Liberty is like a river that knows no bounds;
swells and contracts as it makes its way
to the vast roily sea.
The sea is a metaphor for all tears cried.
Like when Liberty died.
I guess being composed and centered is like majestic
mountain over there, splayed out in front of azure skies,
the color of your mother's eyes.

Liberation is participating in the vision described above.
As it is, the river of my body chugs along
and has an inkling of unclogged rivulets running,
no.. rushing, rushing up and down my arms and legs.
Living in oppression is like being my ankles
pleading with my blood to climb up into my heart
where hope lives, pumping.
Hope is like feeling the beats of your own drumming
heart steady and defiant.
.
When you're filled with hope, you are the river.
.

There was no way for many people to internalize fear;
they began losing control over their very own lives.
Constant surveillance drove many into madness,
the sane to suicide.
Not surprisingly, many took to killing each other in fits of anger
frustration - strangers on strangers - family members.
Parents fearing for the lives of their young children
projected onto them their own despair.
There was no let-up of wars, mass illegal immigration, unemployment,
inadequate health care, natural disasters, coastal & in-land towns obliterated
by more powerful hurricanes and tornadoes that many thought were engineered.
Congress passed bills years ago to modify and manipulate the weather.
Low-brow nuts-in-charge were only too eager to wreck havoc
the states for economic and political control.
Parents thinking there was no way out,
the downward spiral in quality of life entrenched
parents started killing off their children.
By this time, things had gotten quite desperate.

We were a smiling nation back then during the Reagan years,
in stark contrast to the present dregs of the day
in high places.
Today in the public square, once a thriving center of activity, no tree
stands, and the square stands bare. People don't meet and mix in a happy way
with the present dregs of the day. No. One is bound to lower covered head to chest,
eyes focused on the path below to avoid the eyes on poles,
in boxes, attached to telephone wires, restaurant tables, buses, windows,
floors and walls; all monitored and used in public to search privates-
spy docs manning endoscopes.

There is no hope.

"Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end.
We meant to change a nation, and instead we changed the world."
-- Ronald Reagan

Reading the words of President Reagan's Farewell Address
to the Nation on January 11, 1989, brought back all the good
one had for the country and its People.
It seemed, no other time in our history would there be
such a sense of cohesion, sense of destiny,
sense of preordained greatness in truth and human spirit,
than was encapsulated in the mere phrase
"Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev."
One has to marvel at the audacity of such a command
leveled at a Russian leader.
Marveling still, at the warmth and sincerity of a man
could fundamentally put an end to the Cold War.
Such a man was he, President Reagan.

It behooves our Betters to take note
the People have not forgotten what a good man can accomplish:
end the Cold War, triumph over communism,
restore pride in America, here at home,
throughout the world.