Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.

Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.

I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.

I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.

I am still learning - how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in the service of what I believe, how to accept when I fail and rejoice when I succeed.

The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.