As A Poet And Writer, I Deeply

To Tell The Truth Is To Become Beautiful, To Begin To Love Yourself, Value Yourself. And That's Political, In Its Most Profound Way.

In The Name Of Motherhood And Fatherhood And Education And Good Manners, We Threaten And Suffocate And Bind And Ensnare And Bribe And Trick Children Into Wholesale Emulation Of Our Ways.

That A Little Child Will Lead Us Back To The Child We Will Always Be, Vulnerable And Wanting And Hurting For Love And For Beauty.

As A Child I Was Taught That To Tell The Truth Was Often Painful. As An Adult I Have Learned That Not To Tell The Truth Is More Painful, And That The Fear Of Telling The Truth - Whatever The Truth May Be - That Fear Is The Most Painful Sensation Of A Moral Life.

In America, You Can Segregate The People, But The Problems Will Travel. From Slavery To Equal Rights, From State Suppression Of Dissent To Crime, Drugs And Unemployment, I Can't Think Of A Supposedly Black Issue That Hasn't Wasted The Original Black Target Group And Then Spread Like Measles To Outlying White Experience.