Dare to love yourselfas if you were a rainbowwith gold at both ends.
The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.
You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.
Each star is a mirror reflecting the truth inside you.
Un-winged and naked, sorrow surrenders its crown to a throne called grace.
What a lover’s heart knows let no man’s brain dispute.
A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmareto the jeweled vision of a life started anew.
And now we step to the rhythm of miracles.–from The Light, That Never Dies
Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven’s mouth.
Quote words that affirmall men and women are yourbrothers and sisters.
Love as a concrete foundation for an authentically functional civilization requires the around-the-clock labors of forgiveness. Without it, Love fails, Friendship fails, Intelligence fails, Humanity: fails.
Where humanitysowed faith, hope, and unity, joy’s garden blossomed.
Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.
The best of humanity’s recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance.
Time (again, Time) like the soul, wears many faces, many bodies and climates and attitudes. The past is one face, the present a second and the future yet another.
A world without poetry and art would be too much like one without birds or flowers: bearable but a lot less enjoyable.
What is this slow blue dream of living, and this fevered death by dreaming?
Knowledge planted in truth grows in truth.Strength born of peace loses nothing to hate.
It can be difficult to speak truth to power. Circumstances, however, have made doing so increasingly necessary.
Feet sandaled with dreams tread paths of vision leading to wisdom’s sharp peaks.
Even when muddy your wings sparkle bright wonders that heal broken worlds.
With my ninth mind I resurrect my firstand dance slow to the music of my soul made new.
Everywhere we shine death and life burn into something new…
This is what our love is––a sacred pattern of unbroken unity sewn flawlessly invisible inside all other images, thoughts, smells, and sounds.
Just above our terror, the stars painted this storyin perfect silver calligraphy. And our souls, too oftenabused by ignorance, covered our eyes with mercy.
Love, Mercy, and Grace, sisters all, attend your wounds of silence and hope.
This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.
Making the choice to exercise compassion is an expression of Love for Humanity and Life itself.
In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.
Hearts rebuilt from hope resurrect dreams killed by hate.
This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.
In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.
At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.
The same hot lightning that burns your blood with passion–– cools your fears with peace.
In this quiet place on a quiet streetwhere no one ever finds usgently, lovingly, freedom gives back our pain.–from poem In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street
When a reader enters the pages of a book of poetry, he or she enters a world where dreams transform the past into knowledge made applicable to the present, and where visions shape the present into extraordinary possibilities for the future.
The music of revelation announces itself to the reader in somber brooding tones or in melodies light as air and one is invited to dance with the most captivating of partners: poetry.
A poet is a verb that blossoms light in gardens of dawn, or sometimes midnight.
History dressed up in the glow of love’s kiss turned grief into beauty.
Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too.
Shine your soul with the same egoless humility as the rainbow and no matter where you go in this world or the next, love will find you, attend you, and bless you.
Souls reconstructed with faith transform agony into peace.
You are the hybrids of golden worlds and ages splendidly conceived.
On faith’s battered back calm eyes etch prayers that cool a nation’s hot rage.
The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large.
Compassion crowns the soul with its truest victory.
The leaders and followers of the Harlem Renaissance were every bit as intent on using Black culture to help make the United States a more functional democracy as they were on employing Black culture to ‘vindicate’ Black people.
History, too, has a penchant for giving birth to itself over and over again, and those whom it appoints agents of change and progress do not always accept their destinies willingly.
In your hands winteris a book with cloud pagesthat snow pearls of love.
Most people are slow to champion love because they fear the transformation it brings into their lives. And make no mistake about it: love does take over and transform the schemes and operations of our egos in a very mighty way.
To create art with all the passion in one’s soul is to live art with all the beauty in one’s heart.
Your pain is a school unto itself–– and your joy a lovely temple.
Passion presented with a greater challenge achieves a greater goal.– from The Sexual Side of Spirituality
There is within the human heart a quality of intelligence which has been known to surpass that attributed to the human mind.
There is no envy, jealousy, or hatred between the different colors of the rainbow. And no fear either. Because each one exists to make the others’ love more beautiful.
The glorification of hatred is predicated on a foundation of fear-induced ignorance venomous to haters and those they believe they hate.
Poetry empowers the simplest of lives to confront the most extreme sorrows with courage, and motivates the mightiest of offices to humbly heed lessons in compassion.
Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all.
Millions cheer the warriorspilling blood across the ringwhile the one who stands for peaceis ridiculed and shamed.Must hearts forever sufferfrom ignorance and greed?Can bombs heal our soulsor set our spirits free?
