cash. a woman gazing into the face of a cell phone. i gave me lover a cherry and lived on. endure these bitter hips and hot heads and the empty collapse. night will still holdup after all these years. summer snap. >> virginia tech. the loner is here. the one who stopped listening. the one with the hidden fuse. with the fist. with the hole in his heart.

with the cool guns, the one who blasts away. who kills just because. who kills as well because there's nothing left but the dead. kills himself. suicide on top of all these kills and now you know, what a mar gin in old baghdad in the wrong place at the wrong time why you're mourning is going in one ear of the deaf tomorrow. and out the deafening utter. air cane. one, the sorrow these many

months isn't because celebrities put eyes all over my body as i was in the u.s. again. not the other america. it comes from the footprint of a kick stab in my back. got riding a bus to a reading with some really destitute brothers and sisters in a 16, 3 office space. i am sitting in the rear of the bus reading a translation of the book of the concealed mystery. my eyes are risen from a black woman standing and talking on her cell phone.

i voice decibeled, latino black and white workers. when i arrive, i accidentally grace her sleeve with an excuse me. she pushed me. shouts don't touch me with hate red and what the hell do you think you did to me. the eyes coiled and in denial or at once and set to spring. when my shoulders i bear a gentle but insistent arms and turning from a black man, you don't want to go here.

here's your stop. he leads me to the stair well, but no sooner do i begin descending when i feel myself hurtled down my a kick to my back falling and landing up a level on my feet as the door closes with a snicker and the bus pulls away. from my amazement what they do, the latina asks in startled urgency on the sidewalk. and home wards make me realize, i am 72. for the first time in my life. 2. one could i suppose chaplin it a way. how for no reason suddenly one

is popped or clobbered with the cane. kicked in the ass for a slap stick for silence. but it just happens, humiliation sounds very depth. just happens, a wound knows no depth of time and not so random is the karma of lungs breezing arkayicly. i didn't know the volatility of the hatred, i could only think dike. but if you prophecy be true that it will be reasoned.

and reasoned must find it's violence in order to be for violence is the memory a horror carried by the soul of the blood to sect. she, a violent of resistance is also a violence for, if she said or of me. why not take all of me and shove it up your ass because you can just about sit with your lips. because i am inside you now in violation of you and are american filthy crumb of a loaf

of people. i am here and everywhere. no matter how hold you will always be the snot nosed with the shame spread over your brains from a rumble doubt of gang bang wooden zips where the real thing went down on haight then ran in torn threads of a dead dawn to bring hot rolls and milk to 2 kids in a dump near palieu. 3, chalk it up like the gutters and walls of our breaths.

between tilted ties singing the day is night and the night moves inside this long, lonesome bread of glues. don't climb to the top. you can fall in and we'll never again find you. so many come at the midnight taint. paint the world where the sunshine aid ain't. go back to what beginning? a serial suck. a kick in the butt. oh, derelict devil in this

hell's night. stay carton. be full of disstress. you can pull the race are card out of your hat. see the mother of memories. the ors slide of the richness. know and your can't pull the race card out of the-bra neither. if she pushed you and kicked you, curse and spit you who touched her raped her mother and grandmother. you can't do this . we the thunder that never stopped shaking rooms. we are born to hate. hate. learn to hate. was wife and then that white

didn't mean. or shinola. just meaningless. feeding the rebirth where i be. i and you be. you and nothing will ever be between, but tragic race disgrace. cause you and i are on 2 to be slaves. black and white. that's why. the consumer trees grow long,

long limbs. there's money in rape and murder. bloody blood talk. war though. war duh. everyone riding hump back in their own dodgy. be and w. you noted stake of a putrid clan of worms insane and greatly dangerous. put your sincere hatreds and stupidity away. come together from under the skin with where soul is blood

and beneath the sea and rise the wave and the furl class. and money tyranny and be what revels that has to be. [applause]. >> i will read one more poem. and i will read it, it's a title poem. all that's left.

all that's left in the world. whether in cuba venezuela, bolivia. as well as in china, japan, the united states europe. the middle east. africa. all of them cannot despise their resistance. despite their refusal stop that march of death. despite their resistance. communists repressives. zionists and anarchists. none can evade the march. this one is not coming with

hammer and sickles . all wars surrender to. but when comes the cry? when will it really happen as death is peace? when can i truly die. you will never know yet you may have already and this life is your way of paying hommage to the power that loves and you left you with the taste of immortality on your lips.

nothing mystical. no cries. power, your way. or buddha in the wings. even lying on your back, you are mocking. this is not a cynical, or pessimist or neonnist poem. join deaths to your life and you will live as if there 1 drum to march to. there is no march at all. you are there. all will be well for all. [applause]. >> >> >> >>

oh, my! haa ha ha! ha hha ha! [snortg]

>> patricia leanne caldwell born in tennessee. daughter of robert and irma. at age of 3 moved to missouri and returned when she was 12 years old. patricia grew up with segregation and injustices which she writes about. she spent many countless hours in the nashville public library. it was her family life that was bountiful and flowing with tales told by her story telling grandfather. raised with love of reading and oral tradition. graduated from tennessee state and degree in english in 1964.

she married her childhood friend on december 12. they are the parents of fredrick and twins robert and john. her education continued with a master's degree in early childhood literature, and programming in 1975 from webster university. patricia has a successful career as a teacher and children's book editor. she changed careers to become a full time writer of children and young adult books. her goal is to create books for and about african-americans. i write because there is a need to have books for, by and about the african-american experience and how we helped to develop this country. i present to you patricia makinsik heart of literacy.

