SLIMY GREEN CESSPOOL REFLECTING CAPITALIST RULE

by Raymond Nat Turner

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Capitalism says corporations are people… It says,

Money’s speech… Buying, bossing, sock-puppet

politicians on Capitalist Hill; White Supreme Court; and

Offal Office’s corrupt cabinet of Epstein class War House.

Capitalism pulled One Big Beautiful Bank Job, stage whispering, 

DOGE really means Department Of Grifter Enrichment! Then,

boasted about looting fruits of our labor; while its Cruel Reich Cult 

casually kills on our streets and strolls unaccountable into the sunset.

Capitalism’s painting our streets crimson, killing class bothers and sisters 

San Diego to Maine. Turning cobwebbed warehouses into torture, murder,

Mengele Medicine hells. Bombing humble boats full of fish on the high seas.

Reducing apartment buildings, hospitals, schools teeming with dreams to rubble…

Capitalism crowned a chainsaw prancing prince of apartheid

First Techno-Fascist Trillionaire. And celebrated his warped

worldview of spastic stiff salutes and spit-shined jackboots—

Mirroring the stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule.

The stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule

Mirroring testosterone-intoxicated, pomade man, obeying orders 

of Captain Morgan, Jack Daniels and Jim Beam. Foolish Fox-box 

foot soldier lusting blood: Blowing up schoolchildren and teachers!

The stinky, slimy green, cesspool—reflecting capitalist rule

Algae attack, metaphor for war. Peeling paint, Pentagon pimps

shredding social safety net with looped, weapons-testing, wars

Horrific, eternal, trade shows of terror… 

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH TURNS TO RUBBLE

by Raymond Nat Turner

Tiny backpacks, bloody body parts litter pulverized apartment and charred-

car-streets. Stolen lives litter flattened hospitals and schools. Litter crimson

coffee shop floors. Litter blackened fields of vaporized crops.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Over and over Earth’s saddest symphony plays. Harrowing screams, wails, moans.

Same timbre, same tones. Same saline Palestine tears in Sudan. Same in Ukraine, 

Lebanon, Venezuela, Iran. The same 1% is at war with workers of the world—and

Everything they touch turns to rubble

They bomb, they strut. They prance and ‘dance,’ and bomb and bomb again.

They bomb abroad shouting, “stay sheltered!” Lucrative explosions silence

music of whining saw, pounding hammer raising roofs, housing the unhoused.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Hubris high off homeland invasion, hostile takeovers weeks before, they dream

of easy money. Quick work of weekend war. But weekend morphs into weeks. 

And weeks into months. And months into long and lean years.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

They send holy warriors striking Saturdays, Sundays, holidays ‘round Epstein news

cycles like pyrite wrecking balls revolving around orange planet, Pedophilia. ‘Round

its death smell. ‘Round sulphur scent and white phosphorus fragrance anointing them.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

They strike when Essential Workers catch fleeting winks on speeding trains roaring

beneath snoring cities. When countrymen and women dreaming of better worlds are

not yet woke. Over and over again Cruel Reich Cult strikes under cover of darkness and

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Cruel Reich Cult strikes when working ones are doubled over panting, catching

blitzkrieg breaths. Or, when they meditate, chant, or pray protecting souls, spirits,

minds from repeated trauma of sadistic Psy-Ops on our damn dime.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

One Big Beautiful Bank Job body count equals wreckage in the wake of DOGE:

Department Of Grifter Enrichment. And drowned, frozen, burned bodies pile up 

at feet of climate deniers battling Mengele Medicine Men for roadkill recognition.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Ugly omen, J6 white supremacists storming Capitalist Hill, ransacking offices, shitting in

halls, foreshadowed shredded social safety net. Scuttled science and education. Heralded 

War House-Offal Office golden grift; Kennedy Center shuttered; redacted Bill Of Rights.

Everything they touch turns to rubble

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

STATE OF THE EPSTEIN CLASS’S UNION

by Raymond Nat Turner

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Disabling flying fingers of 14 fact-checkers; blowing out 30 

bullshit detectors. One hour and 41 minutes of Tourettes with-

out regrets. Specious Olympics of Lying—stuck the landing—

flooding the zone with dreck.

