As A Poet And Writer, I Deeply

Our Children Will Not Survive Our Habits Of Thinking, Our Failures Of The Spirit, Our Wreck Of The Universe Into Which We Bring New Life As Blithely As We Do. Mostly, Our Children Will Resemble Our Own Misery And Spite And Anger, Because We Give Them No Choice About It. In The Name Of Motherhood And Fatherhood And Education And Good Manners, We Threaten And Suffocate And Bind And Ensnare And Bribe And Trick Children Into Wholesale Emulation Of Our Ways.

In The Name Of Motherhood And Fatherhood And Education And Good Manners, We Threaten And Suffocate And Bind And Ensnare And Bribe And Trick Children Into Wholesale Emulation Of Our Ways.

When That Devil's Bullet Lodged Itself Inside The Body Of Martin Luther King, He Had Already Begun An Astonishing Mobilization Of Poor, Black, White, Latino Americans Who Had Nothing To Lose. They Would Challenge Our Government To Eliminate Exploitative, Merciless, And War-mongering Policies, Nationwide, Or Else "tie Up The Country" Through "means Of Civil Disobedience." Dr. King Intended To Organize Those Legions Into "coercive Direct Actions" That Would Make Of Babylon A Dysfunctional Behemoth Begging For Relief. Is It Any Wonder He Was Killed?

Let Me Just Say, At Once: I Am Not Now Nor Have I Ever Been A White Man. And, Leaving Aside The Joys Of Unearned Privilege, This Leaves Me Feeling Pretty Good.

To Rescue Our Children We Will Have To Let Them Save Us From The Power We Embody: We Will Have To Trust The Very Difference That They Forever Personify.