We Need Everybody And All That We

When We Heard About The Hippies, The Barely More Than Boys And Girls Who Decided To Try Something Different ... We Laughed At Them. We Condemned Them, Our Children, For Seeking A Different Future. We Hated Them For Their Flowers, For Their Love, And For Their Unmistakable Rejection Of Every Hideous, Mistaken Compromise That We Had Made Throughout Our Hollow, Money-bitten, Frightened, Adult Lives

In America, The Traditional Routes To Black Identity Have Hardly Been Normal. Suicide (disappearance By Imitation, Or Willed Extinction), Violence (hysterical Religiosity, Crime, Armed Revolt), And Exemplary Moral Courage; None Of These Is Normal.

So, Poetry Becomes A Means For Useful Dialogue Between People Who Are Not Only Unknown, But Mute To Each Other. It Produces A Dialogue Among People That Guards All Of Us Against Manipulation By Our So-called Leaders.

I Believe That Love Is The Single, True Prosperity Of Any Moment.

Body And Soul, Black America Reveals The Extreme Questions Of Contemporary Life, Questions Of Freedom And Identity: How Can I Be Who I Am?