“The more sincere the soul, the heavier the cross endured.”

It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence.

Others would say it was the triumphant meaningful way he lived that allowed him to rise heroically above absurdity.

Love, Mercy, and Grace, sisters all, attend your wounds of silence and hope.

Within the universe of the extraordinary, those qualities we designate to human concepts of gender are often shared, exchanged, or even completely obliterated.

War poisons the land Like diseased minds downloaded/ into bowls of tears.

When reading about what may be described as the lesser celebrated heroic figures of the Harlem Renaissance,

History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty.

The act of writing itself is much like the construction of a mirror made of words.

Hope drowned in shadows emerges fiercely splendid–– boldly angelic.

They may have for their lives, or, exercising sufficient strength of will to make those dreams a reality.

Groping their way through suffocating shadows of political turmoil, economic oppression, military mayhem, starvation, and disease.

Writing for me is a form of spiritual discipline and creative vision, a means of being in the world and giving one’s love to it without compromise or dilution.

First gave in to the urge to pray to their sense of something greater than themselves and interpreted certain signs or events or silences as responses to those prayers.

Know yourself fearlessly (even quietly) for all the things you are.

A horn of plenty spills from your hands into the starved lives of millions.

Unless you are here: this garden refuses to exist. Pink dragonflies fall from the air and become scorpions scratching blood out of rocks.

I come from a huge family and out of all 34 of my immediate family members, my heavier influences were women. Between my grandmothers, aunts, older female cousins, and of course my mother,

Or to a guilty or innocent sufferer! Sacrifice yourself, your talent, your time, your rest to another, to one who has to bear a heavier load than you – and your unhappy mood will dissolve into a blessed, contented submission to God.