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

If all options are on the table…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
13 Feb 2019
🖨️ Print Article
If all options are on the table…
You mean ALL options on the table.... seriously???

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear filters usurping skull and
crossbones drinking water 400 times
before it flows from a single faucet
If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear boots on the
ground and on ladders, meddling smoggy
skies with windmills and solar panels

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear screaming propaganda of
Saws, and chants of Hammers, connecting
2x4s— Overthrowing tents, sleeping bags,
cardboard mattresses metastasizing as
Terror beneath bridges, freeways and
on cold streets across the country

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear stock market-like chatter,
Humanitarian Intervention making
medical appointments for millions—Free—
Toppling infant mortality, cancer, heart
attacks, strokes— Coup d’ etat blockading
buckets of weaponized chicken; Sanctioning super-sized
sugary cannons of colored water; Overthrowing dictatorial
Colonels and Kings … Removing millions of obese,waddling
overweight, malnourished Americans from harm’s way

If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear Regime Change squealing and
giggling from public school playgrounds
Surrounded by well-supplied, well-paid
Public Teachers flashing strobe light
smiles, seconding emotions of children
If “all options are on the table”
Let’s hear tellers counting currency
and ATMs belching backpay
at furloughed federal workers…
If “all options are on the table”
These are our appetizers… Otherwise, STFU
finger-pointing, posturing, ‘bout… ‘democracy!’

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

poetry

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


More Stories


  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    In its Lynching of the Voting Rights Act, Did SCOTUS Just Do Us A Favor By Elucidating the Lies of “America?”
    06 May 2026
    The Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais revealed that Black people's limited electoral power is not protected, and it never has been.
  • Jeremy Miller
    The Republic of Mali Still Stands: A Sahelian coup d'état that almost was
    06 May 2026
    The attack on Mali was a coordinated international destabilization campaign, but as is usually the case, any coverage from the Western press hides the full story.
  • Wolfgang Bronner
    Entertainment as Militarization: The Spectacle of the Super Bowl & WrestleMania in Nashville
    06 May 2026
    The spectacle of major sporting events does not simply distract from a city's crackdown on the working class. It is a mechanism through which it is normalized and accelerated.
  • Gary Wilson
    Supreme Court attacks Black voting rights, Native nations
    06 May 2026
    The Louisiana v. Callais Supreme Court decision has given state legislatures the green light to break up Black and Native voting districts.
  • Richard Medhurst
    How the US Pulled off an Armed Robbery of the World's Energy Supply and Created the Petrogas-Dollar
    06 May 2026
    A forensic investigation into how Washington leveraged the war in Iran to replace Nord Stream, save the dollar, and establish total command over the world’s fuel from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us