(I wrote this poem several police killings back.)

Killing in Their Sunday Best

Unwilling dancers in the Tree unbowed within the bonfires night.

they watched them die hung from a tree

And leave their conscience on the lawn

still clean and pressed and smiling free

They kill still wearing the Sunday Best

Then pose to save the memory.

An auctioneer takes silent bids to swindle Justice

selling death Wholesale

Then hiding inside sanctity,

Hear not a sentence spoke by tempered ear,

But just the deafening blood-dimmed roar,

like that old Irish poet said,

“drowned innocence” with obscene grins,

That stare through Time and haunted groves,

The quarry’s Tomb plumb-line now unconcealed,

They found the Tree,

they built the Jail,

With never a thought

For innocence that’s hung upon.

And now they are the Ones within.

-Albert Turner Goins