If we even tolerate any oppression of gay and lesbian Americans, if we join those who would intrude upon the choices of our hearts, then who among us shall be free?

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 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 a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.

The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think

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)

Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.