What Do We Want From Each Other

The Quality Of Light By Which We Scrutinize Our Lives Has Direct Bearing Upon The Product Which We Live, And Upon The Changes Which We Hope To Bring About Through Those Lives. It Is Within This Light That We Form Those Ideas By Which We Pursue Our Magic And Make It Realized. This Is Poetry As Illumination, For It Is Through Poetry That We Give Name To Those Ideas Which Are, Until The Poem, Nameless And Formless-about To Be Birthed, But Already Felt.

I Have Died Too Many Deaths That Were Not Mine.

For Those Of Us Who Write, It Is Necessary To Scrutinize Not Only The Truth Of What We Speak, But The Truth Of That Language By Which We Speak It.

I Learned To Read From Mrs. Augusta Baker, The Children's Librarian. ... If That Was The Only Good Deed That Lady Ever Did In Her Life, May She Rest In Peace. Because That Deed Saved My Life, If Not Sooner, Then Later, When Sometimes The Only Thing I Had To Hold On To Was Knowing I Could Read.

I Remember How Being Young And Black And Gay And Lonely Felt. A Lot Of It Was Fine, Feeling I Had The Truth And The Light And The Key, But A Lot Of It Was Purely Hell.