“If I say your voice is an amber waterfall in which I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation, If I confess that your body is the only civilization I long to experience… would it mean that we are close to knowing something about love?”

An outrageous instinct to love and be loved blinded your arms to lines of propriety

In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.

As life in general constituted much pain in the form of struggles against poverty, disease, ignorance, and emotional anguish,

The word ‘survivor’ carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women.

The ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi’s poetry inspires human hearts to believe in possibilities beyond the predictably fatal.

Upon the lips of babes asleep I saw light embracing light and so allowed my syllables to rest there as a prayer they might sing in their dreams.

Varieties of angels, like varieties of love, are many.

Millions cheer the warriorspilling blood across the ringwhile the one who stands for peaceis ridiculed and shamed.

The books are also a part of what I call the great continuum of spiritual literary dialogue that I feel has been in progress since human beings

From her gospel-singing mother Cissy Houston, her legendary pop-diva cousin Dionne Warwick, and her Queen of Soul godmother Aretha Franklin

Rainbows introduce us to reflections of different beautiful possibilities so we never forget that pain and grief are not the final options in life.

We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war

Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid.

Still willing to invest in art and poetry’s own uniquely explosive contributions to the great, and small, dramas of human history.

Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails

Without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.

The evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming.