YET ANOTHER REV LETTER

it is the establishment—that 1%
who have given us the habit
of blame. Scapegoating. We have to
restructure our minds, shake habits
ground into our brains by TV, they are
diversion tactics, to make us forget
what we want. The resignation of a dean, a mayor
changes nothing            blaming a figurehead
brings no true change

Note: it’s not scapegoating to lay blame on those
who physically harm: pepper spray, maim, taser, shoot
their children, their mothers, their own gentle brothers—
get them off the streets for good if we can but remember
no dean or mayor (no governor, president) truly controls
their own police force:             they are mercenaries
paid lackeys

who see their own oppression in our faces
and try to destroy their pain by annihilating us

Nov 23, 2011, San Francisco

~~~~~

Over the span of her remarkable career, Diane di Prima has published 43 books of poetry and prose and, as per Allen Ginsberg, “broke barriers of race- class identity and delivered a major body of verse brilliant in its particularity.” She is presently the Poet Laureate of San Francisco.