Writing a poem after George Floyd was murdered

I wrote this shortly after a police officer murdered George Floyd.

Like many in this country, I was shocked, disgusted, and utterly heartbroken after watching the video of this man begging for his life. All the while, a man who was supposed to serve and protect his community ignored pleas for help with a smug look on his face.

And like many Americans, I was inspired to begin studying, really reading, and researching into the history of not only racism in America but white supremacy. And like many, I was disgusted repeatedly learning just how many of our systems are rooted in racist ideologies. It's many, if not most of them, in case you were wondering. But I digress. That is an entirely different topic for a different day.

I wanted to create a poem that iterated that this officer murdered a man while being filmed while having his hands in his pockets, and it didn't seem to bother him. I wanted to explore that. And in several of the previous drafts of this poem, I had lines that I wrote from the officer's perspective, but it just didn't flow right and wasn't working. And it got dark, but not in a way that I felt was productive.

I wanted to compare this execution of Floyd to historically accurate events, so I used the whistle at a white woman (Emmett Till) and the phrase "grab a rope" is about lynching and lynching crowds.

The following several lines speak for themselves, bystanders begged for the police to get off his neck, and Floyd cried out for his mom. All the while, this officer sits motionless with his knee on Floyd's neck with a look of indifference so startling it shocked an entire nation. Sure, the murder and horrific video were shocking, but this police officer's actions, his facial expression, his overall demeanor, well, to me, that was the awful thing of all. How could someone have such disregard for human life? To human dignity? It twists my stomach in knots all over again, just thinking about it.
I switch the tone of the poem at this point, and I point fingers back at America. I was so sick of seeing on Facebook; people were defending this officer's actions. And even if they weren't outright defending him, they were attacked Floyd's character or lecturing about compliance with officers, or whatever other ridiculous argument people were pounding into their keyboards across this country. I wanted these several lines to read like someone was pounding away at a keyboard.

I then tell the reader to stop talking unless they are going to be calling for justice. I also make a sarcastic comment about how all these unarmed men keep "mysteriously" ending up dead. It is no mystery. It is because of white supremacy.

And then I end the poem with a call for justice—a call for action. I think we can do better. I hope we can do better.