.

There once was a very big lie,
That our country refused to deny.
While we did what they told us,
To the Commies they sold us
And we kissed all our freedoms goodbye.

.

.

Joe Tessitore is a retired New York City resident and poet.

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43 Responses

  1. Mike Bryant

    Joe… I believe that your insightful limerick’s appearance here was up to Divine intervention… and Evan too, of course.
    I love it.

    Reply
  3. Jeff Kemper

    Not quite “all” . . . yet. But “all our freedoms” appears to be the goal. It’s uncanny how destruction is coming from within.

    Reply
  5. Cynthia Erlandson

    Great one, Joe. It says so much truth in so few words.

    Reply
  6. Norma Okun

    Freedom did not begin in the 21 first century. Neither will end in any century.
    Freedom without order is chaos. And what we have is a crisis. Freedom is justice. It is the oneness of truth and beauty. The world will first be free of liars before freedom.
    Freedom and order are always together. Neither can be without the other.

    Reply
  7. Roy E. Peterson

    So much in one nutshell and so apropos to the present day! Great!

    Reply
  10. Sally Cook

    Good work, Joe ! I certainly hope it does not come to that.

    Reply
  11. Joe Tessitore

    It goes without saying that both “The Election” and “The Pandemic” are very big and very blatant lies that every person of good will clearly recognizes.
    I am struggling to write about an even bigger lie and yet one that is far more subtle. It lives in the pit of my stomach and it never leaves and it keeps me from walking up to every masked brother and sister that I pass and begging them to take that thing off, because it’s all a lie.
    It is the same lie that has church leaders in New York State begging Governor Mussolini to declare that the practice of religion is an essential service, the same lie that, if I dwell on it long enough, will have me pulling the hair out of my head.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Here in my Brooklyn neighborhood, most people have discarded the stupid dhimmi-mask and are walking around breathing freely. No one gives a swiving hump what dictators like Cuomo, DeBlasio, and Fauci say.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Joe, Susan and I went to Sam’s Club, Spec’s liquor and HEB supermarket… no masks. Most people are still wearing them but we didn’t get any lip or even any hard looks. Abbot dropped the mask mandate but most stores still require masks… except they don’t really if you have the guts to stand up to them.

    • Mike Bryant

      Yep… the lie is that we even need a vaccine that is putting billions in the pockets of the usual suspects. Hydroxychloroquine works but was kept from us. Ivermectin works… the University of Virginia is using it to cure Wuhan Flu of all the Big Government people. And NOW, when the billions in profits have been assured by their campaign (When have you EVER seen public officials pushing flu shots?) NOW the studies are sneaking out (but not being covered by mainstream media)

      https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/peer_reviewed_study_finds_that_ivermectin_is_effective_as_prophylaxis_for_covid19_and_as_a_therapeutic_remedy_.html

      They are giving the damned Covid jabs to 6 month old children now… An adult, at least, can agree to be a guinea pig. This is pure evil.

      Reply
    • Patricia Redfern

      Whoa! I hope you do pen the one you are planning on. Nations are being fooled!
      Fauci, et al, need a noose

      Reply
  12. Paul Freeman

    As a species, we need to shut down this virus. By petty squabbling over dictators and masks and vaccines and who’s a sheep and who has guts, we’re just giving the virus the time and leeway to mutate into even deadlier variants, as apparently is happening. Placing a parochial First Amendment label on the pandemic is a bit like fiddling while Rome burns – or did Rome burn?

    Anyhow, that’s my take.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      See Florida… if it’s possible to get any real numbers on your side of the world. I think it’s hilarious that an English teacher in the Middle East thinks he knows more than the people that live here and know the doctors and nurses involved. He also knows more than a former military intelligence officer. Susan had been misinformed about America and Americans by the British Bullshit Corporation till she spent a few years here and saw with her own eyes what is actually taking place.
      I happen to know that where you live, the camels are getting Covid B(actrian) oops I meant Covid D (romedary) and therefore are wearing masks front AND rear. Everybody knows this and I hope you don’t deny it.
      We are not stupid Paul, please stop treating us as if we are.

      Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” in the November 1845 issue of Graham’s Magazine, there is this statement, “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
      Try to be like Poe.
      It took the BBC over twenty years to find out the truth about Rotherham. Do you enjoy being lied to?

      Reply
      • C.B. Anderson

        Mr. Freeman is one of the sheeple, Mike. There’s no doubt about it. Reason and evidence, for him, take second place behind the edicts of the State and the illusion that our so-called scientific authorities actually understand what they are talking about. Look at Texas, look at Florida. Freeman is just fiddling around with an out-of-tune banjo.

