Make a difference, does it? You stay the night here snake get you.

Black people are victims of an enormous amount of violence. None of those things can take place without the complicity of the people who run the schools and the city.

Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.

No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.

More than fear of loving bears or birds bigger than cows, I fear pathless nights. How, I wonder, can I find you in the dark?

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.