It Wasn't A Deliberate Decision To Become

My Great-grandfather Melvin Had Been A Carpenter - So Was My Father - And They Taught Me The Value Of Tools: Saws, Hammers, Chisels, Files And Rulers. It All Dealt With Conciseness And Precision. It Eliminated Guesswork. One Has To Know His Tools, So He Doesn't Work Against Himself.

I See Many Black Males Grasping For Some Thread Of Hope. There Are So Many Destructive Practices, Glimpses Into A Psychic Abyss. That Must Be Very Frightening.

I Like Connecting The Abstract To The Concrete. There's A Tension In That. I Believe The Reader Or Listener Should Be Able To Enter The Poem As A Participant. So I Try To Get Past Resolving Poems.

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.

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.