Wednesday, June 16, 2021

The Article which mentioned Lew Rockwell

General News 8/18/2006 at 12:32 AM EDT  

 

The Oil Plundering Act, The Sheehan – Rockwell Affair, and Targeting British Petroleum 

By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster (Page 1 of 2 pages) (View How Many People Read This) No comments Author 94 Follow Me on Twitter Message Melinda Pillsbury-Foster Become a Fan "Mom, when did Congress pass the Oil Plundering Act?" Arthur surprised me while I was busy at the computer with the above question. I paused. I had been wasting a moment reading the posts on the purported affair between Lew Rockwell, and Cindy Sheehan. Libertarianland is a small world where everyone pretty much knows each other. "What did you say?" I was sure I had misheard him. When I am reading I have been known to ignore earthquakes, even when it isn't gossip about someone I know. I got to know Lew when we were both on Libertarian National Committee in the 80s. MORE

Thursday, January 8, 2015

The Lew Rockwell Encounter

Why this is being published now.  

No matter what activities we are engaged in we have an obligation not to deceive or harm others.  I was harmed, not by the asinine little flirtation but by the way I was treated by Lew and others involved.  I know my writing was brought to Lew's attention after this took place and he consistently refused to publish it, a form of censorship since many of my ideas were original.  He removed my name from his mailing list and used his position to marginalize me in every way possible.  I am not the only woman who was targeted by Lew for his sexual titillation.  All too often people who get influence proven themselves to be ethically incapable of handling power without using and harming others for their own ends.  Lew is such a person. 

Those who knew should consider the implications of trust betrayed. 


The Lew Rockwell Encounter


On August 19, 2006, I received an email from Mary Stromberg, the wife of Joseph Stromberg, an economist who had worked with Lew Rockwell at the Mises Institute for a number of years.  Mary was commenting on an article I had written which appeared on OPED News titled, "The Oil Plundering Act, The Sheehan – Rockwell Affair, and Targeting British Petroleum."  The article had appeared under general news two days earlier, August 17, 2006.  

  What a hoot.....thanks for the great moment of brevity and context  regarding the Lewster.

xxxxxxx@xxxx.net

A correspondence began.  Eventually many subjects came under discussion, including my own e-ncounter with Lew the previous year which is explained below.  

Other issues discussed included correspondence on John Fund and Wendy McElroy, who is still an honored writer for lewrockwell.com., and more. 

The material from the correspondence will be used for a series of article, and then a book, on values which support freedom.  

The Lew Encounter



Below are some poems and a few e-mails I exchanged with Lew Rockwell in the early months of 2005. They are laid out chronologically, interlaced so as to make sense. The exchange was punctuated by phone conversations that fill in the gaps. I am not going to try to reconstruct those.


I first got to know Lew while serving on National Committee of the Libertarian Party around 1986 or thereabouts. I saw him at NatCom meetings and our relationship was casual and friendly. During the end of that period I remember one incident that surprised me. Lew told me during a group walk from meeting room to lunch that he was going to be in Los Angeles, where I then lived, for a conference. I was then married and the very active mother of five children, all at home. To his suggestion we get together I responded that I would be happy to pick him up and take him through the drive through at MacDonald's with the kids. I was not interested in any extension of our relationship into other areas but felt that passing this suggestion off as a joke was the best idea. Nothing further was said.

Two months later during a horrible bout of the flu I was sitting with the kids at the dining room table drinking hot tea when the phone rang. The phone was set loud so that, while not a speaker phone, it could be heard. If you have a bunch of kids in primary school you understand why.

“Hello?” ( I sounded very congested.)

“Hi, I'm in my hotel room and I am naked.”

Sometimes it is just too much information. The kids were staring at me; the ringing of the phone had brought a pause in the conversation. It had been quiet for once.

“Oh hi, Lew....I have a terrible flu. Hope the conference goes well. Bye.”

The kids asked questions. I think I persuaded them they had misheard, but since they had grown up knowing Libertarians this might not have seemed so odd to them. If you are a Libertarian or know LP activists you will understand. Asocial behavior is normal in the LP and the larger freedom movement. .



I left the LP before the next NatCom Meeting and so consequently did not see Lew again for some time. Subsequent terse encounters took place at conventions and Mises events; there were no personal moments. Some things are better left to gather dust in hopes they will be entirely forgotten – except by the kids, as it turned out.

When lewrockwell.com came online it was nearly 20 years later. We had all aged, gaining, I was sure, personal insight. I had put together a discussion group to consider issues and asked Lew to join. He accepted. We started talking and e-mailing though Lew did not really participate with the group.

I was divorced and did not know Lew was married. I had never known much about his personal life before we started talking in 2005. We talked for some months, I several times refused to meet him at conferences. When he had broached the subject of a romantic involvement I had responded with a poem. I was not interested in an affair; really, at this age the idea seemed absurd. This is the time of life when romance is more like a good science fiction story than an entry into reality.

But I confess to a nasty habit. I write poetry. My poetry is a form of journaling.



Those that involved this ongoing dialog with Lew are mostly addressed to Roses because Lew sent me a bouquet of roses in the summer of 2005 and I started calling him Roses after that.



I learned he was married in early 2006. He slipped and mentioned his wife, nearly choking on the words. That changed things.

The correspondence included here came right after that. He had agreed to stop the overt flirtation and go back to being 'friends.' That did not happen and eventually the correspondence stopped entirely.

Later, when asked, I went back to look for more e-mails but these were all I found. I am writing this explanation because this became known through a curious set of circumstances and I was then asked to produce the letters for his wife. By then I had discovered that the behavior exhibited with me had also been experienced by other women, including Cindy Sheehan. As you may know, the relationship with Sheehan broke up her marriage. I now understand that Lew had disrupted several marriages and lives with his faux on line romances.

Lew and I have not communicated since late spring 2006. The poems are from the Rose Series. I include all that were written during that period.





No. 4 The Tones of Love



The sound of tones forgotten; and the taste of hope renewed.

The nearness of a rapture that both captures and eludes.

The melodies remembered that race the heart and mind

These the soul borne fibers that weave love in the Design.



Associated fragrance; the rose pressed on the page.

The letter kept and cherished 'til it crumbles, brown with age.

We cling to those illusions and ignore what can be real

As we taste the vast profusion, the universal meal.



Beyond digestive moments when the soul can pause to hear.

When all the past pretensions leave us nothing more to fear.

Untrammeled by the baggage carried with us from the womb.

Is the truth we all came searching for, if ego with make room.



