I Knew Life Began Where I Stood

I Define Poetry As Celebration And Confrontation. When We Witness Something, Are We Responsible For What We Witness? That's An On-going Existential Question. Perhaps We Are And Perhaps There's A Kind Of Daring, A Kind Of Necessary Energetic Questioning. Because Often I Say It's Not What We Know, It's What We Can Risk Discovering.

There's A Sameness About American Poetry That I Don't Think Represents The Whole People. It Represents A Poetry Of The Moment, A Poetry Of Evasion, And I Have Problems With This. I Believe Poetry Has Always Been Political, Long Before Poets Had To Deal With The Page And White Space . . . It's Natural.

Tonight I Feel The Stars Are Out To Use Me For Target Practice.

Whoever Said Men Hit Harder When Women Are Around, Is Right. Word For Word, We Beat The Love Out Of Each Other.

I Close My Eyes And Can See Men Drawing Lines In The Dust. America Pushes Through The Membrane Of Mist And Smoke, And I'm A Small Boy Again In Bogalusa.