“Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous – dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say.” James Baldwin

One day I saw snow in the center of a Caribbean rain forest.  Well he had a farm in the mountains with one thousand cinnamon trees.  I was standing on a ridge looking at his farm, then a yellow butterfly rested on my white poplin dress and I pulled a dead leaf from my hair. [...]

Final Curve When you turn the corner And you run into yourself Then you know that you have turned All the corners that are left Langston Hughes Here I am in the wild, the wild of Africa and the wild of New York, and in both places you need to unhinder yourself at times, become [...]

THE SHAPOTI TREE.     I used to have a sapodilla tree; it was mine, it was always mine.  It wasn’t on my land but on my grand uncle’s, my great-grand mother planted it and by the time I was born it began to bear fruit.  My great grand mother, her name was Louisiana, was [...]

A memory is a physical place. A place I once was and can never revisit physically.  It never happens again.  I remember my grandmother Josephine as I often do.  But this time I come to the realization that she will only ever be a memory.  She will only exist for me and the people who [...]

I inhale sharply and as I do I close my eyes. No not just close them, I shut the world off. I turn off the sounds of the bellowing fan, of the almost quiet rustle of the curtains as they brush against the peeling yellow painted wall, of the buzz of night quiet – the [...]

Genius Child Langston Hughes This is a song for the genius child. Sing it softly, for the song is wild. Sing it softly as ever you can – Lest the song get out of hand. Nobody loves a genius child.  Can you love an eagle, Tame or wild? Can you love an eagle, Wild or [...]

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Still from Fellini’s Satyricon

“Centuries of servitude have to be shucked; but there is no history, only the history of emotion.” -Derek Walcott What the twilight says -photo: shala monroque Roman Summer Night