling down to 12 in a Berlin bunker…

Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 All Rights Reserved.
Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performance artist. You can find more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Mayor's Race
    31 Oct 2025
    Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on James Fauntleroy’s YouTube program, Jaybefaunt. They discussed the upcoming mayoral election in New York City that pits the Democratic Party nominee, Zohran…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Shutdown and Neverending Hostility to the Welfare State
    29 Oct 2025
    The federal government shutdown is a fight between Trump and democrats, but it is also emblematic of the tenuous nature of the welfare state in the U.S. The duopoly parties are both committed to…
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    The United States and Israel: The Tale of Two Rogue Settler-Colonial States United by A Commitment to White Supremacy and Barbaric State Violence
    29 Oct 2025
    The genocide in Gaza, the threat to Venezuela, and the targeting of Iran are not isolated crises. They are coordinated fronts in a single war effort attempting to enforce imperial dominance.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    STATEMENT: The Challenge to the Colonial Powers, Delegates to the Fifth Pan-African Congress, 1945
    29 Oct 2025
    “Africans, as a last resort, may have to appeal to force in the effort to achieve Freedom, even if force destroys them and the world.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    The US Targets Colombians by Sanctioning Gustavo Petro
    29 Oct 2025
    “I do not have a dollar in the United States. There is no account to freeze for me.”  - Colombian President Gustavo Petro, solidarity rally in Bogota, 10/24/2025
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us