You can have a poem like "B-Movie" and sum up thirty conversations that people have had on the subject, but I wrote it down, and other people didn't.

Womenfolk raised me and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home

Well the first thing I want to say is mandate, my ass... We've been convinced that 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate. We're all actors in this I suppose.

I was one of the first three black students to go to an all-white school in Tennessee.

I cannot afford to watch Fox News.

I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.