In momentary insights, in the clearing of debris

The time proved truth of loving awaits for eyes that see.



Lew loved the poem and encouraged me to write more. Since being encouraged to engage in your secret vice is irresistible, I did just that.



No. 5 In Contemplation of Chocolate – Written for Roses



In waking need and memory the mind reminds the tongue.

The nose evokes that heady scent; incitement has begun.

The silky sheen of perfect shell; the berried glaze inside.

The thirst for chocolate ecstasy, a hungry heart beguiled.



The sight and touch reminds us of times now passed away.

Magnificent experience; enchantment long delayed.

The fingers touch the surface, so smooth and sharp the edge.

The scent so rich and eloquent; an object and a pledge.



The fullness of experience; the lips caress and probe.

The tongue explodes, sensation bound, each nibble so extols.

That tasted edges beckon us to sate our inner greeds.

And lead us on to avenues that ease our other needs.



A chocolate form perfected is worth the price it cost.

Eaten and remembered; that pleasure can't be lost.



We were discussing issues and some of these worked into the poetry.



No. 6 The Tools of Humanity A series within a series.

    For Roses, who thought it would be a good idea.



Into the mind of woman from her desperation born

Came the use of hair and fibers to tie and weave what's worn.
Her need arose from circumstance, her arms must hold her child.
Ideas made into matter were necessity compiled.

The babe she bore and suckled brought love and desperate need.
The eye locked needs of mother, child, evoked a better breed.
The mind of woman understood what only women know.
The fear and awe that men expressed became both faith and goad.

Original of family, her whose children lived to breed
Original of commerce, cooperation born through need.
Original of churching, the awe that incites fear
Original of everything, came from babe held near.

Original transition from animal to now.
Ideas the means appointed to create and to endow.
The awe of birth and bleeding, creating fear in eyes of men
Became the lever needed to survive, again, again.

The rise of nation's power that deified men's gods
Ignored the source devoured that had shortened all our odds.
The commerce grown from weavings that only women made
Consumed by rampant needings that made all women slaves.

The world in forward motion, forgetting whence it came
Creates in place of history men's  fantasies of fame.



No. 7 Loving and Being Loved



In momentary increments like beads that tell our faith.

The moments of a love well tried brings solace and true grace.



The blending and contentment designs a place apart.

The changing tones of mind and skin seep in to touch the heart.



Through all the parts of loving, thin and tempered steel.

The truth of love patinaed lend us ease most real.



Through anguish and through anger, through vanity and age

The truth of love instructs us as life turns every page.



All disappointments mellow because of eyes that see

Accepting imperfections that bind and leave us free.



The rapture and rejections that love can meet and mend

Teach us that for loving we first must find a friend.



The sweetness of full trusting; a place I've yearned to know.

The place that still eludes me where I most want to go.



No. 8 A Prayer for the Children of Iraq and America

    who have tasted the dust of death in the womb.



Born from trauma; wounded by their time within the womb.
They want the arms of loving while truth spells out their doom.
They struggle to see beauty through eyes boiled red by war
They're here for us to cherish because that's what babes are for.


When the sight of them revolts us; we turn so not to see
But these babies born to suffer speak our own destines. 
Our leaders stole their future that profits might accrue
Those of us who care enough must give them what is due.


These babies soft and needing, who survived the dust of death
Deformed, their mothers grieving, bear the cost of this excess.
Truncated lives of struggle their faces shock our eyes
This truth must be examined; it cannot be denied.


The Geiger counter clatters instead of rattled toys
The burning pain envelopes them and cancels out all joy.
And still our leaders posture, lie and bumble right along
Because the profits counted cannot possibly be wrong.


Our weapons scored their chances to live the lives we know.
Our leaders eyes on profit dismissed their right to grow.
From nuclear waste recycled into weapons aimed both ways
It's generations still unborn who'll know the real price paid.


A poison lives among us in souls well steeped in greed
All of us their victims, ground up that they might feed.
The appetites of NeoCons grow without an end
Consuming all Earth's children, so Earth might start again.


Humankind is fragile and the lesson from Earth's school
May cancel all our future lives, all hope for our renewal.
The justice unremitted to these, the most in need
Could spell the loss of every life that fails to hear or heed.


Justice now for all the babes to make the world more sane.
A promise for the future that ends the right to maim.
Justice for the Earth herself, for all of us are One
One people on one globe of life beneath one pulsing sun.


The time is past for waiting; the dust of death arrives.
It settles on our nationhood with all its sheaths of lies.
It cloaks our every action with disrepute and fear
And stark will be the future if the least are not held dear.


10,000 generations, uncounted lives destroyed
Will pass to find this dust of death still active and deployed.
Our babies still will struggle to see and breathe and be
As Earth, the first born mother, rethinks our destiny.

.

A di Lorenzo article was responsible for this one. I had a cat named Lorenzo da Medici who was smarter than the present version.



No. 9 To the Ill Fame of both sides in the Civil War



The South would rise with sabers and take up speech of rights
Lincoln, mad oppressor, would be shown that they could fight.
But America's Revolution, now lost and passed away
Had left a clear foundation that still had much to say.

It's words of honored mention affirmed all Man to be free
The capital that bought the chance affirmed that destiny.
No state has rights to limit; no state may this amend.
So Southern rights were hollow, infirm at every end. 

So Lincoln used the flower of a serfdom ill devised.
From England's dour history, in the South is still survived.

To reinvent a kinghood that stays with us today.

And the words of freedom lingered, not knowing what to say.

 
With manifest assertions, flawed with greeds and power
Lincoln took our Nation to Freedom's darkest hour. 

His help meets were all Southern because they failed to see.

That freedom isn't given through any state or fee.



So cry for banners lifted to a State built on a lie

And cringe for all the might have beens that Southerners deny.



From the one Eternal, residing in the soul

Freedom still is sacred – and Freedom's still the goal.





No. 10 Sophia Coming from the Shadows



Emerging from long silence, ages long, that stilled her voice

Comes the image of a woman who gives form to the Design

Her lengthy absence anguished, it killed our forward choice.

Condemning all to interregnum of the feminine sublime.



The birthing of all children viewed as wage of sinful act.

The very truth of generation seen as ugly and obscene.

The coursing of her body became a shameful monthly fact.

Her truths were changed and altered to own her and demean.



Her gifts that made us human, that set this course through time

The weavings and the makings that became our wealth of mind.

Converted to men's erections; their possession reassigned

But the truth, though long evaded, still awaited those inclined.



Now Sophia is emerging into minds that can't forget.

Her presence forging hope anew beyond the grave of years.

