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

Mengele Medicine… Free
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
12 Jul 2017
🖨️ Print Article

by BAR poet in residence Raynmond Nat Turner

This week our poet examines the links between the blankets settlers distributed among Native Americans and capitalism's reckless disregard of human, environmental and medica ethics.

Mengele Medicine… Free

by BAR poet in residence Raynmond Nat Turner

I.
My mom inspected
hell holes, City of
Angels,
ruled by devils.

Captured Angelinos
complained about
Not getting water.
Red punch, sí— water, no;
As the Founding Fathers,
The Framers—of warriors
and truth-tellers—intended…

Outside the city,
concertina wire veils
Loveless gray walls
keeping a grim gulag
out of sight, out of mind;
Concealing the work camp,
pharmaceutical
playground, infested
with sadistic torturers;
and Mengele medicine men
standing on skeletons—
suffering side-effects
of pulse-less persons,
$500.00 an hour lawyers.

Mengele medicine men,
practicing goober dust,
black cat dander, four-
leaf clover, rabbit’s foot,
aspirin for cancer quackery.
Experimenting with
effects of no water,
sugar water, fracked water,
black water, white bread
on diabetic shock subjects—
Side effects of remote-
controlled Death Panels,
posing as parole boards…

II.
Warriors, Freedom Fighters’
Sacrifices paved our way—
Heroic lamp-lighters
Long for light of day
And they gotta be Free, Free, Free
‘Cause they hold the Key, Key, Key

Resistance isn’t crime
When tellers of truth fight back
From cages of endless time
And peculiar tenure-track
And they gotta be Free, Free, Free
‘Cause they hold the Key, Key, Key

Torture arisoners, Prisoners of War…)

(1st stanza 1st time Rubato; Ballad feel;
1st stanza 2nd time to Groove)

Raymond Nat Turner © 2017 All Rights Reserved

BAR's Ppoet in residence, Raymond Nat Turner is an acclaimed poet and performance artist. We'll have to put up a booking page for him here soon. Meanwhile you can find much 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


  • Imani Nile
    Don't Bring None of Your Anti Anti-Imperialist Bullshit to Cuba
    09 Sep 2026
    Empire taught us what to believe about the Global South. It also taught us how to move through it, and being colonized here does not exempt us from carrying those beliefs with us.
  • Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
    9/11 and the Great American Decline
    09 Sep 2026
    The Bush administration had long planned a global war for U.S. hegemony, and the attacks of September 11 provided the perfect pretext to put those plans into motion.
  • J.C. Hallman , Keaton Ross
    Who's Calling?
    09 Sep 2026
    Oklahoma prison inmates were making political calls for a conservative Super PAC during the primary.
  • Michael Steven Smith
    Meet the Radical Legal Collective That Won Justice for Fred Hampton and Continues Fighting to This Day
    09 Sep 2026
    Longtime attorney Flint Taylor’s new book tells the story of the People’s Law Collective, which grew out of the radical movements of the late 1960s.
  • Logan McMillen
    After Blocking Fuel, the US Turns to Cuba’s Food Supply
    09 Sep 2026
    The Trump administration has already cut off Cuba’s access to oil. Now it’s attempting to starve the Cuban people, targeting the country’s capacity to grow, process, and import food — unless it buys…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us