This summer I told a friend that I couldn't write any more poems about police brutality. So here's an old one. Again. I initially wrote this poem in 2002 and when performing it in public through the years have changed/updated the names. Mike Brown Eric Garner is only the most recent addition to the litany of blood.
Justified Use of Force
Every month there’s a new one
A Diallo, Bell, Brown
Ford, Garner, Rice or me
Clamoring loudly
Broken faces on TV
We ask so many questions
But no one’s forced to answer
With sympathy’s short half-life
Soon most are hoping for the noise to stop
And the questions to disappear once again
Just like us
In our lives
And our deaths
© Gayle Force Press 2014
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