    • Joe Tessitore

      Your take is saturated in lies and it’s painful to see.
      Shame on you for coming here and spreading it.

      Reply
    • Norma Okun

      C.B. Anderson, you and Mr. Salemi told me to leave too on account of what I dared to say about your poem. I got attacked. I did not get encouraged. I got the boot. Are we still an open society? Can people, if they see a person make a remark different than theirs, express their opinion? Should good will occur? Or do you kick the person out like a rat. I believe we can learn from Mr. Freeman. Why can’t he say the opposite of what you guys believe and why do you make him ashamed?

      Reply
      • Joe Tessitore

        If Mr. Freeman “believes” that the Batflu is deadly, then there is nothing that anyone can learn from him.
        If he “believes” that the last presidential election here in the United States was fair, then there is even less that anyone can learn from him.

        I believe that we insult his intelligence if we “credit” him for believing these things.

        My faith teaches me that it is a sin on my part to leave a brother or a sister in their lies.

      • C.B. Anderson

        Nobody, Norma, has given anyone the boot. But if someone says something stupid, it’s fair for others to point that out.

  13. Joe Tessitore

    Mr. Freeman knows the kind of reaction his fuzzy but incendiary remarks will elicit here. His pattern, to date, has been to drop them nonetheless and run for cover.
    I welcome an honest discussion with him – his behavior leads me to suspect that he is not at all interested in one.

    Reply
  14. Joe Tessitore

    Please know, Norma, that you and Mr.Freeman are more than welcome here.

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Joe, you are right… throwing out what are known to be incendiary comments into the community, and then running for cover is a kind of trolling. We’ve seen another kind here as well in which the troll won’t stop arguing and writes eighteen paragraphs, and then does the same thing over and over on the same post/poem. What Freeman is doing is just as soul destroying. The people on this site know all too well what the globalists think on every single issue because they sell their warped and lying views globally through the media. We don’t need a media mouthpiece spewing those same destructive lies on a site dedicated to a type of poetry that has almost been wiped out by those self-same powers. Mr. Freeman, I, like many here, enjoy reading your poetry. You are welcome here. As you know, Joe controls the comments under his poem. That’s why he answered you. He could have just as easily asked me to remove your comment. When your poems are published here, you have that same power over the comments. That page becomes your house. I wonder if you’d express your feelings so openly if you were invited into the home of someone in the country where you’re teaching. I’ve heard that the English are all about good manners. That’s what this conservative site wants. Trolling is unacceptable.

      Reply
    • Norma Okun

      Thank you Joe Tessitore. I appreciate knowing that we all have the same questions that are viewed through different ways of mind. I don’t believe it is just a matter of righting a wrong and leading a brother to truth. What is the truth to you might be different with all that is being said over the internet and media, which I believe is fabricated to inflame egos. That type of propaganda through films got Hitler to get away with all the misuse of power. Some people actually believe the holocaust did not exist. I was someone who knew of the virus when someone close to me was infected with it. I am glad that he did not pass away from it as I heard two of my friends lost their parents to covid-19. We have been misled to believe whatever they want us to believe over the air waves. I am serious; I do believe in fake news and they are usually the ones most people believe.

      Reply
  15. Paul Freeman

    For the record, I know that once I post my opinion (which I hold as strongly as you hold yours), I will be in for a torrent of abuse – a sort of a First Amendment shutdown. That’s generally why I don’t come back once I’ve done my duty and made my opinion known.

    Reply
    • Susan Jarvis Bryant

      Paul, as Mike pointed out previously, this page is Joe’s home. Joe has made it clear that he welcomes an honest discussion with you. You have not afforded him that courtesy. Joe said you are more than welcome here to discuss what you’ve brought up – he objects to “fuzzy but incendiary remarks” and then you running for cover. Either engage in a conversation or don’t initiate one if you’re not going to participate further. How on earth can that be construed as a “First Amendment shutdown”? A robust discussion whereby both sides air their views isn’t a “torrent of abuse” – it’s a platform of differing ideas to hopefully build upon for the betterment of a currently chaotic and wounded world. I am genuinely sorry you feel this way.

      Reply
      • Joe Tessitore

        Can it be said any better than that?
        Indeed, it cannot!

    • Joe Tessitore

      You don’t post opinions, Mr.Freeman, you deny reality and people here do not abuse you for doing so – they challenge you for doing so. If anyone is being abusive, Mr. Freeman, it is you for falsely accusing us.

