I Am The History Of The Rejection

Our Children Will Not Survive Our Habits Of Thinking, Our Failures Of The Spirit, Our Wreck Of The Universe Into Which We Bring New Life As Blithely As We Do. Mostly, Our Children Will Resemble Our Own Misery And Spite And Anger, Because We Give Them No Choice About It. 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.

I Am The History Of The Rejection Of Who I Am

The First Function Of Poetry Is To Tell The Truth, To Learn How To Do That, To Find Out What You Really Feel And What You Really Think

I Wrote Those Poems For Myself, As A Way Of Being A Soldier Here In This Country. I Didn't Know The Poems Would Travel. I Didn't Go To Lebanon Until Two Years Ago, But People Told Me That Many Arabs Had Memorized These Poems And Translated Them Into Arabic.

Good Poetry And Successful Revolution Change Our Lives. And You Cannot Compose A Good Poem Or Wage A Revolution Without Changing Consciousness Unless You Attack The Language That You Share With Your Enemies And Invent A Language That You Share With Your Allies.