Brandi L. Bates

Give me Pablo Neruda, picnic beneath a full moon & iridescent stars, black olives, cherries, dark things, canoe on a river...that's romance.

Lowkey punchdrunk off this Sangria-sweet love and all it__ prodigious trappings_

Unapologetically smitten with thunderstorms...the thought of rough sex beneath an acid washed moon and hydrated stars...

The most empowering thing you can do though is to create innovative ways to bring in livable wages. That begins with a debt free lifestyle.

No matter what the industry you choose to ultimately invest all your time and energy in, be sure you're the owner, founder, and CEO. Remember, if you don't own it, you can't control it nor can you depend on it.

When the door to my writing chamber gasps shut and the almost imperceptible sigh of a rose petal falls on my desk, I know that my muse is present.

Wrote my way out of the hood...thought my way out of poverty! Don't tell me that knowledge isn't power. Education changes everything.

The light of an early Summer afternoon as it slips toward dusk has so many good things wrapped up in it..

The greatest minds are like film, they take the negatives and develop themselves in darkness...

You and those shot-glass eyes, deep swirling pools of 80-proof firewater, with the depth and profundity of Saturn__ spinning pulsars_

I will Basquiat the canvas of your body like a Broadway Junction wall_and Gordon Parks you for those dark midnights when your scent fades.

Quality sells itself. No hype needed.

All those other girls are cake...I'm Crème brûlée...Tiramisu, if you will. Just a few notches above.

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder...but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject...we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history.

Fruit falls when you shake the tree. You have to keep making things happen.

Like caterpillars our metamorphosis begins with what comes from our mouth. Caterpillars spin silk cocoons from the mouth. We speak life or death, success or failure. All transformation starts with what comes from our mouth.

David__ mouth dripped open slowly. He stood with his heels dug into my carpet, a dashed hope, a broken dream. No amount of money could top the priceless look that gathered on his face like an unmade bed. His eyebrows crumpled and furrowed like disheveled sheets. His lips curled into an acidic smirk. Confusion and shock collided in the cornea of his dilated pupils. He was a B.B. King song, personified. His entire body sang the blues.

Everyone's life changes when they meet their Obi-Wan & their Yoda, or their Morpheus & their Oracle; those who help remove the veil.