>> i am from st. louis, missouri. a lot of you think i have said it in correctly when i said missouri. you think i got it slid into my southern dialect, right? no. i was not born in st. louis. i was born in nashville, tennessee, a little town side of nashville. that is where i grew up, went to high school, met and married my husband. moved back to st. louis where i lived part of my life. i heard people saying missouri and missouri. what is the correct pronunciation of our new home? the best place to go when you want information is where? >> [inaudible]. >> of course, we all know that.

i went to the library and the librarian gave me a wonderful book and began a life long friendship with the librarian. missouri is the native american pronunciation. in their language it is the people of the big boats. one word means all of that. missouri. frenchman who came up the mississippi river. they said that would be a great place to have a trading post. they set up a trading post and called it st. louis. missouri became missouri. now i ask you which is correct? missouri or missouri?

>> missouri. okay. neither one. [laughter]. you can't say the native americans were wrong for saying missouri. you can't say the french were wrong for pronouncing it in their language, just different ways of pronouncing the same word. that is where we have the problem with the word different. different isn't a synonym of the word wrong. we have to be careful how we use it and our children. it answers the question, why do you write that? i write to tell the story. one that has fallen through the cracks, one marginalized by main stream history.

either misrepresented or represented to the way in which it is a stereo typical, write to take those stereotypes, reshape them and give them back to you dressed in a new dress. i mean when i say different is not a synonym for wrong, it means that we should celebrate those things. everyone in this room is different in some way. but you should not feel bad about that. your uniqueness, as my grandson who loves to make up words, that is your wonderment. [laughter]. it answers that question that

we get asked most often is why do you write? you can say pat is write to tell that different story and different is not a synonym for wrong. before i was a writer, however, i was a listener. i grew up listening to stories. listening to language. come with me to nashville, tennessee to an old farmhouse set back off the road, a little house, window here, window here and doorway that looked like a face. the windows, door, and front porch kind of sag so it looked like a smiling face. [laughter]. then there was a long sidewalk that led up to the house.

when you turn and started toward it, you felt like you were going to a warm and happy place. my grandparents loved to in the evening sit on the front porch. there was a radio that set in the window, my grandfather would listen to the ball game. i remember when marion anderson would sing, my grandmother made us be quiet and respectful before greatness. every once in a while a neighbor would come by and would excuse herself and come out with a pitcher of lemonade or ice tea. she had those tea cakes that i loved. most of the time children would

say go on and play. you wouldn't listen to grown up's conversation. at that point we were all welcome. the stories were layered. seniors got something that the young parents and fathers learned, then teenagers and little ones. we all got something out of the story. they were layered. i try to do that in my writing. i try to layer so that the reader who is sharing the story with the young person will get something out of it or see something they can learn from as well. my mother loved to do poetry. i would sit in the hallow of

her arm and begin resiting dunbar poetry. [inaudible] you as dirty as me. look at that mouth. him being so sweet and sticky, goodness. i would say momma, do it again, please. i would beg her to do it again, she would say, no, go to bed, now. i grew up listening to dunbar who wrote in dialect, little brown baby. he wrote beautiful things in standard english. an angel robed in spotless white. the spirit was gone, men saw the blush and called it [inaudible].

i fell in love with that beautiful black angel. i could visualize it the way my mother would resite it. i know why the cage bird sings, it would be free. it is not a carol of joy or pray upward to heaven he fling. i know why the cage bird sings. mia angelou knew of it. i like dunbar, my grandfather used words the way he described

him. good morning mr. james, how are you feeling this morning. he would say i am stepping, but not high. isn't that wonderful? okay. okay. i go play down by the creek. he would say yes, tkarlg, but be particular. that meant be careful because i love you and don't want anything to happen to you. it was coded in the be protected. he often said be careful now. that meant one thing, be particular, there was stuff down by the creek and he wanted me to be careful and watch because he didn't want anything to happen to me.

be particular did it all. when he would say when you go over there, i want you to walk and hold your head up like you belong to somebody. that meant you were representing your family. i want you to carry yourself in a way that you represent your family well with. he didn't have to go through all of that. hold your head up and act like you belong to somebody. if you didn't, you were growing up like a weed. i love dunbar for that reason. fast forward many years later, i am a teacher of 8th grade english. i want to give my students dunbar. there is nothing