I still gasp at the revealing lingo for weapons: erector launchers, thrust ratios; my teeth grind reflexively when Dubya sputters Eye-Rack and Eye-Ran have 'nookyular capabacity.

Hate generalizes; love specifies. Or: The movements of hatred are toward generalization; love's movements are toward specification.

Metaphor is the energy charge that leaps between images, revealing their connections.

What would we do without irony? Check out your own daily reliance on it, the foul-weather friend who's there for you when nothing else is.

I do believe deeply that all human beings, male and female, are sexual beings, most likely bisexual beings channeled this way and that by cultures terrified of boundary crossings without passports stamped gay or straight.

My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others' agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.

For a poet, making poems is a way of viewing the world, being in the world, breathing.