FREEDOM CAMP

By Marilynn Lea Stark

PREFACE

For long years now wandering afoot, across cityscape where eyes could only rest alive,
Across an entire continent among its people, a nation, a universal world;
To go by the way of path as goal, knowing a moment to survive and to thrive
Upon truth as seen and unseen, and rest in the love of giving God through those people unfurled. (1)

In how many ways can I tell you, for this is the recount of story bold;
And in how many ways can you, my people, ever listen so as to see
The entity of freedom for freedom’s majestic hold,
When it lives naught except as in a vision, unreachable democracy. (2)

Were I to equal my obeisance in tasks thence performed from vision’s charter,
Place such on your knee as by way of request that you might recognize my feat;
Would I wait another decade split athunder to loud talk of spurious and even contraband barter
Instead of the winning of yourself, that my deeds were intended to dictatorial contract defeat? (3)

You have your choice, you are the people, and how you think is then again firmament
In such aegis of the abode above, wherein lies destiny’s tenacious grip;
For twice ordered, it seems, by God and then people, when detriment,
Detriment to my freedom derives from your justifying a town to taking awash your nation’s soul as ship. (4)

Then is heard the most gripping plaints as from some field past of halcyon air,
As the mighty-born die yet alive to the day of freedom’s deeds, thoughts and ken;
For now you say you have no choice, cannot but in the contrary deed despair,
Since you are gone to other parts of ruling power, now never tether to the laws of when. (5)

Place be the way, honor the day, that I had so gone out for you and fought;
To come home to a pine tree made sacred in a fight, nor ever ’twas circumscribed by me,
Calling witness to rescue along a road with houses, had I my hope still for freedom sought;
The forest could stand more mighty than you, who could not tell the horror you did so see. (6)

Or did you see, for what was the battle, a Cold War also for decades yours?
I had declared you free from delusion’s hold as by my presidential deed and prospectus;
You chose to follow some zealots across the field, refusing with them me my long-earned doors.
You are the misled, you are so doomed, for you had failed in abstract heart reflexive. (7)

Nor can I forgive you, since that is not the question, yet forgive as I might I cannot;
You cannot simply put your bold crimes aplenty in place of the marriage I had seen,
Remove further your contrivance against me over another attempt on my civil rights sought,
And expect everyone to support your hypothesis that your Rhodes scholar was on my behalf ever so keen. (8)

Yet I must confess, since you cannot in like mode soar, since away from truth you are so rent,
Were I to win you a day or find you a way to once again live for righteous thought and deed;
Would my heart for truth include the sheep, once aherd and upon me bent,
Where across quadrangle so null and ill-employed did privacy’s hold falter to sound’s embattled heed. (9)

My wider people, I will win you yet to a truth so bold and cold for you to hear:
It was they, I had forgiven them, had lived upon victorious departure a prayer, a quest for ties anew;
This rapprochement ne’er possible, I tell you the fact: in them the memory, the fear
Blocked my forgiveness so honorably extended, whilst they set instead upon me to battle renew. (10)

So that is why, there is no heart, no heart in an enemy so much in crimes are they clad,
That they might be able to see social justice and the rule of heart’s love
Is beyond this day, beyond good measure they might have in my heart once again had;
Who could deny a marriage so clear; for such is story: these people are indoctrinated out of values above. (11)

INTRODUCTION

For years beyond the battles of war, as history sees by name, the Cold War renown,
Whilst I have fended much like you: not compensated for years lost to false incrimination war games and strife,
Like some giant commander stripped of troops did I wage and strategize in a world to me a town;
For years did I take the religious strife so shredded as any sacred document, as my way of friendship in this war-torn life. (12)

You may ask why, and not comprehend, unable to see me as tried and true
To a society, a cult, a religious man, whose repulsion of myself from their rooves
Should have caused me to reconnoiter, to my individual place review;
You would thus have me leave ever their guest book, since the home of sky me so unjustly reproves. (13)

True is your thought thus to me of your heart, that you would care to see me a place;
How many such prayers in my long walk so rendered, and how food comes to a person with no plate;
For the sadhu airborne in me came from across the sea, where five houses give the hand repast in true grace,
And that in a day’s time uplifts as all; but for me was a given, begged dime never too late. (14)

Then how can I win you back to your reason, on this, my religious walk?
Do you place your analysis thus above the call of war, of life continued no matter the why?
Do you cherish your sense of rule in the abstract as if you were in charge of the concept you thus stalk?
Do you also judge each creature who eats from God’s kingdom, and knows better than you open sky? (15)

What concept upon which you trample you cannot even vaguely see, so those roofless are of you afraid;
Can you see for yourself in others what you could not yourself achieve, if you lift the blame and find your love?
Or does your mind become boggled and buckle and beg from me of no more, you prayed;
At least you prayed, and where you could not see; and saw in me some profoundly pure visage of a dove. (16)

