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.
The U.S. is careening towards economic and military disaster, a moment when the Black radical tradition is missing but badly needed.
“We salute all peoples who are fighting/We honor all those who have died/For the cause of freedom.”
This lecture was delivered on February 3, 2026, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada) for the monthly series “Black History and the Project of Black Studies.”
Dan Kovalik and Jeremy Kuzmarov’s Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change was published on September 1, 2025. What can it teach us now that the empire has pulled the trigger on three more nations…
"Everything they touch turns to rubble" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
