For Those Of Us Who Write, It

... Poetry Is Not A Luxury. It Is A Vital Necessity Of Our Existence. It Forms The Quality Of The Light Within Which We Predicate Our Hopes And Dreams Toward Survival And Change, First Made Into Language, Then Into Idea, Then Into More Tangible Action. Poetry Is The Way We Help Give Name To The Nameless So It Can Be Thought. The Farthest Horizons Of Our Hopes And Fears Are Cobbled By Our Poems, Carved From The Rock Experiences Of Our Daily Lives.

. . . It Is Through Poetry That We Give Name To Those Ideas Which Are-until The Poem-nameless And Formless, About To Be Birthed, But Already Felt.

I Am A Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, Stronger For All My Identities, And I Am Indivisible.

If Our History Has Taught Us Anything, It Is That Action For Change Directed Against The External Conditions Of Our Oppressions Is Not Enough.

Unless One Lives And Loves In The Trenches, It Is Difficult To Remember That The War Against Dehumanization Is Ceaseless.