What concept revisited upon your sill, that one mighty was by political appointment robbed and by word;
The word so given a platform inverted, to me like serpent or snake biting the air in sheer greed;
The basic truth we saw to rumor enshrouded became a justice bench of substance absurd,
To call a light tower a dark pit of hopeless agony, some lie the town recited out of heed. (17)

Heed for what, but the ruling few who played the misery around me on their world stage;
Thus they recruited you, if washed you were of your own ability to think and to see–
Blame me not for this. For that will free you from your quest, your quest by rumor once stayed,
And now is rumor forgotten, so see again what value will redeem your mind to democracy. (18)

Accept the fact of my mission seen, if not by you, by me! For then you will see past condition,
To thus free you from logic’s like conditional clamp upon your perception of my demeanor;
Or, like crashing monkeys you could misplace your intellect, swing incivility, and make mad your darkness a mission,
Then feel thus empowered, while you miss the point, instead of seeing right value as redeemer. (19)

A hero lives to be seen and known, not as you might think in fame’s taunt;
But to accomplish for others what they themselves cannot see, in a way they cannot do,
For purpose even undeclared, ever driven to meet a line for others perhaps only a retrospective haunt
At times–they may be seen only unto themselves, then robbed of past mission accomplished so true. (20)

A mythical lady misaligned to her hero once held so total of mind can be even yet a heroine;
No one of like birth, no nation together, can live a lie once truth in battle has placed its time-laden grip;
For such lie would foment disaster by succession of battle, whereupon endless the maze ever narrowing;
That heart for him lives past terrorized door, the very cabin where pernicious lie gave it such sordid lip. (21)

Honor runs as deep as any hidden and active spring, giving water made pure by ground soil a filter;
So does go deep the progression of battle to a nation as righteous as ours: America, I see you;
Throughout the right-thinking populace will story be told so true, if only heroism now held off-kilter
Could once again be seen as why my Beloved had ever saved me, was ever to his heart for me so justly true. (22)

Can measure be made of established love where hatred and zealots once overthrew,
Is like asking a question of a tree; such corruption and greed to only feed papaver,
To those who believe they can ingest such truth, and build a false kingdom; for on sterile stalk they threw
To grinding halt so many a righteous and innocent youth– now what truth, what crime this money does aver? (23)

That might be why across history’s annals there lives instead the story, the one-worded lore,
Not of brave man and brave woman in love to wed, to make of people their tested love more;
But instead a mob serves as family in complicit trust to this, robbing the mightier gender in war
As the one labelled and useless to some natural plant, whose vision like butterfly dupes and steals wisdom’s solid door; (24)

Making thus outlaw mockery of valor, might and courage great, does the mother go under
Except to a title given to ersatz substance hated and feared, bearing the name as insult to war’s victory;
For every classic tells the myth of those chosen and few who take way in such brave battle asunder,
When once the ancient spiritual mother answers to plant with her timeless vision worthy of vision’s pure rectory. (25)

From out of earth there is grown a heap of chemical key which empowers but a few in division:
Those who fall and employ, as on a Sunday ride, whose peace belies the blast of the journey;
And those who play ruler by its alluring power of insubstantial wealth’s provision;
Do you actually pray for a president to arise, if by vote, who is nothing but a fanciful, would-be turnkey? (26)

Just where is your love for freedom, that you would wish your neighbor or classmate
To war game’s endless aim, to place vertical bars where might De Tocqueville’s society be?
The crimes so rife upon the land in such rule of war so uncivil, have caused us to lock the door afraid,
Instead of trusting that our friends are indeed friends; and this, the way of mob rule past democracy; (27)

This is the day when you must seek an answer to ever-growing quandary,
For now instead of permission’s search, your home a possible place for sanctuary
To some enemy quite saddled with eyes afire in the memory of terror’s monied roof laundry–
They cleaned the world of established wealth skyline, those worshipers of putrid chemical’s estuary. (28)

Yet in defense of truth now thrown to proper task,
In wake of war by hijacked plane,
Can you tolerate the new rule of law to ask,
“Do you herein a terrorist house without shame?” (29)

What if the leader by high truth employed, the one of whom you heard had been of home robbed,
Had in her long walk for freedom and for God, in name of democracy to restitution so true,
Had ever been robbed of conceptual self-defense, and wrongly accused of terror’s own hold as she was mobbed,
Yet so innocent, noble, so true; to fight for life, for freedom, for non-existent home was for her die or do. (30)

This is the way of karmic law, when wrong accusation sullies the battle ordained to the righteous when few;
The balance of war answers always to the higher, the more distant pitch of battle unseen
Except by those of unbending courage, never to indoctrinator’s mind like askew,
And who remain to avail of the truth such rescue, will they rescue by now precipitated might supreme. (31)