In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers’ broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope.
Individuals often turn to poetry, not only to glean strength and perspective from the words of others, but to give birth to their own poetic voices and to hold history accountable for the catastrophes rearranging their lives.
We ache with the yearningthat turns half into wholeand offer no excusesfor the beauty of our souls.
The Universe said, ‘Let me show your soul something beautiful.
Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives.
What can bombs know of the illuminated fields so golden with heaven in your heart’s sacred lands?
The gentle pulsing and flickering of stars and nebulae made a kind of music, a sweet easy mesh of whispered tones and sighing harmonies that held him in its force like the earth [holding] the moon.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was a manifestation of hope that humanity might one day get out of its own way by finding the courage to realize that love and nonviolence are not indicators of weakness but gifts of significant strength.
Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.
At the different stages of recognition, reflection, and redress, practicing compassion provides potentially world-saving opportunities which otherwise likely would not exist.
If the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the observation that we are all much more alike than we are unalike.
The instinct to tell our children that they are better than someone else’s children, based on nothing more than the color of their skin, is now a fossilized aberration that serves no useful purpose.
Whether we consider hip-hop as an evolved manifestation of the Harlem Renaissance or something completely new under the sun, it clearly has moved beyond the stage of just entertaining lives to that of informing and empowering lives.
The acknowledgement of a single possibility can change everything.
Then came the healing time, hearts started to shine, soul felt so fine, oh what a freeing time it was.
Hope drowned in shadowsemerges fiercely splendid––boldly angelic.
I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.
When the lyrical muse sings the creative pen dances.
The dancing vortex of a sacred metaphor clashes horns and halos to make wounded music set to the tempo of a new era in brilliant labor.
Art gives its vision to beauty not always recognized. And it surrenders freely — whatever power it possesses to every sincere soul that seeks it. But above all else–it presents us with the gift of ourselves.
Poetry looking in the mirror sees art, and art looking in a mirror sings poetry.
I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my cosmic vortex upon this crucifix called language.
Some have speculated that the way [Albert] Camus died made his theories on absurdity a self-fulfilling prophecy. Others would say it was the triumphant meaningful way he lived that allowed him to rise heroically above absurdity.
Between death and hell a bridge shining silver wings offers his soul hope.
Upon the lips of babes asleep I saw light embracing light and so allowed my syllables to rest there as a prayer they might sing in their dreams…
In an age of bombsguzzling blood, skylarks merge peacewith thought and action.
Know yourself fearlessly (even quietly) for all the things you are.
With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light.
Death wins nothing here,gnawing wings that amputate––then spread, lift up, fly.
This rose of pearl-coated infinity transformsthe diseased slums of a broken heartinto a palace made of psalms and gold.
The whole purpose of the construction of The Bridge of Silver Wings was to provide a path leading to The River of Winged Dreams, or to serve as a resting place until the river’s deeper and truer nature revealed itself.
Searching for a mind long lost I found it shaping colors and history near the cliffs of your heart.
The ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi’s poetry inspires human hearts to believe in possibilities beyond the predictably fatal.
If it wasn’t for all those silver wings spread out to help you on your journey, you would’a been dead or someplace screamin’ in a nut house a long time ago.
Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.
Now come the whispersbearing bouquets of moonbeamsand sunlight tremblings.
We can cry for years but sometimes gotta smile too.
In my head this cruel unspeakable truth: that we battled and we cursed and we spilled each other’s blood, we relished our taste of hell and strangled heaven’s love.
Change is one of the scariest things in the world and yet it is also one of those variables of human existence that no one can avoid.
Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.
Stars ink your fingerswith a lexicon of flameblazing rare knowledge.
First steps are always the hardest but until they are taken the notion of progress remains only a notion and not an achievement.
Trayvon Martin, at the most, seems only to have been guilty of being himself.
Beneath the armor of skin/and/bone/and/mindmost of our colors are amazingly the same.
Dreams dress us carefully in the colors of power and faith.
Got just enough room to be a friend of yours. Oh I hope you got room to be a friend of mine.
September 11, 2001: Citizens of the U.S., besieged by terror’s sting,rose up, weeping glory, as if on eagles’ wings.–from the poem Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001
There is in Albert Camus’ literary craftsmanship a seductive intelligence that could almost make a reader dismiss his philosophical intentions if he had not insisted on making them so clear.
It [freedom] rings bells to remind humanity that the most precious gifts in life––like children and love and time––must never be taken for granted.
Freedom rings bells to wake us from the comfort of beautiful dreams and empower the efforts that turn them into reality.
The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.