The blending of the Consciousness that now we can't reject.

Holds place for all of humankind who move beyond their fears.



Anointing true awaking She who launched us into time

Comes Sophia, Ancient Mother, who sets our course divine.



No. 11 The Mind of Mother No. 2, Series with a Series



Gathered by the handfuls the grain would fill their need

The children, gaunt and hungry, they clung and asked to feed.

Her baby's whimpers moved her to see all things anew

From pounded grains made into paste the babe survived and grew.



The residue of pounded grains fell on heated rocks

The woman touched its brown tinged crust, and tasted what heat brought..



The grains of gathered wheat and rye, the seeds of barley, corn

From all the seeds she gathered the baking bread was born.



The labor of the making, devising better tools

These the truth of woman-world that forged all human rules.



No. 12 The Summoning of Vision



His hands extended raptures that I have never known

His face alive with vital thought and glowing, pulsing tones.

He locked my eyes in visions that reached beyond today

And drew me into Love again without a word to say.



All the distant journeys now gone and passed away

All the anguished moments past, extinguished in today

All the deaths and destiny that cost us each so dear

All for Him before me who I can almost hear.



His arms upreaching tell me of further work to do

The joyous challenge in His face makes all experience new.

And in that Face, so perfect another, One is born

A Face that holds summations, beginnings lightly worn.



The silent face of futures already made and and come

Reprove my doubt and fearing and leave me still and numb.

To do the work still promised; to live within the pledge

The brotherhood that draws me on to life's most holy edge.



And from the Face that drew me another One comes forth

Her beauty soft and vibrant, alive with truth and force.

The hands and arms uprising now reach out to embrace

The cost of love is knowing; the gift of truth is Grace.



The sight of golden glories that burn into my eyes

Subsume the Truth oncoming; without the least disguise.





No. 13 Dance of Reckoning for the cessation of fear

Sequestered in the silence that is deep and ages long

Is the requiem of innocence that buries all my songs.

Within that cup of bitterness that stings my every draught

Resides the dregs of my salvation, all made of right and wrong.



Upturned the cup of rapture, to drain out every drop

Consumed the savor and the sanity without the time to stop.

My anguish and my ecstasies both canceled out through time

And me, I am so glad of it, I've finished the Design.



The ages and the wages and the untold lives between

Compiled every minute, every thread of thought I'd seen.

And the missteps mark my passing from the form and flow of truth

From age evolving innocence, the larval form of youth.



The reckoning is coming through the darkened caul of years

I stand right here to meet in, wrapped in all my fears.



No. 14 What if? Written to a a small group of women friends.



What if I hadn't told you before you left today

How very much I love you; how glad you came my way.

What if I hadn't told you, hadn't had you in my life?



My life would have been different, emptier of cheer.

Without that special feeling of knowing you are near.



My life would be vacant of your intriguing bent of mind.

shallower and thinner, and probably less kind.



I am very glad I know you, very glad me met

And no matter what may happen now, that I'll not regret.



No. 15 Connecting Time and Minds



In the intercourse of moment when eyes and minds are one.

Are the places where connections are forged beneath this sun.

Invisible the interface, behind where no one sees

There the quantum interlaces, binds yet leaves us free.



In communion Earth elected long before the thought was born

In the silence soul elected from a past both raw and torn.

Came the longing and desire to return to something new.

The question poised in contemplation so that thought could then ensue.



Here we pause in fear and longing to hear and still our needs

That the follies of the ages might be healed, our anguish eased.

And the intellect that drew us can amend the broken dream

Of a joining and a rapture that incites and so redeems.



The connections weave our spirits and design a world not seen

As we explore reflections without knowing what they mean.



No. 16 Velvet Rosesfor Roses



My lips embraced its essence as its scent caressed my mind

I remember roses that entice and so remind.

The velvet of its petals were a riot most sublime

I drown in convolutions that invite and lend me time.



The rapture found in roses on an early morning walk

Remain the place inside my memory that does not need to talk

For the touch and taste of roses, long dead, still live in me

This the sure reflection that restates my destiny.



I remember roses and I hunger for the mist

That glaze their unfurled colors when blue tones still persist.

And I wished to stop the moment, to extend the cusp of joy

because the fiercest pleasures should never be alloyed.



The few, the sharp, the insights that redeem the time misspent

All for me hold memories that tie them fast to scents.



No. 17 Cascades of Light



The mottling of forest shifts the leaves above my head.

The light, a motley harbor that eases every dread

I swim in eddied fragrance hearing symphonies of life.

Catch the errant flurries turning each to sheer delight.

Time suspending problems that sent my soul to Earth

Tortured hope had filled me; I hungered for rebirth

I walk the paths of needled pine and pray to be renewed.

The sound and scent of living things still tells me what is true.



Cascades of light divining that kiss my hair and eyes

Remind me of reflected thought from which the mind grows wise.

Cascades within the fall of forest sent by distant sun.

Incite the thoughts from ages borne to see all life as One.



In cascades made of photons to cascades made of thought

From all and each is life compiled and forward progress wrought.



No. 18 Connecting to Tomorrow



A passage to the future that eases every grief

Arms that squeeze out every fear that challenge my belief

Echoes of another Love, One that held me near

A space for this remembering is every day more clear.



The destiny of fortune remits my forward rush

The agony revisited is pain and also just.

Ownership admitted to life too lightly lived

Still holds all the promise that One came here to give.



Inside the folds of folly, outside the throb of need

Is every right intention that leave me free to grieve.

Acceptance that the struggle may kill my dearest hope.

And cut off all the promises that gave me larger scope.



Acceptance of potential; acceptance of the loss

Both inherent certainties that blend the promised Cross.



No. 19 More Roses for Roses



Its coiled petals murmur of the scent that draws me in.

Its memory will linger when life is harsh and thin.

I'll taste recalled renewal from its fragrance and its touch

Glad a rose's essence can't lie or kill my trust.



The memory of roses that linger in my mind

Recall interludes of rapture, neither harsh nor kind.

These pauses in life's flowing are grace points for the soul

Neither need nor pain there touches me beyond a need for goals.



The rapture of the roses; their scent reminds and heals.

They ask no price, extract no strife, no part of me need yield.

My pleasure from the roses won't take their scent away

My memory remains with me; they wither undismayed.



So life extends and nurtures, not all exchanges take

And roses bloom and die unplucked, ignoring all my thanks.





No. 20 The Confusion of Roses 

The convoluted petals, like bouquets of ripened thought
Dispel the empty detritus that time and pain have wrought
A morning full of dreaming gleams, the shadows all are gone.
Untasted possibilities, all poised like unsung song. 

