Your days still half-opened, crackle like the fires to come. Outside. The earth. Wind. Night. Unfold for you. Listen to their sounds. They have sung me seasons that never abandoned me.

What is the beauty of the haiku is that it is not simplistic. The beauty of the haiku I just said is very complex. It reaches all the complexities of our life on this Earth. Peace – that’s a very complex idea, peace, so we can’t get it as human beings.

Poetry is subconscious conversation, it is as much the work of those who understand it and those who make it.

The words loved me and I loved them in return.

The most fundamental truth to be told in any art form, as far as Blacks are concerned, is that America is killing us.

I still hear you humming, Mama. The colour of your song calls me home. The colour of your words saying, Let her be. She got a right to be different. She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. Just let the child be. And I be, Mama.

I probably have not killed anyone in America because I write, I’ve maintained good controls over myself by writing.

The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don’t wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait. I think it’s the greatest art.

You can’t have relationships with other people until you give birth to yourself.

I shall become, I shall become a collector of me. And put meat on my soul.