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21 " It would be something fine if we could learn how to bless the lives of children. They are the people of new life. Children are the only people nobody can blame. They are the only ones always willing to make a start; they have no choice. Children are the ways the world begin again and again."But in general, our children have no voice--that we will listen to. We force, we blank them into the bugle/bell regulated lineup of the Army/school, and we insist on silence."But even if we cannot learn to bless their lives (our future times), at least we can try to find out how we already curse and burden their experience: how we limit the wheeling of their inner eyes, how we terrify their trust, and how we condemn the raucous laughter of their natural love. What's more, if we will hear them, they will teach us what they need; they will bluntly formulate the tenderness of their deserving. "
― June Jordan
22 " And then I understood that the answer is yes, yes yes: I care because I want you to care about me. I care because I have become aware of my absolute dependency upon you, whoever you are, for the outcome of my social, my democratic experience. "
― June Jordan , Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays
23 " I am the history of battery assault and limitless armies against whatever I want to do with my mind and my body and my soul "
24 " If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable. "
25 " Because it was raining outside the palace Because there was no rain in her vicinityBecause people kept asking her questions Because nobody ever asked her anythingBecause marriage robbed her of her mother Because she lost her daughters to the same traditionBecause her son laughed when she opened her mouth Because he never delighted in anything she saidBecause romance carried the rose inside a fist Because she hungered for the fragrance of the roseBecause the jewels of her life did not belong to her Because the glow of gold and silk disguised her soul Because nothing she could say could change the melted music of her space Because the privilege of her misery was something she could not disgrace Because no one could imagine reasons for her grief Because her grief required no magination Because it was raining outside the alace Because there was no rain in her vicinity. "
26 " I am a woman. And I am seeking an attitude. I am trying to find reasons for pride. "
27 " ...love without being destroyed... "
28 " Poem for My LoveHow do we come to be here next to each other in the night Where are the stars that show us to our love inevitable Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness and the rain falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh the black men waiting on the corner for a womanly mirage I am amazed by peace It is this possibility of you asleep and breathing in the quiet air "
― June Jordan , Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems
29 " Freedom is indivisible or it is nothing at all besides sloganeering and temporary, short-sighted, and short-lived advancement for a few. "
30 " 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. Indeed, originality is recognized as disobedience, pathology, incorrigible character and/or unlawful conduct to be prosecuted by the state. "
31 " I am not wrong: Wrong is not my nameMy name is my own my own my own and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like thisbut I can tell you that from now on my resistance my simple and daily and nightly self-determination may very well cost you your life "
32 " We must make language accountable to the truths of our experience. "
33 " They blew up your homes and demolished the grocery / stores and blocked the Red Cross and took away doctors / to jail and they cluster-bombed girls and boys / whose bodies / swelled purple and black into twice the original size / and tore the buttocks from a four month old baby / and then / they said this was brilliant "
34 " we are the ones we have been waiting for "
35 " Something has to be done about the way in which this world is set up. "
36 " Buddy and Angela keep track of daytime just by figuring out the last and next time they will come together and how long alone. They become the heated habit of each other. "
― June Jordan , His Own Where
37 " the motivation behind every sentence is the wish to say something real to somebody real. "
38 " We had to break those laws or agree to the slaveholder's image of us: three fifths of a human being. "
39 " This is the meaning of poverty: when you have nothing better to do than to hate somebody who, just exactly like yourself, has nothing better to do than to pick on you instead of trying to figure out how come there's nothing better to do. "
40 " I am a woman searching for her savagery even if it’s doomed "