I write because I would like to live forever. The fact of my future death offends me. Part of this derives from my sense of my own insignificance in the universe. My life and death are a barely momentary flicker. I would like to become more than that. That the people and things I love will die wounds me as well. I seek to immortalize the world I have found and made for myself, even knowing that I won’t be there to witness that immortality, mine or my work’s, that by definition I will never know whether my endeavor has been successful. But when has impossibility ever deterred anyone from a cherished goal? As the brilliant poet and teacher Alvin Feinman once said to me, “Poetry is always close kin to the impossible, isn’t it?

thefinalimage:

Tongues Untied, 1989 (dir. Marlon T. Riggs)

"I am a black man and I am still alive. And, yes, I am a revolutionary because I daily choose to live! But I am a black man whose black mama’s body and spirit was terrorized by another black man’s hands and words. Sexism and patriarchy are not part of the revolution. I am a gender-maneuvering gay black man whose spirit was terrorized by other straight black men. Heterosexism and heteronormativity are not a part of our revolution. I am a black man who has ignored the plights of so many of my brothers. Separation because of difference and elitism based on class is not a part of the revolution. Indeed, my living is your living, is your father’s living, is my father’s living, is my mother’s living, is the stranger’s living, and it is the revolution." ›

I’m faced daily with choosing

violence

or a demeanor that saves

every other life but my own.

black boy mondays.

in the district
(c) [02.25.13.]

Black Freaks, Black Fags, Black Dykes: Re-imagining Rebecca Walker’s “Black Cool” by Darnell L. Moore ›

tionam:

Katiuska | PHILLY | 2013.

©tiona.m.