It's better to have your blackness taken away than to stand there and lie about who you actually are. That's the trap.

I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers.

It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period

Animals were not made for us, or our use. They have their own use, which is just being who they are.

As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can.

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

We are all substantially flawed, wounded, angry, hurt, here on Earth. But this human condition, so painful to us, and in someways shameful- because we feel we are weak when the reality of ourselves is exposed- is made much more bearable when it is shared, face to face, in words that have expressive human eyes behind them.