I am often asked why I started to write poetry. The answer is that my motivation sprang from a visceral need to creatively articulate the experiences of the black youth of my generation, coming of age in a racist society.

She didn't want to be considered a woman yet, wasn't ready to be the recipient of jewelry from men.

Like the rest of the city, LAX is coming of age.

There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going.

Gloomy room
immersed in a scent
of modern cowards
filled with
shapeless creatures
sitting in silence
because they have
nothing to say

Fake plastic faces
with a grimace
of disappointment
painted on them

Are we stuck on hold
expecting our turn
in a waiting room
of so-called
lost generation?

He lies there listening to it, absorbing this sense of his own quiet drone transmuted into something of certain substance, something large, magnificent and grand—no longer him, no, but something bursting from him, leaving his split carcass behind as a monument to its source, its host, its feeding ground.