Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails.

Time (again, Time) like the soul, wears many faces, many bodies and climates and attitudes. The past is one face, the present a second and the future yet another.

In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.

From her gospel-singing mother Cissy Houston, her legendary pop-diva cousin Dionne Warwick, and her Queen of Soul godmother Aretha Franklin, she [Whitney Houston] inherited gifts for skillfully interpreting lyrics and endowing them with new depth and jeweled nuance.

Just above our terror, the stars painted this story in perfect silver calligraphy. And our souls, too often abused by ignorance, covered our eyes with mercy.

It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence.

Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.