The bud becomes the flower arching out to bring renewal.
The stamen and the pistil don't think about the rules.
Their drive to live and multiply appoints their short lived need.
A failure to perpetuate would cancel out their breed.

The flower and the primate live to cast their seed
But in the time allotted us is also time to grieve. 
For moments missed and muddled, untasted joys of soul
These cadenced delectations remain each spirit's goal.

The rapture of the roses meet in minds that reach through pain
To teach your soul the unseen truth and make this living sane. 



No. 21 The Arrival of Roses – for Roses



Kissed with misted memories that linger in the mind

The roses came with greetings to tell me life is kind.

They set up place of honor on the table by my bed

Their fragrance touched on all the things that we have never said.



The roses of reflection coddle dreams we have not shared

Connections that are fragile, never spoken, never dared.

They remain in introspection, safe inside the head

Never spoken, never followed, because of where they lead.



But roses bloom unfrightened, hours measure out their time.

Their blooming: its own purpose; outside of our designs.

The fragrance so evoking of dreams that burn and ache

Remain when bed is empty and no one can partake.



So thank you for the roses, they linger in my mind.

As do your words and wicked wit, outside this cusp of time.



No. 22 To Roses



Linking pinkies binds a friendship with no limits and no end

The pledge abides vicissitudes of time and place and kin.

And Roses hear the music of a dance that has begun

A dance that weaves its magic in melodies of tongue.



In wakings and in makings that remind us life is dear

The nuance of a friendship is always light and clear

A voice that asks and pauses, ears that wait to hear

The links of common thinking find the icons both revere.



And the music of the moment wafts like seas of rippled light

That gleam with conversations that promise new delights

New insights spark and hold us in the dance of human need

That nurture and sustain us, entice and leave us free.



The linking of the pinkies and ideas that light the dark

Pledges of a friendship that enraptures mind and heart.



No. 23 Points of Funny



The touch of truth relieves us of the pain we cannot shed

Laughter is the instrument that eases heart and head.

Connecting us to anguish while anguish trickles out.

Laughter is the medium through which we lose our doubts.



The convoluted raptures that remind us we are odd

The insights that redeem us and point us back to God

The closeness of a sharing where we acknowledge fear

All, the stuff of humor that help our minds grow clear.



The spark of light that ripples in laughter that extols

The end of life and fervor that is every soul's real goal.

Allows the closest blending of mind and heart and touch

That honor and extend us, showing life is just.



Laughter lights the fires of worlds still hid from sight

That deliver our redemption and the substance of delight.



No. 24 On Dying Roses

Their petals curl and darken from red to russet tones
Its scent condensed turns inward and reminds me I'm alone
The magic and the moment are paused in cusp of life
And roses turn towards dying, leaving my delight.

A symbol speaking loving, to human eyes and minds
The rose itself the organ for making its own kind.
The petals beckon breeding, continuance through time
Never thinking or debating its place in the design.

Man's endorphined haze of rapture is foreign and absurd
The rose accepts its dying with neither cry nor word.
Small deaths of hope and honor are human kinds of thoughts
The rose curls in, extinguished, its petals bend and drop.

Between the death of roses and the hope that makes life whole
Are promises of loving that remain my human goal.



No. 25 Islands in the Desert



Islands in the desert reaching up into the sky

Cloaked with pine and cedar they stand three miles high

The desert down below them holds a different kind of life

The distance is deceptive; each a gradient of strife



The struggle to continue; in each a single song

The cactus and the cedar, neither right or wrong.

The life that time unfolded from the sea, an age away

Is still the Mother of the future; the source of yesterday.



An Island in the desert and an Island cloaked in space

Both the product of Creation that brings both life and grace.

The flow and form confirming that living tells its truth

Survival is the eloquence that gives us place on Earth



Islands rise up joyous to meet the clouds above

Testaments to powers who speak to us with love.

No. 26 Echoes of Laughter – For Roses


The moments never mentioned are filled with focused thought

Internal tools drive us with all those insights bought.

Hours deep and coddled by the raptures of the mind

Still leave an empty aching when thoughts are so inclined.



The hungered need of laughter has place in these designs.

Laughter heals and captures and tries to make us kind.

Outside the drives of intellect are other human needs

Fulfillment is the condiment that confines and leaves us free.



With laughter scented moments that issue magic in

The touch of our emotions builds bonds that make us friends.

That place of human needing that quenched can make us whole

Laughter stills that anguish when living takes its toll.



So pause to laugh and wonder, listen and reflect.

The touch we leave unsavored is waiting for us yet.



No. 27 Cadence - For Roses



In laughter scented nuance that abides when voices still

I find the best and gladdest of my hopes to be fulfilled

Reflections of the mystery that contain the choice of thought

The sequence of the hours bring their lessons truly taught.



Illusions that beguiled in the callowness now past

Have lost their force and hunger; leaving place for what will last

The touch and scent of roses and the voice that speaks delight

Both promise a redemption that restores my faith in light.



Outside the caul of reason, inside the human soul

Are all the wisps of passion that are remain the inward goal

To touch and blend the laughter, to bind the mind and heart

To rub smooth the flaws of pain and fear that shattered every part



Illusions no more comfort, the truth the cup I sip

To taste the grace of passion and drink love from your lips.



No. 28 Hunger – Written for Roses



In the silent introspection that holds me through the night

I give space to all the shadows that disturb my forward flight

Illusions stilled in midnight seep out and leave me peace

As what remains inside me kindles mindward course into belief



In the muted blue of shadows I test these new edged thoughts

Compiling and excising mistakes my life had taught.

I touch the raw and troubled, remembered times of shame

Expunging mismade connections leave me eased of pain.



The scent of roses lingers through the houred course of night

Its promise is the misting that veils the morning light.

Cascades of time and passion fill out a past removed

As sweated, shaking, anguish drains the harsh and crude.



I thank the night for silence, for the place where lies can die.

Moving into sunrise, that heals that child's cries.



No. 29 Freedom - written to Roses



An anguish and a hunger that invades my sleep and dreams

A thirst that's always present to parch my very being.

Every breath a labor, and every thought a wound

My soul would savor freedom, my body sees its tomb.



I've built and framed the future, lived on hope and will

But the takers always find me and so the dreams are stilled.

The child of my body and the milk within my breast

All turned to acid burning that shatter home and rest.



But scent and taste of freedom still beckons from afar

Its light on the horizon is like one dying star.

Through ages gone uncounted, through years and anguished trial

My heart and soul have hungered, rejecting fates denial.



