Sonia Sanchez Quotes

Come windless invader I am a carnival of Stars, a poem of blood.

No. Don't never go looking for love girl. Just wait. It'll come. Like the rain fallin' from the heaven, it'll come. Just don't never give up on love.

I cannot tell the truth about anything unless I confess being a student, growing and learning something new every day. The more I learn, the clearer my view of the world becomes.

Let me wear the day Well so when it reaches you You will enjoy it.

your hands humming hurricanes of beauty.

Do not speak to me of martyrdom, of men who die to be remembered on some parish day. I don’t believe in dying though, I too shall die. And violets like castanets will echo me. SONIA SANCHEZ

what i need is traveling minds talktouch kisses spittouch you swimming upstream.

How to dance in blood and remain sane?

Wind as old as Rome outside my window, inky fleece clouds against charcoal crushed velvet skies, fall feels soulful, like a LaBelle octave.

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.

but i am what i am. woman. alone amid all this noise.

I write to keep in contact with our ancestors and to spread truth to people.

3. i have told you my name so there is tomorrow. 4. see me through your own eyes i am here.

(once upon an afternoon i became still-life i carried a balloon and a long black knife.)

if i had known, if i had known you, i would have left my love at home. -Haiku

FOR SONIA SANCHEZ

Haiku [For you] love between us is speech and breath. loving you is a long river running

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

Girl don’t you know yet that you don’t never give up on love? Don’t you know you has in you the pulse of winds? The noise of dragonflies?

Let her be. She got a right to be different. She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. Just let the child be.

i gather up each sound you left behind and stretch them on our bed. each nite i breathe you and become high.

your face like summer lightning gets caught in my voice and i draw you up from deep rivers taste your face of a thousand names see you smile a new season hear your voice a wild sea pausing in the wind

Is she a writer too, ma?" "No, honey. She's a lady who has lived life instead of writing about it.

No. Don’t never go looking for love girl. Just wait. It’ll come. Like the rain fallin’ from the heaven, it’ll come. Just don’t never give up on love.

you, man, will you remember me when i die? will you stare and stain my death and say i saw her dancen among swallows far from the world’s obscenities? you, man, will you remember and cry?

Today, home from Trinidad, I thank James Arthur Baldwin for his legacy of fire. A fine rain of words when we had no tongues. He set fire to our eyes. Made a single look, gesture endure. Made a people meaningful and moral. Responsible finally for all our sweet and terrible lives.

For we the people will always be arriving a ceremony of thunder waking up the earth opening our eyes to human monuments. And it'll get better it'll get better if we the people work, organize, resist, come together for peace, racial, social and sexual justice it'll get better it'll get better.

Where there are many men without honor, there will always be some others who bear in themselves the honor of many men.

i told them that men and women are measured by their acts not by their swaggering speech or walk, or the money they have stashed between their legs.

This earth is hard symmetry This earth of feverish war This earth inflamed with hate

I shall become a collector of me and put meat on my soul

i saw you vincent van gogh perched on those pennsylvania cornfields communing amid secret black bird societies. yes.

Answer me. Where does a Black woman go when she is me, trailed by myths that this country has invented about her? Where to go to, when all of you have been there already, and claimed the turf as your own and you watch the rest of us shipwrecked by circumstance and color, looking. Waiting. Needing.

And you told us: the storm is rising against the privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no shelter in isolation or armament and you told us: the storm will not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of the earth enables men (and women) everywhere to live in dignity and human decency.

And you challenged us to breathe in Bernard Haring's words: the materialistic growth--mania for more and more production and more and more markets for selling unnecessary and even damaging products is a sin against the generation to come what shall we leave to them: rubbish, atomic weapons numerous enough to make the earth uninhabitable, a poisoned atmosphere, polluted water?

To P.J. (2 yrs old who sed write a poem for me in Portland, Oregon) if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful as u little 2/yr/old/brotha, I wud laugh, jump, leap up and touch the stars cuz u be the poem i try for each time i pick up a pen and paper. u. and Morani and Mungu be our blue/blk/stars that will shine on our lives and makes us finally BE. if i cud ever write a poem as beautiful as u, little 2/yr/old/brotha, poetry wud go out of bizness.

