“Women and Men, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, white, black, red, brown.”

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.

Someone had to embrace positive beginnings before anyone could celebrate successful conclusions or continuations.

Art gives its vision to beauty not always recognized. And it surrenders freely — whatever power it possesses to every sincere soul that seeks it. But above all else–it presents us with the gift of ourselves.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela might be measured in part by the profound and unique gestures made by people in different countries to honor his life upon learning of his death.

With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light.

The singular historic moment millions now celebrate could have been tragically lost to guerrilla decontextualization.

I told my dentist my teeth are going yellow. he told me to wear a brown tie.

Any use of the names of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, in connection with any violence or killing of police, is reprehensible and against the pursuit of justice in both cases.

Don’t get caught up on ‘I’m brown, black, white, red, blue, whatever.’ You gotta ask, what were you called before 1492?

When you get to that level of brown liquor – an age distillate of a fermented thing, grain that we learned how to plant and make grow.

I saw myself the lambent easy light Gild the brown horror, and dispel the night.

When you’re brown and Indian, you get offered a lot of doctor roles.

Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on.

The most dangerous drug I know has brown eyes and a heartbeat.