Excerpt
Dear People of Chromatic Distinctions—

I used to tell people I never expected to live past the age of 21 (25 at the latest) because of all the guns and knives and cannons of intentional mayhem aimed at my head or heart from the time I was born. Henry Dumas, whom I loved for every syllable he managed to squeeze out of his genius before a policeman ended his life at age 33, convinced me through his writings to make an effort to stay alive. By doing so, I might make some kind of contribution to a different interpretation of what being Black could or sometimes did mean. Therefore, here I am decades later ducking and dodging the assaults of a sniper germ.

Writing and publishing articles or poems about racial injustices was something I did instinctively in the past. Before being able to write or publish anything about the pain surging through the veins of the world right now, I first had to do something else. I had to break the spell of hypnosis cast by surrealistic images not only of Blacks being gunned down on a weekly basis, but of people worldwide joining in protests against the de facto genocide.

I cried weekly from the pain of seeing accumulating losses of Black lives and now, also, over the beauty of seeing people in Japan, France, Germany, South Africa, Brazil, Romania, so many places, taking to their streets to say they are with us. They remember us in different often heroic contexts. They know us from the heroic exploits of the Harlem Hellfighters in World War I, the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II, artists like Lois Mailou Jones, performance superstars such as Josephine Baker, the musical genius of legendary jazz musicians like Duke Ellington and Nina Simone, and authors such as Toni Morrison, Chester Himes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. They know us as beautiful.
Seeker of Beauty With Beauty
(p. 85, These Black and Blue Red Zone Days by Aberjhani)