When I first saw [James Baldwin] on television in the early sixties, I felt immediately a kinship with this man whose anger and disappointment with America's contradictions transformed his face into a warrior's face, whose tongue transformed our massacres into triumphs. And he left behind a hundred TV deaths: scholars, writers, teachers, and journalists shipwrecked by his revivals and sermons. And the Black audiences watched and shouted amen and felt clean and conscious and chosen.

The news of [James Baldwin's] death reached me in Trinidad around midnight. I was lecturing in the country about African-American literature and liberation, longevity and love, commitment and courage. I could not sleep. I got up and walked out of my hotel room into a night filled with stars. And I sat down in the park and talked to him. About the world. About his work. How grateful we all are that he walked on the earth, that he breathed, that he preached, that he came toward us baptizing us with his holy words. And some of us were saved because of him. Harlem man. Genius. Piercing us with his eyes and his pen. How to write of this beautiful big-eyed man who took on the country with his words? How to make anyone understand his beauty in a country that hates Blacks?

And I crept into my eyes. Alone with my daydreams of being woman.

death is a five o'clock door forever changing time.

It is essential that we always repeat: we the people, we the people, we the people.

What do I think about my neighbors? These people. These people who have sprayed the word nigger on my door. These people who finally threatened my children. My children did you hear me? Have you ever held a child in your arms while she shook her insides out? She was so scared I cried her to sleep. How do you ever tell a child again that she's safe? Huh? What do I think of these people? Huh? What should anyone think? What should you reporters think? What should the city think? What should the mayor think? What should the country think?

This is the time for the creative Man. Woman. Who must decide that She. He. Can live in peace. Racial and sexual justice on this earth. This is the time for you and me. African American. Whites. Latinos. Gays. Asians. Jews. Native Americans. Lesbians. Muslims. All of us must finally bury the elitism of race superiority the elitism of sexual superiority the elitism of economic superiority the elitism of religious superiority So we welcome you on the celebration of 218 years Philadelphia. America.

love between us is speech and breath. loving you is a long river running.

some times i dream bout u & me runnen down a street laughin. me no older u no younger than we be.

am gonna take me seriously. toooday. & study myself.

how sad it must be to love so many women to need so many black perfumed bodies weeping underneath you.

yeh. billie. if someone had love u like u shud have been loved ain't no tellin what kinds of songs u wud have swung gainst this country's wite mind. or what kinds of lyrics wud have pushed us from our blue / nites. yeh. billie. if some blk / man had reallee made u feel permanentlee warm. ain't no tellen where the jazz of yo/songs wud have led us.

this country might have been a pio neer land once. but. there ain’t no mo indians blowing custer’s mind with a different image of america. this country might have needed shoot/ outs/daily/ once. but. there ain’t no mo real/white/ allamerican bad/guys. just. u & me. blk/and un/armed. this country might have been a pion eer land. once. and it still is. check out the falling gun/shells on our blk/tomorrows.

it is midnight no magical bewitching hour for me i know only that i am here waiting remembering that once as a child i walked two miles in my sleep. did i know then where i was going? traveling. i’m always traveling. i want to tell you about me about nights on a brown couch when i wrapped my bones in lint and refused to move. no one touches me anymore. father do not send me out among strangers. you you black man stretching scraping the mold from your body. here is my hand. i am not afraid of the night. - Poem at thirty

They’s men and mens. Some good. Some bad. Some breathing death. Some breathing life.

Her humming became the only sound in the park. Her voice moved across the bench like a mutilated child. And I cried. For myself. For this woman talkin’ about love. For all the women who have ever stretched their bodies out anticipating civilization and finding ruins.

We all gotta salute death one time or ’nother girl. Death be waitin’ outdoors trying to get inside.

this day is not real. the crowing of the far-away carillons ring out direction less. even you are un real roasting under a man hattan sky while passersby flap their indecent tongues. even i am un real but i am black and thought to be without meaning. - on seeing Pacifist burn

did ya ever cry Black man, did ya ever cry til you knocked all over? - Haiku

They were coming again, those words insistent as his hands had been, pounding inside me, demanding their time and place. I relaxed as my hands moved across the paper like one possessed.

Help me, Sandy. Listen to my talk. Hold my hand when I git too sad. Laugh at my fears that keep poppin’ out on me like some childhood disease. Be my vaccine, babee. I need you. Don’t ever leave me, babee, cuz I’ll never have a love like you again. I’ll never have another woman again if you leave me.