Larry (poem)

I wrote this in the spring of 1997, in honor of Larry Isaac Powell, 28, an black man beaten by seven officers, all white, from the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office and the Soddy-Daisy Police Department after being pulled over on suspicion of DUI on Highway 27 in the northern part of the county on 3 February 1993.  Two of the officers choked him to death, one with a hand around the front of his throat, the other with a baton from behind.  I'm posting it now in memory of Eric Garner.

Seven blue uniforms

One man on the ground

Hands cuffed behind him

Dead from strangulation

Whose fingers left their marks

Along your windpipe

Whose baton imprinted itself

On the back of your neck

Many years ago you died

And still no one had paid

Until there is justice in this town

There’ll be no peace of heart or mind