      Your claim that the virus will “mutate into even deadlier variants”
      is a blatant denial of reality. The Liars tell us that in the United States, half a million people have died from the virus so, for the sake of demonstrating a point, let us proceed with their questionable number.
      In a nation of one hundred million people, that would be one half of one percent of the population.
      But we are a nation of at least three hundred and thirty million people, and so the percentage of fatalities drops to .0015%. – statistically insignificant in anyone’s book.

      So just how deadly is the Batflu, Mr. Freeman?

      Reply
      • Joe Tessitore

        Perhaps a better ending for this would be “So we’re no longer talking about one half of one percent, we’re not even talking about one one hundredth of one percent – we’re talking about one one thousandth of one percent.”

      • Joe Tessitore

        As a footnote, I read in Apple News the other day that the “Happiest Nation on Earth” – India – passed a dark milestone; 400,000 dead from the Batflu.
        The population of India is 1.391 billion people.

      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        The sad truth of this dire situation, Joe, is that most people don’t care for the glaring logic spelled out by the facts and figures. They only listen to the government-funded “experts”. Who cares if one of the main “experts” was involved in funding the Wuhan lab for experiments declared illegal in the US and who cares if that main “expert” has stakes in the Moderna vaccine? The truth is out there. The truth is on this page, offered with concern and good faith. I, for one, appreciate your tireless efforts to keep it alive. Thank you.

    • Norma Okun

      Mr. Freeman you have a right to keep up with your last name. You are free to think and be a person with his own opinions. I believe we can all learn from you. For that matter you can learn from a turtle. All things teach us something. No one should be too good to learn from things different than himself.

      Reply
  16. Joe Tessitore

    Further, Mr. Freeman, to describe what we’re going through as “petty squabbling” is dismissive and infuriating – we’re engaged in the fight of our lives to keep our country free.

    Reply
  17. Mike Bryant

    Joe, you have represented the truth admirably.
    Keep up the good work!

    Reply
    • Joe Tessitore

      Thank you, Norma, Susan and Mike for your encouragement, especially this late in an overly-long comments train.
      I think that at this point in my life, I really don’t have much of a choice – I just can’t turn my head and walk away from this kind of thing anymore.

      Reply
      • Mike Bryant

        Great, Joe, we feel the same. Pushback is happening in every state. We will not lose our freedom without a fight.

  18. Will

    Joe T. —

    I admire this work. It is easily understood by the SCP audience in spite of the concerns I detail here that I think might plague broader audience impact.

    And I admire your willingness to describe the sentiment behind it (in the fashion of Mr. Wise whom you admire).

    That said, as a fan of your work generally, I offer the following thoughts on this verse, for whatever they might be worth:

    At L1, when citing or alluding to a particular lie, I think identifying the liar is here is critical to the remaining text. A lie is the conscious action of someone, not something that merely exists.

    Hence, I think L1 would be clearer as something like:

    “All the globalists told us a lie”.

    That gives “they” in L3 and L4 a needed antecedent, and implies the relative size of the lie. It also makes the meter in L1, L2, and L5 consistent.

    In L2, I think you need to embrace the audience a bit more personally and accountably — something more like:

    “We the people refused to deny”

    That more strongly sets up the first person plural in L3 and L4.

    In L4 the colloquial “Commies” would read better as ” Chinese”, but you have probably made a wiser choice because “Chinese” implies the people rather than their politicians.

    Invoking the term “freedoms” in L5, however, should be rethought. Our message should stick to “liberty”, albeit admittedly a word and concept much more difficult to accomodate in formal poetry. “Freedom” is the asphalt of tyranny. It paves the way to places like Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington where liberty is disappearing.

    L5 could instead read something like:

    “And our liberty kissed us goodbye”.

    That makes it clearer that the effect on us is from refusing to deny. It also gets to the heart of what “globalists” are really after, which I think is your larger point. Liberty — a far cry ftom freedom — is the basis of our sovreignty and the bedrock of our citizenship.

    In sum, I think start-to-end clarity and continuity are essential in such brief form for a broad audience. Ambiguity, unless purposeful and very well constructed, tends to be ineffective. Not stating the big lie directly I think cleverly creates sufficient intrigue.

    The limerick form suits you and the subject well, but the phrase “a limerick” should not appear in your title reference. It suggests to many you are jesting, not jousting. Let the very recognizable form speak for itself.

    That said, you are, to good effect, a minimalist by nature, and limerick form, done well, reduces our language to memorable quintessence, whether we contemplate, advocate, interrogate, educate, or narrate.

    Just thoughts. Nice work.

    Reply

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