To restore for children, and for the child in you, in all; to refurbish the light itself, it seems,
That my hero stood it all for me, he stood it all and more– did the properties of light itself somehow change?
That you can not see I never truly believed, as if I saw rather through an organized roar your dreams
Ever to defeat except in death, the wisdom of my hero, the way of all heroism, for ageless truth you cannot rearrange. (32)

This is the time for better employ across mankind’s court for love, were it ever so vital,
That a corrupting army of drug dealing few should hang their hats and stay their ground,
Allowing sanity’s tenor, a resonating song, to reclaim, restore, renew by recital
The facts of heroic love in peace, than that a tarnished badge should direct an altar from anarchy’s sound. (33)

All rests upon this, the vision anew that heroic love is valid, though few ever live to its hilt by need,
Enjoying instead providence seen as by expectation and garden, while imagining only urgent claim,
And standing by in life’s trials so scattered, as compared to when death’s consistent rule must heed;
A couple gone sad that their heroic platform collapsed in the weight of those gone criminally insane. (34)

War-mad, and out of order, made necessary the place to put in camp;
Those zealots few attracted the battle in their callousness to love;
Now if you see that shattered their lives before the taking of religious revamp,
Then falling back under, to the same old gone wild, and how they shattered the dove. (35)

DANCE OF THE VISION AGAINST HEROISM

Over by the ridge, the Chestnut Ridge, and across the road from the school,
I found repose fortnightly after classes, what of the Vedanta teaching politics upon me conferred;
While others stayed there, fully engaged, with every need and tool ,
I, held yet to beggar’s cityscape seeking of food, and to my noble family for rent deferred. (36)

The way of the sadhu does not work unless contemplative accord retains the say;
For any truth message will only be given by the one so totally and perfectly renounced,
If such honorable accord is known and fully operative, so that God’s own way
Can be discerned through example and sight, His Holy name also by mutual deed itself pronounced. (37)

As instead of proper religious ethic, and which stands in full knowledge of the way of charity,
The political rule gave the say of doom to this sadhu, who could only also by wrong contract beg;
So the long hunger war which had ruled the Swiss stage, giving the Gipper great bargaining clarity,
Was soon to find new place for keeping, when other past bargains did he then for repute have to hedge. (38)

Under a Scotch pine would I place my camp, to draw from mother Earth peace and a quiet place to pray;
In beatific mind did nature beckon me in, after my long years of wandering and in search of return to civic liberty;
So became my tree so sacred, my shelter from city strife– and how did this the hunger life stay;
Yet to my Beloved I held out-of-doors, as the policy of his school turned me away from his full heroic delivery. (39)

Travelling back to rented room, to await another Sunday to see him, for him me to teach,
How I felt so wronged and bereft, not knowing how we could from this breach ever marry;
Any request I made to honor my hope and visit him for satsang, for darshan, as in former days’ reach,
Was answered with some mysterious, cruel threat by Whitfield, the manager–she gave absolute nary. (40)

To study Sanskrit and learn the Upanishads, was I asking only what she and others used
But for political, black magic leverage against our marriage, my proposal to him notwithstanding;
Quite innocent of their exact opposition and such method, those devotees caused me pain in their ruse,
Leaving me so unjustly excluded, and never able to say why, as if others directed them, orders demanding. (41)

For my Beloved had led them and taught them, and on this entire Earth were they to me so profoundly dear;
How I loved them and all that they stood for, they were my way, my hope, my vision–
I saw them go under before my eyes, I saw them act estranged and different, for what reason to me not clear;
I would depart and pray for answer: they were made open to evil through policy’s wrong decision. (42)

No more a happy day, though grateful was I to receive fortnightly my brief inclusion;
The students at Arsha Vidya thrived upon my ouster from him, my great hero through long global war;
And in the shelter of that city was I being seriously poisoned; my sacred tree gave curative restitution;
Once my friend and staunch supporter, Whitfield set upon our marriage despite its victorious, heroic lore. (43)

My sacred tree so saved my life, that miracle must be herein told;
My place of residence was filled with iniquity, and assassinator’s plan;
Each time I prayed beneath its boughs, the poison lost its hold;
Did I tell you one time I strayed in s’s in walk–Whitfield kept real against me the ban. (44)

This is the dance, the dance of truth, within which is truth only of chemical race,
Whose vision ephemeral becomes sought for rock, yet upon it there is no place;
Offered and dealt as panacea, since first there must be tragedy and pain,
What better construct than to refute a marriage, had it sprung out of sheer heroic gain. (46)

To dance to a vision of but play upon the senses, to vision of total realization of desire requited,
And mistake this for rescue, mistake it for real, whilst that trip is nothing but delusion incited;
To so dance is to trudge in treachery some dirge, dreaming of problems over while problems start anew–
This is the deal of the darkest hour, for some hellish demons to yet feign some giving, pious pew. (47)