I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

and if i if i ever let love go because the hatred and the whisperings become a phantom dictate i o- bey in lieu of impulse and realities (the blossoming flamingos of my wild mimosa trees) then let love freeze me out. (from i must become a menace to my enemies)

Anytime you see white men suppose to fight each other an you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an they huffing an puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don have no shirt an tie, somebody don live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.

Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?

In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.

That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes.

To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.