The firm hard edge of freedom that makes the world anew.

The vision from the cradle that your soul still knows as true.

The only harbor calling from beyond the silent grave.

Freedom is the rapture that only we can save.



It calls and you can hear it, if you can lose your fear

Freedom is God speaking that all of us might hear.



No. 30 Struggles that make us whole - To Roses



I found the thoughts reflected from a window glazed with gold

The thoughts curled in, enticing me, my grave seemed far less cold.

The struggle with my anguish scored both mind and heart

I rose, rejecting torment, forgave that life restart.



The struggle carved my future and the future lets me see

The fullness of the intellect, the truths that make us free

The road is long and lonely and no one knows my pain

But the Struggle is companion who asks no price or gain.



I fill the mornings moments with the tapping out of thought

I read the words I've written and see the image caught

I feel the blood still pumping and smile out through tears

Because the cost of breathing was conquering my fears.



The first and last of intellect that blend to make me whole

To pay the price of conscience and light the future's goals.



No. 31 The NeoCons



They make war on rights and freedom, undeclared but finely planned

They size up all possessions, to hone their false demands.

Laid out in detailed memos their bank accounts await.

But no amount of taking can satisfy or sate.



The NeoCons are coming to take both life and hope.

Liberty and honor, concepts beyond their scope.

The grasping and the appetites consume our very lives.

Their greeds and needs consume the Earth; excess their only guide.



The NeoCons are coming to take what is not earned

This the lesson taught them, by a past that never learned.

Dividing up the living into those with rights and not.

Destroyed the very future that our Founders lives had bought.

The human rights of women, ignored has done us in

The NeoCons are coming to punish that first sin.





No. 32 Sharp Shadows



The languid ease of autumn with harvest taken in

reminds me life has slumbered, still waiting to begin.

A glow and gaud redeem me, the leaves hold heart and eyes

The crimson flush of color speaks in tones I once despised.



The lungs can ache with needing for air to heat the blood

The mind can hunger also, for hands both wise and rough

Within the soul immortal the beat of both pulse on

The mind and heart communicate, neither right nor wrong.



And the shadows, sharp and savage, remind me life will end

Within the cusp of living the will must learn and bend.

And canopies of autumn spread out across the lawn

Their colors gold and wanton, their life is nearly gone



I welcome fall and shadows the harvest gold and true.

As symbols and intentions their message still is you.



No. 33 Coalition



Ideas that drive our actions and disguise our common dreams

A chasm dredged and widened through the cleverest of schemes.

Ideas, the human tooling for structures of the mind

Translated into factions they steal and kill and blind.



Ideas from minds forgotten, ideas that linger on

Ideas that ooze with power even when they're wrong.

Ideas have maimed and murdered through every human state

Ideas have stolen freedom with deceits that feed a false debate.



To see the truth behind them, rebuilding human dreams

Accepting each as equal rejecting what demeans.

Filling in the chasms that divide all kinds of men.

The vision of a future that freedom must demand.



A coalition meeting to hear and think and see

Ideas of common future that serve to make us free.





No. 34 The Metronome of Houred Time – for Roses



The pulsing beat of minutes, number out my life

limits and a liberty that speak of love and strife

And lips unkissed reproach me for all I have not done

The slow dried petals slumber, each touched by perfect sun.



Life stretches out and slumbers, remitting misspent dreams

And moments filled with silence both promise and demean.

The petals smell of passion and promise an embrace

While moments die untasted and leave no touch or trace.



For I remember laughter and the nuance of your hand

As moments pass untasted because of life's demands.

Ideas that fill and sate me still leave my flesh in need

You, the pleasure beckons to hold or only tease?



The days of life hold anguish but also seeds of hope

That passion soar and blossom, fulfilling both our scopes.





No. 35 The Subtleties of Silver; the Intricacies of Gold



Their sheen reflects our passions and the greeds of human need

Inciting love and hatred they hold and always tease.

The Noble metals harbored within the Earth, our home

Reflect us, great and vile, a mirror stark and dumb.



The noble and the common within each human heart

Find the place eternal from which all moments start

They struggle for survival; they chart the futured past

Repeating all the conflicts they forge our living last.



On footed souls were seek them; we struggle to possess

The metals test our mettle until the moment we divest.

Through intellect and hungers we justify our goals

While fulfillment slips through fingers and fails to make us whole.



True metals in the moment when heart and soul are one

The Earth the place of testing, a testing just begun.



No. 36 The Glaze of Thought



In twists and turns of turbulence that stretch my very seams

The fabric of reality converges with my dreams

And the glaze of thought awakens and the future rushes in

The endings and beginnings, in thought, are closest kin.



The rapture of remembering, the hot sharp touch of mind

Each component to assemble the final phase of every kind.

In the birth of morning silence and the death of scented rose

Are the elements eternal that no one can ever know.



As the shadows bend oncoming every nuance, every truth

Votes its echoed coming from decrepitude to youth

The first and last reversal that laughs at dreams undone

Remembers the renewal when all of us were One.



Out of many splintered moments in orgasmic rush to Mind.

The weaving threads in each of us converge as the Design.



No. 37 A Christmas Wish for Roses



The echoed light of laughter,

The heart-held peace that lasts

The glaze of hope unsullied

Holding futures and our past.



A smile lit with trusting

A home that draws love in

Gifts extending and adjusting

That invite us to be kin.



A world of balanced yearnings

A world that makes us one

Unnumbered threads a-weaving

Around one living sun.



The cycled year recalls us to view our lives anew

To speak our hopes most private and make those visions true.



No. 37 Christmas Memory of early February



His Presence felt for ages before the Birth Divine
His summoning of sages compelled both love and crimes
His Spirit drove and forged us
His Plan to make us One
Became the underscore oncoming
Its chorus still unsung. 

The Rapture still invoking
Both tears and heady sight
A throughline of becoming
Bringing fear and rare delight. 

His Smile lit the ages with a Love that never dies
That remains the wages that sustains us through the lies. 

His Birth to Mary called us to know the harshest grief
But dying within his holding is the first and perfect peace. 



No. 38 Self Discovery



 To see the past as present in the shadow of your soul

To know the truth repugnant and change your furthest goal

To ache with tears unsummoned and accept your desperate fear

Life's challenge and the ravaging are what you should hold dear.



The anguishes of failure and the pain of misspent love

The spirit bound in flesh and mind; the hand within the glove.

Reproofs unearned and wrenching, the loss of every hope

Fractures on the glaze of trust with which you cannot cope.



