Public Comment

I.

Enough ale the color of

Leaded water in Flint to

Flood the Lower Ninth Ward  

Enough Bud brewed to drown  

Governments in bathtubs  

Enough melted cheese to sink  

Manhattan multiple times  

Enough pizzas to feed every  

Occupy, springing up 2011, for a week  

Enough chips to stretch from  

Earth to Uranus and back again  

Enough heartburn to backlog  

Every emergency room still open  

Enough gas to forget about fracking; 

and power an armada of nuclear subs 

Enough bullshit to flow Brooklyn Bridge 

to Golden Gate Bridge and back again, 

Pausing “Send In The Clowns—“ 

$election 2016—2/4 Dance where a dime’s 

Difference resides in war dancers, 

Bailout engineers, extraordinary renderers, 

Enhanced interrogators, collateral damagers, 

Drone devotees—Guantanamo groupies! 

thickness of a Trump card separates 

Warheads of a Cruz missile from those of a 

Golda-plated Iron Lady plundering Haiti— 

Grieving families still feel the Bern of Boeing’s 

Products and learn Northrup-Grummond’s another 

Name for death… 

Grandiose spectacle of declining empire, the 

Warfare state, causes chickens to tremble in terror 

This time of the year 

thinking of their wings, breasts, other body parts 

stuffing the Colonel’s buckets; chickens shudder 

at being stuffed in pepperoni holes of cops, klan, 

militia and poor black, brown, and white 

Working-class men in Couch Potato Pose 

for four hours… 

A week deep into African- 

American History Month—shortest 

Month of the year, and another 

Newton leads Panthers on Ohlone Land, 

Golden State, world stage, this Sunday— 

Not the 9.0 earthquake, 1960s… 

He entertains endless babbling about 

Arms, “arm-strength—“ armed self-defense 

Stuffed behind class war’s line of scrimmage 

like a failed fourth and one run; he addresses 

chatter of “moving the chains—“ Removing the 

Chains is out of bounds, like a receiver failing to tap 

dance before the white line… 

Pigskin pursuits like opponents clipping, chopping 

Black Lives down on streets, are out of bounds—so is 

Tackling land, bread, housing and other 10-Points 

Panthers played Sudden Death overtime for… 

II. 

ALERT: 

Before Broncos or Panthers wake up, 

Before buses caravan from hotels—before 

Coin toss—heads 1% wins, tails 99% loses: 

Playing field ain’t level, dice are loaded— 

Game’s rigged, fix is in: 

Fat Cats, too big to fail, stuffed Single Payer, strip- 

Sacked schools, jobs, pensions, 4o1Ks, blocked 

Housing, threw drinking water, air we breathe for 

Losses; bailed-out bull-rushing banksters on quick- 

Counts—ran endless, no huddle wars… And 64 people 

Own more wealth than all eyes viewing Super Bowl L! 

Voting is like talking12^th Man, Terrible Towel, Cheese- 

head claptrap, rant, rodomontade—until Colts become 

Broncos; Jaguars, Panthers; Raiders, Patriots— or some 

Slave Phone app is invented for saving the planet, 

Saving the working-class masses—February 31^st… 

We claim we want another world—say it’s 

Possible, we can hear it on a clear day, and 

can’t wait, and other incredibly beautiful things… 

Yet, classmates succumb to cancer and we talk 

“transitions,” “home-goings,” avoiding the 

hermeneutics of suspicion, not outliving our 

parents—our children not outliving us… 

We claim, “all lives matter” knowing some 

Have never mattered—and never will… 

We say, “Save the children,” watching fifty-four 

Schools closed, twenty-three prisons built— 

celebrating life, slicing 60% of the pie for death 

We say, “organic,” instead of calling out war- 

Poisoned Frankenfood; we say, “mainstream media,” 

knowing it’s minority, multibillionaire, big-lie 

Head-fixing… 

We say, “becoming a police state,” like $4.99 

Becomes $5.00— because bald-headed buffoons and 

lil’ fellas with funny mustaches are MIA—though 25% 

of all humans caged are under stars and stripes; some 

are gunned down daily! 

We speak truth to power. Yet, power creeps like 

Weeds into our lexicon: 

“boots on the ground” isn’t a Barney’s blowout 

sidewalk sale; “enhanced interrogation” ain’t discourse 

on Douglass intersecting Du Bois, in Robeson’s 

Cultural Work, or King’s ‘67 Riverside Church speech; 

“signature strikes” aren’t ILWU refusals to 

Unload South African and Israeli apartheid cargo 

“high value targets” ain’t good department store deals 

Game planning from the Peoples’ Playbook— 

Marching holes in soles, walking out, sitting-in, 

Striking, boycotting—meeting more than four corners; 

Nurturing the new—paying attention to children in 

Chitown, babies in Baltimore, front-liners in Flint and 

Ferguson—remembering Occupy, drawing lessons— 

putting forehead to history, theory getting us to the 

Red Zone—struggle for socialism’s our Super Bowl! 

Raymond Nat Turner © 2016 All Rights Reserved