Elephant excrement flooded Fox-boxes of viewers and listeners laid

back on La-Z-Boys, red cap electrodes attached to shaved heads, their

Tariff Sheriff telling them, “We’re the hottest country in the world!”

The roaring economy is roaring like never before. Golden Age of America.

Their Tariff Sheriff told them we the greatest. Biggest. Best-est. Most-est

in history. Told them the price of eggs in Erehwon, along with butter, fruit

and rents are way, way down. And gas is less than two dollars a gallon at

Shangri-La stations. And 401Ks are way, way, way up for lil folks of Oz.

His wild-eyed Cruel Reich Cult members wore holes in trousers and skirts

springing up like jack-in-the-boxes applauding long and loud and often.

Some fractured greasy thumbs and bloody hands clapping so hard, for so

long, over and over again. 

Like rabid, frothing-mouthed lynch mob, they cheered Big Beautiful Bank Job

and dastardly deeds of DOGE: Department of Grifter Enrichment. Sidelining

survivors and protecting Epstein Class pedophiles flying Lolita Express 39,000 feet

above borders and accountability they orgiastically chanted, “U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A!”

And their Tariff Sheriff told them he’s ended 8 wars, including the Mexican War;

War with Spain; French and Indian War; War Of 1812. Told them he rebuilt and

rebranded the Wehrmacht “Peace through strength.” And doing it is costing a trillion

dollars—along with blitzkrieg-warp speed redaction of our rights and freedoms…

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

ENEMY WITHIN

by Raymond Nat Turner

“Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable"   — George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

They are the bloodthirsty! Parasitic. Anti-freedom, fascist,

Pedophile, compromised ones. The grifting, gaslighting, big-

Lying ones. Way Back Machine, return to the ‘50s —1850s — ones.

The Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, billionaire “enemy within” ones.

They are the thirty pieces of silver ones, camouflaged in stars and

Stripes! Red, white, and blue-wrapped ones — wholly-owned —

Bought and bossed. The remote-controlled ones — rolling red carpet

On bent knee — servicing strongmen. They are: “The Enemy Within.”

They are the enemy within warring on the working-class! Reich-cult.

Sadist bullies dispatching platoons of masked goons! The worst of the

Worse! J6-confederate-felons, flooding factories, fields and streets —

Redacting 1st amendment — Erasing 4th, 13th, 14th, 15th freedoms …

They are chainsaw-brandishing bandits. Looting, uprooting, destroying things

That work! Thieves turning fruits of our labor into personal ATMs.  Waste,

Fraud and Abuse disguised as Department Of Grifter Enrichment — DOGE.

Rejecting 99 Cents Store solutions — like mirrors — for detecting themselves.

They are an ethno nationalist food truck serving poisonous menu of misery: 

School Shooting Du Jour! War Of The Week! Jobless, Homeless, Hungry 

Government Shutdown Gumbo. Medical Neglect Noodles. Post-Constitutional,

Police State Pork Fried ICE. Doom and gloom, dark, death and destruction desserts.

They are warfare state “Drill, baby, drill!” dinosaurs shaking down with teargas, 

Pepper-spray, rubber-bullet reign, places we live and love. Fox-box foot soldiers

Prancing like peacocks. Transforming our cities into ‘training grounds’ 

Instead of solar-paneled, windmill wonderlands running armadas of electric busses.

WE are the ones we’ve been waiting for! Robust resisters riding in on white horses 

Named Mutual Aid. United Front, Mass Movement Mamas and Papas. Department

Of Solidarity. Door-knocking neighbors, meeting more than four corners. WE are the 

Ones we’ve been waiting for! Street Heat Senators/Shoe Leather Legislators muscling 

Up movements! Robust resisters refusing to slip on elephant excrement-donkey dung — Bipartisan — billionaire bullshit!