All tempering and burning; the fire burns out dross

In the crucible of living nothings really lost.

So take my hand, I'll lead you into the molten core

The burning is not pleasant but it must not be ignored.



On the journey made internal is the battle to be won

To the place where the eternal, in peace, will make us One.



No. 39 The Flavors of Reality



The languid mood of winter, releasing me from fear

Excites the premonitions that excises hope most dear.

I do not trust your fervor and I doubt that love is real.

Your eyes look past my needing, and glint with tones of steel.



My skin remembers passion; my mind reproves my need

The eloquence excepting, releasing me to grieve.

For trust is never useful in relationships of love

The needing and the seeking makes squabs of every dove.



I've felt your fingers fondle me in mind and bodied place

I've steeped myself in passion and extolled your every grace

In mind our lovings happened while in truth its my disgrace

Behind the shield of inference, we never did embrace.



I've loved an age in waiting and I've known your lips as mine

But in the clutch of winter I've found you less than kind.

Because I want that closeness I step back and then I sneer.

Passions cup is waning and every day less dear.



I love the patterned thinking that traces mind in you

But I doubt its couraged content having found you less that true.



No. 40 Cascades of Truth



In the silence of the night time when the soul is free to see

I taste the past-made corridors that forged my destiny.

Like torrents unrelenting they bring both truth and grief

Clarify and sanctify what time has made of me.



In the place of honor, where all my lives are one.

I see the real beginnings where assumptions are undone.

And I laugh as tears undo me, I grieve for what is known

As Time still makes and so infuses me with what I did not own.



The love of him who touched me with ideas that sealed my fate

Leaving to the dust bin other courses that elate.

For him, the source of thinking, for him the source of lies

I find the cause and sacrament that only Gods despise.



The laughter and the longing remain with me through time

And change the course of thinking, all human and divine.




No. 41 Listen to Me

Divided by the lies and greeds of them who grasp at power
Our lives and love divided to grieve the fall of towers.
I've missed the referenced moment when you spoke your best belief
And wandered in the desert, weighted down with soul torn grief.

I'm woken in the night time, wanting your lost touch
I've anguished for the moments that felt might lead to lust.
I need the skin close nuance that stops the flow of time
And known in those sparse moments your place in my designs.

The flow of raptured memories will never wait or grieve.
The moments are for taking, fulfilling all our needs.
I wakened to the closeness of one whose really there
And cancels out the anguish of lives filled with despair.

This night is arching onward towards reunion with the light
And only you and I will know if its arching brings delights.



No. 42 Out of Many, One



Out of choices made in passion and from thoughts distilled in time

Come the weavings that define us and determine the Design.

For us to set the boundaries of the world where humans live

For us to mark our roles with thought; determine what we give.



The forward thrust of living, the actions humans take

Determine lives unstarted beyond the last debate.

And the many go on weaving through the choices each will make

Affirming or revoking the structures of the State.



And from that vast profusion writ in blood, and living will

Shall echo out our future action, to survive or maybe kill.

The structures we have fashioned from our needs and appetites

Will speak our timetold truthing, both to shame and to delight.



And from this sea of savagery, from survival and through grief

All will come together, made as One through shared beliefs.



An e-mail......



On 2/7/06 5:26 PM, "Melinda Pillsbury-Foster" wrote:

Hi Lew,
   You really need to talk to ?? about the wifi project.  This thing with aol means a slow shutting down of our present mediums for communication and ??'s corporation takes this away from the dinosaurs in a way they cannot oppose.



On 2/7/06 5:26 PM, "Melinda Pillsbury-Foster" wrote:

Hi Lew,
   You really need to talk to ?? about the wifi project.  This thing with aol means a slow shutting down of our present mediums for communication and ??'s corporation takes this away from the dinosaurs in a way they cannot oppose.  Again, his numbr is ?????????.

Wrote another poem  Cheers,  Melinda

  1. Out of Many, One (actually 42.)


Out of choices made in passion and from thoughts distilled in time
Come the weavings that define us and determine the Design.
For us to set the boundaries of the world where humans live
For us to mark our roles with thought; determine what we give.

The forward thrust of living, the actions humans take
Determine lives unstarted beyond the last debate.
And the many go on weaving through the choices each will make
Affirming or revoking the structures of the State.

And from that vast profusion writ in blood, and living will
Shall echo out our future action, to survive or maybe kill.
The structures we have fashioned from our needs and appetites
Will speak our timetold truthing, both to shame and to delight.

And from this sea of savagery, from survival and through grief
All will come together, made as One through shared beliefs.  



On 2/7/06, Lew Rockwell <lhrockwell@hotmail.com> wrote:

That is beautiful!

No. 43 For Roses wondering, the delights of passion

The choices made in passion touch the tenderest resort
Where each of us is singular, confronting life's first torts.
Our passions will define us to the farthest edge of life
And passion is the lever point; conjoining all our sight.

Through mind and through emotion to a place we've never been
We strain to see the outline, discerning closest kin
The interface uniting us in spirit, body, mind
Tells the anguish and the raptures, making up our own design.

I tell you of the passions that continue all our lives
The pulse of hope and anguish that considered make us wise
The conduit for intellect; the voice that speaks our needs
The insight that accepted bring us up and to our knees. 

I'll tell you of the passions that may start on naked skin
But when truist simmer through us lending strength to make amends. 



Another e-mail – this was a reaction to the poem above which went out to my poetry list. All of these went out to my poetry list. Lew might not have realized that.







Wed, 08 Feb 2006 12:54:16 -0600
Subject: Re: ?? (Individual referred to removed)
From: "Lew Rockwell" <lhrockwell@hotmail.com>
To: "Melinda Pillsbury-Foster"


Tell me about choices made in passion.



On 2/8/06 8:01 AM, "Melinda Pillsbury-Foster" wrote:

Wow, and you haven't even talked to him yet. Actually, I thought he was kind of ordinary looking.
No, I know you mean the poem. Thanks, glad you liked it. Right now he is preparing for his next negotiation with that major who wants in. 10% for 25 million. But call him. I want you to get to know him and hear about the technology. It is amazing both in concept and where it takes the market in terms of individual control. Hugs, Melinda



No. 44 For RosesCaught in Thought



Through the shadows on the spirit that send anguish through the spine

The paths that weave life's magic also lend their flow to minds

And minds fracture and refine us producing worlds of many kinds

To beckon and extend us as we seek the source sublime.



The journey of an hour that extends to ages long

Our life, a blink of moment, stilled inside a note of song

Extensions of the power and the rapture of our need

Each a true expression that each spirit learns to heed.



