Maybe the purpose of being here, wherever we are, is to increase the durability and occasions of love among and between peoples.

Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies.

Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie.

I am a stranger, learning to love the strangers around me

There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth.

In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.

Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.