Portside

Be careful.


With what relief do we fall back on


the tale, so often told in revolutions


that now we must


organize, obey the rules, so that later


we can be free. It is the point


at which the revolution stops. To be carried forward 

later & in another country, this is


the pattern, but we can


break the pattern
                                 learn now we see


with all our skin, smell with our eyes too

sense & sex are boundless & the call


is to be boundless in them, make the joy now, that we want, no shape


for space & time now but the shapes we will

Diane di Prima was a poet and activist noted for her association with the Beat movement. She studied everything, taught everywhere, and knew everyone seeking alternatives to the conformity and oppression of American capitalism. She died in 2020. (This poem appeared originally in di Prima's Revolutionary Letters. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Publishers.)