Our passions weave in wonder to the pulsing that is life

They merge our thoughts and hungers, elemental in device.

Our passions sate and fill us, staving off the touch of death

And grant us glad delections with a touch that spans life's breadth.



The truist of our passions merge the mind and give us scope

To move beyond the anguish that extinguished lesser hope.





No. 45 Assumptions and the State where I met Roses

Lew asked me to write a poem about the conference were we first met. I obliged. This was the first poem I wrote after discovering he was married.

In an effluence of comments on the markets never free
Discourse rising and reacting to the tones of miseries
Invoked by fraud and violence from those trusted with all power
At a conference of the intellect, attendees sad and dour. 

In a place of academics living in a sheltered place of mind
The discourse never reaches, never bends the State's design.
For the human action pulses with the weaving lives and wills
Of people who will never read the Austrian appeals. 

Be cautious of the structures that you build inside the State
Be careful to remember that assumptions steal and take
Remake your own conclusions, never questioned, that enslave
All structures of exclusion dig Liberty's last grave.

Free the choices stricken from a world bound up with lies
Unchain the mind and spirit so our choices aren't denied. 



No. 46 Meetings in the Mind and Heart A - Warning for Roses

A place for meeting focuses, we see our future dreams
We pause to reconnoiter, to consider errant schemes.

The searing touches rendered, the gasp of pulsing skin,
Sensations to remember, delights that lead us in.

A million places beckon us, to sate our hidden needs
Question what your needs demand and what those yearnings breed.

A cause, a quest, that calls us to a life in human form
Emancipating human hopes; from this a future born. 

Weight the full course beckoning and count off hidden costs
The consequence of harbored hopes can also carry loss. 

Temptations of the body; hungers of the soul,
Justify those ugly acts that leave us less than whole.

The hardest and most precious gift, the only one that lasts
We bring its print along with us, engraved in soul made pasts.

To live a life of honor; to keep the record clean
To stand before the the One Who Knows, proud of every scene. 

The dross of life is counted in deceit and misspent hours.
The forge of living burns out dross; leaving our true power. 

The satin touch of passion, sensations that most please.
The cost in honor lost to us could leave our souls to freeze. 







Thu, 09 Feb 2006 16:33:34 -0600
Subject: Re: No. 44 Meetings in the Mind and Heart
From: "Lew Rockwell" <lhrockwell@hotmail.com>
To: "Melinda Pillsbury-Foster"


You are wonderful, and I take your warning to heart.



No. 47 The Playground

On the playground of their childhoods, where they struggled to fit in

The men we know as NeoCons faced derision without end.

Asocial and too clumsy to excel at any sport.

They learned to use deception to survive and to extort.



Feel pity for their anguish, they trembled with that pain

And swore to change their status; it left them less than sane.

They lost themselves in fancy; they lived on dreams of power

They studied all the rule books and deception left them sour.



Through the angst of viewing what other men could do.

Building edifice most dour to make their dreams come true

Assembling their tools with persuasion and with guile

Philosophy and policy converted to beguile



Grasping and consuming; their souls without a song

Arrested in their boyhoods, unable to move on

Their stunted souls inform us if we take time to see

The fate of all such takers, their ugly destiny.



See beyond the glitter as they putrefy within

All tyrants throughout history recognize their kin.



On 2/ 14/06 11:33 AM, "Melinda Pillsbury-Foster" wrote:

From Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

http://stoptheneoconning.blogspot.com/





Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:43:37 -0600
Subject: Re: A Note to brighten your Valentine Day!
From: "Lew Rockwell" <lhrockwell@hotmail.com>  
To: "Melinda Pillsbury-Foster"



What costume do you want to wear?
On 2/14/06 3:07 PM, "?????????????@???????????" wrote:
Zorro.  But I don't have my cape anymore.




Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:19:47 -0600
Subject: Re: A Note to brighten your Valentine Day!
From: "Lew Rockwell" <lhrockwell@hotmail.com
To: ???????????????@??????????????



What about me?
On 2/14/06 5:05 PM, "themelinda@pillsbury-foster.us" <themelinda@pillsbury-foster.us> wrote:

What was the name of Zorro's sidekick?  We can go out and fight for justice, freedom and anarchy!  It will be fun.





Wed, 15 Feb 2006 09:52:37 -0600
Subject: Re: A Note to brighten your Valentine Day!
From: "Lew Rockwell" <lhrockwell@hotmail.com
To: Melinda ??????????@???????????????



Bernardo. But wasn’t he a mute?



No. 48 Love and Need

The ripples of your laughter, the insights that inform

The touch of thoughts inciting, ideas beyond the norms.

The shape of worlds oncoming from thoughts that make us kin

These, the magic interludes that differences amend.



Excitement sealing happiness that carries me through time

The smiles, these evoking, that embrace our whole design

As thoughts sublime and pungent, change the landscape of the mind

You, the one who shares these things, underscores each line.



The world of mind is opened through touches that delight

Bringing peace and promise to extend the edge of sight.

And the rapture and the inferences embrace of whole of life

To know and to remember, rejecting what is strife.



The love of cherished honor, the tones of life lived right

Remain the choice of passion that flourishes in light.



Melinda Pillsbury-Foster"
From: "Lew Rockwell" <lewrockwell@mac.com>
Subject: welcome back
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:27:40 -0700



Sorry, darling, not to have anything from the Clark campaign.

On Apr 10, 2006, at 10:35 AM, M. P.F. wrote:



But I am sure you have something else just as interesting to auction with a fascinating story to go with it!  Think about what that might be!



"Lew Rockwell" <lewrockwell@mac.com>
Subject: Re: welcome back
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:37:23 -0700
To: "M. P.F."



A date with you? But then I would have to be the winning bidder.





"Lew Rockwell" <lewrockwell@mac.com>
Subject: really?
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 12:51:51 -0700
To: "M. P.F."



A love poem?





No. 49 Human Action, Warping Passions - for Roses cause he asked

In digs through human detritus from events removed in time
Reassembled like the pottery, that shattered, conceal design.
The hungers and the urges that decided what has been
Also serve to show and tell us; to speak the souls of men.

Their greeds drove them to hunger and their greeds determined lives
Their greeds reached out to ravish as conquest fed their drives.
The base, the ugly lustings to acquire what is not earned
Deceit and base coercion was the lesson they best learned.

With blandished words, well monied, from the well-heeled halls of power
Came Cato and Ed's cabal to grasp and to devour.
The tools of oppression Crane would see arrayed
So Rothbard was ejected and the Milton card was played.

