Dis-honest Broker

Raymond Nat Turner
(for my friend Farid)

Metallic music of shovels; Abrasions on bare hands
Digging, digging, digging through twisted bones and
Rusted bricks of buildings. To backpacks, blankets, baby
body parts to free tiny arms and legs emitting whispers…

Obese bulldozers munching homes and olive trees;
Settlers snacking on bones of the evicted;
Aquifer flooded with sea water and sewage are G-
Rated nightmares and matter not to NFL, NBA bi-partisans

Forked tongue, dis-honest broker, fluent in ancient language
Genocide
Trots tattered tropes for terror out. Swears another Offal Office
Oath on War House Bible — bathed in blood of 10s of millions: Wounded Knee
to Trail of Tears; Tulsa to Hiroshima; Korea to
Vietnam to Afghanistan…

Riddler/Joker — Dis-
honest broker: “You have a right to”
Be an aircraft carrier on the desert
Acting as a weapons lab conducting
Trade shows; Disguised as democracy
Acting as an apartheid state; Concealing
Third Reich real estate practices — Go on
Step on the gas — and
“Mow the grass!”

“You have a right to” quell them/Shell
them! Bombard them/boneyard them!
Snipe them/wipe them! Un-home them/Pogrom them!
Expel them/Farewell them!

“You have a right to” strangulate them/Annihilate them!
Bomb roads they’re instructed to travel — Let them eat
Lead and gravel!

“You have a right to” kill them One-a-Day… for years — Daily… for decades… Until bloody bootprints become
Normal as “Ironclad!”             Normal as Baghdad…
“You have a right to” 22 days of carnage; provided
you Madison Avenue it: “Operation Caste-Lead!”
“You have a right to” Step on the gas — and
“Mow the grass!“

“You have a right to” 51 days of slaughter — if
you market it as: “Operation Protective Edge!”
“You have a right to” Step on the gas — and
“Mow the grass!”

“You have a right to” Dr. Goebbels’ white phosphorus
prescriptions for human animals holding human shields;
Holding hostages; Holding hospital hideouts; Holding
House keys — for…                3/4 of a Century…

Former forklift driver/warehouse worker/janitor, Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; BAR’s Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC. Read other articles by Raymond Nat Turner, or visit his website.