Raymond Nat Turner is a NYC poet; Black Agenda Report's Poet-in-Residence; and founder/co-leader of the jazz-poetry ensemble UpSurge!NYC.

DOGE ORDER—LAST ONE OUT

by John Stickney

Will the last immigrant out
please sweep their cage
and turn out the lights
(another 1 Billion in savings!)
on their way to 
their rendition flight

Please think 
of the children 
expecting 
a clean 
and
empty cage

John Stickney is a poet and writer, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, who currently resides in Denver, NC.

THE GOOD NEWS

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

AI-generated image from Dreamstime.

for

billions:

 

white

bird

 

column 

of 

smoke:

 

America’s

leonine

antidote

 

to

vice

 

injustices 

 

+ dogedom 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds watches the progress of the nation and the world from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean. Some of her work can be viewed at http://theumbrellaarts.org/

ON THE AFTERMATH OF A CONSEQUENTIAL ELECTION

by Peter Nohrnberg

Art by Soybeing at Michael Moore Substack

Outraged and exhausted, we make our choice
guided by billions that masquerade as voice.
Like good consumers, we were well apprised; 
knew the cost of eggs, if not of lies.
Fever dreams of unruly immigration 
return to T---p the frayed reigns of the nation.
Sworn in under the Capitol’s Rotunda—
a cold snap turns DC to arctic tundra—
the colossus takes his oath on Lincoln’s Bible.
(Who but Abe or Jesus can claim libel?) 
Fearing his dark promise of retribution 
Silicon Valley makes a contribution. 
Bureaucrats begin to take their leave 
as Musk and DOGE descend like drones on Kyiv.
Among those given the algorithmic axe:
employees who fend off nuclear attacks. 
Less government reform than “shock and awe,” 
cutting of red tape, and rule of law. 
T---p wields his blunt Sharpie like a machete,
shreds the Constitution to confetti.
Vital public info goes up in smoke,
sacrificed on the altar of “anti-woke.”
An able four-star general gets the sack,
replaced by one with three-stars who’s not black.  
POTUS’s pen claims there’s but two genders;
and those born intersex? return to sender!
Like King David who forgave his half-brother, 
Trump pardons both rioter and traitor. 
The Senate coddles his menagerie of weasels 
while unvaxed kids in Texas contract measles.  
The keys to New York City pass to ICE
while Don Junior cavorts on Greenland’s ice.
Deported “illegals” are dealt a dismal fate:
and on the return flight? The brothers Tate. 
Statecraft becomes T---p’s Art of the Self-Deal,
while folks in Gaza scavenge for a meal. 
(One day they’ll all be served a ten-course feast 
at the “Riviera of the Middle East”;
but first they must go on a long vacation 
while Gaza undergoes renovation). 
Back in the Oval Office on his knees 
Zelenskyy begs, but stops at “pretty please”:
desperately in need of guns and tanks,  
dressed down for not dressing up, not saying “thanks.” 
 
Does the arc of history bend toward justice;
Or does history simply bend and break us? 
Does democracy die in darkness, or blinding light? 
How should we view this spectacle, our plight? 
Will art and culture help us ride out the storm,
or did they bring about this new abnorm?  
Did treating blue collar folks as ignore-ables 
help gather MAGA’s “basket of deplorables”?
Or were their grievances, self-pity
what drove them to become so proudly sh---y? 
Perhaps there’s something deep within us all 
that answers to the con man’s siren call.   
Devotion to another’s certainty 
distracts us from the world’s contingency.  
How easy to blame DEI, the border;
easier still to make disorder out of order.
 
When power controls the future and the past, 
can even the written word persist, outlast?  
Yet words, like insects tend to stick around;
gone for years, they emerge from underground:
can sting or float, be bee or butterfly,
little strong things to pinch an ugly lie.   

A poet, cultural critic, and a scholar of literary modernism, Peter Nohrnberg has had his poetry published by Southwest Review, Notre Dame Review, The Wisconsin Review, and Oxford Poetry, among other journals. His poem “Pantoum After a School Shooting” was awarded second place in the 2020 Morton Marr Poetry Prize.