Ideas affirming freedom could not be left in play
So the Austrians were muted, their force of truth delayed.
And who will count the losses, and who will pay the cost?
And who is left to understand the bottom line of loss?

Debasing words of honor used to mean the soul inborn
The freedoms we all cherished, converted, burned with scorn.
Autonomy indwelling in each denied by law
To profit cancered egos that demanded wealth by claw.

The list of ugly takers, writ long, remember well
Their names defamed the Vision that condemns their souls to hell.

  1. Rare Delight
    Micro motion mending our divides of thought and peace
    Actions weave in wonders from lives both spare and brief.
    A billion thoughts refining; one man will never see
    A wave both deep and arching directs our destiny. 

    Tectonic shifts that echo; change that moves towards hope
    Tiny fractures that bring healing, enlarging promised scope.
    Reflecting light and darkness, catching half built dreams.
    The futures still for making and forsaking what demeans. 

    The onward rush of passion and the subtle lines of time
    All of these are written in the frame of the design.
    All of us now living, and all of us to be
    All of us now dead and gone within the frame of WE.

    In incremental anguish and through the pall of night. 
    Each of us makes choices, bringing grief and rare delight.  
  2. From Shards to Light - for the honest man who asked if I could write a poem about the origin of money in twenty minutes.

    From an insight of convenience they drew marks on shards of clay
    The goats and sheep and cheeses thus were counted up each day.
    And trader's lives were better, as barter was replaced.
    With mites of fired pottery that bore each items face.
    The marks and shards were money; more fungible to hold
    So trade and space were easier; what was owned was sold.
    But then a cunning taker thought to make his own
    The shards went out of favor, replacing coin wrot gold
    Issued first by temple and then anointed King
    So fungible the medium it built a wealth in things.

    Accumulation beckoned the greedy onto thrones.    
    Through money all were shackled, the people could be owned. 
    A flow of current holdings, in increments of gold
    Created flow of currency, and ever more was sold.

         Price now marked in shiny bits they trusted not to lie. 
         But men saw ways of stealing from weight the coins would buy.
         So England then replaced them, their coins had reeded edge.
         Clipping and the shaving, made obvious instead.



        Money called and promised, so fluid in its scope.
        Kings and those in power wrote promises on notes.

       Temptations to debasement, temptations to inflate.
       Became the real foundation of the governmental state.


      And money still enticed us, and draws in those who steal.
      Finessing, redefining, the units once were real.

     Now with no foundation in sheep or even cheese
     The money is all funny, and only Kings are pleased.


     The flow of human commerce, so easy to abuse.
     Is still the form adopted, that all of us must use.

    We count up paper icons, inscribed with those now gone.
    We trust in those who make them, despite the fact their wrong.


    We need the fluid functions that money can provide.
   While all the self anointed kings, count, and so decide.

  1. Magic Money Written for one of my partners in revolution.



With opinings and definings the presses clack and run

The FED announces numbers that make our minds grow numb.

The complexities of money make thievery a joy

Alan loved the power, Ayn's first money boy.



Its owners, all so nameless, ensure they pump us dry.

By transfers and with interest that makes the widows cry.

And marks on pages tally the figures that expand

As “available for loaning” reaches to the most demand.



From banks and institutions that conspire with the FED

The piles of the dollars shrink and leave us fully bled.

Expanded to a magnitude that boggles those who see

The FED prints funny money, and consumes lives yet to be.



A con game still ongoing, rapacious to consume

Expand supply, disguise the lie, and lead us on to doom.

The flow and flux of money, that eats the truth and land

A set up for a taking we all will understand.



The sound of tiny popping, as price makes its decline

Shrinking all horizons, as interest rates still climb.

A future of our choosing?

A con game finally done?

The final trump infusing

The truth we've been so dumb?



The money game is reaching its final stage of life

Leaving in its passing a people locked in strife.



No. 53 Tension and Ease



The tempo and the tension envelopes every thought
Sound and seething interruptions leave you empty and distraught
The surging tide of living that leaves us less than sane
While we forget to find the silence that cancels out our pain.

The silence caught and carried in the place behind the wind
Excises all the tensions, the place where peace begins
Always there awaiting our need to draw it in.
The Silence, heals us inward, the first and perfect Friend. 

When cacaphonies uprising rend the inner peace
In the silence of the windward I go to take my ease.
There, I touch the surety that we will never die.
And shrug off the assumptions that carry fear and lies.

In the Silent place of meeting, behind the sound of Wind.
I wrap myself in raptures that speak the truth of Him.



  1. Fortress Lew – Written for a wilted Rose

Inside the vault of thinking that tightens every day
The buttressing of intellect constricts, its price unpaid.
Providing moat and monolith, outside the world careens
And greyness coalesces bringing fear to inner being.



Inside the Fortress Rockwell, ideas grow sparse and thin
The Giants have receded, new chapters can't begin.
The easy way that beckoned was a cul de sac of time
Delightful in its resonance, it justified old crimes.



Inside the sad and lonely, outside the core of truth
Stark and hard the pathway that now his mind must rue.
Evasions come with price tags; demand to be made whole
Count out that truth in coinage that leaves gouges in the soul.



The gold of truth still beckons, to eyes that dare to see
Remember in life's winter you chose this destiny.



Like Lemmings  flooding onwards to a chasm miles deep
Their scarecrow of devising smiles, seeing the tails of fleeing sheep
The nightmare that compels us to the death of every hope:
The fantasy of NeoCons that greed alone evoked. 

Stay the course to poverty, to want and desperate need
Stay the course as every dream dies as lies deceive.
Stay the course together, no need to question lies
Stay the course laid out for us? America will die. 

The Founders stir and tremble at a course so gone astray
The courage of its people tried, found wanting, washed away. 
The boogeymen constructed from what was never real
Dictates the course of destiny that soon will be revealed.

Stay the course to serfdom, stay to bitter truth
Stay and know your masters, that chickenhawking crew
Stay on course elected by what you would not see
This, the just conclusion of Freedom's destiny?

Within that fold of cowards are a few who will not run
They know the truth of courage and reach for truth and guns
Hearing age old lessons that informed us long ago.
The shackles will not hold them, freedom is their goal. 

They stay the course to honor
Stay the course to hope
Stay the course to courage, they will see and cope.
Stay the course to justice because they understand
God gave life for lessons; to live and die as Man.


 

Post Script.

And that is the story as it was lived on the phone and Internet for about a year. I do not regret the poems. In fact, for me the poems made it worth the chagrin of finding I had been slightly deceived.

When life offers wilted roses make potpourri.