(How could we not promote poetry from a member of Congress? – promoted by Colorado Pols)
I wrote two poems for the new year, the first is a retrospective of 2009 and the second is my fondest wish for 2010. Happy New Year Coloradopols family!
Jared
(poems after the flip)
2009
2009 come and gone
May 2010 be more ripe for song.
A difficult year for our nation and world
Around us recession, war, strife, all swirled
People jobless
Their families without bread
Looked to our congress
To make them well fed
We passed several bills
“Drink from the public swill”
to AIG, autos, and clunker-owners we said,
And the result, of course: to a higher deficit it led
The mountains of Afghanistan we occupy still
Our troop levels there continue to build
I listened to generals, to scholars to spooks,
Yet Al Queda isn’t there,
In Pakistan and Yemen we should look
So too we occupy old Babylon
With a promise we must honor to soon be gone
While in Washington the Pachyderms and asses did battle
Fighting and bickering and sounding like rattlers
Hissing and striking, hemming and hawing,
Displaying plumage and pomp
Never listening always talking
But despite us the engine of America is strong
The free market’s cycles are not decades long
There is a natural rhythm to things
Of seasons Fall, Winter, Summer and Spring
Of what futures markets bring
Of Dows, Russells, Standards and Poors
Of bears and of bulls, of declines and of soars
Of jobs and good wages to support honest folk
Of people borrowing and then struggling to throw off debt?s yoke
Some cry “depression”!
Others “mild recession”!
Still the country presses on
awaiting the bright new dawn
As for my prescription,
Hardly worth an inscription
The doctors say it best
” Do no harm,”
And a night’s good rest.
Remaining Work
By the Statue of Liberty
My dear right side is angry
With certain justification
With rage we observe
Rampant disregard for the law of the land
No one guarding, miles of border sand
Bird flus and pig flus (not the kind for a vet)
Our schools overwhelmed, our hospitals overset
Our Laws flouted and violated,
Our border security degraded,
Without insurance, without taxes, without existence under the rules
Why does our policy this invasion fuel?
My dear left side outraged at tragedies and plights
The mother separated from her sons
The abuelita in flight
The worker paid less than minimum wage
Afraid to object lest he be seized and detained
The student who finds she can’t go to college,
The the detainee who languishes in taxpayer-financed squalor
Twelve million here but not here
Laws violated, not enforced
Each day we keep the pot from melting our valuable additions
The irony of our current policies that lead to sedition
An affront to I who hold the torch high
Give me your tired your poor
that I may look through them
Use them abuse them,
And neglect to see
That they are me
And I am but of them and their progeny,
as I always have been and always will be.
May 2010 bring Comprehensive Immigration Reform to our nation and our millions of families who wait in limbo for a chance to legally exist, contribute to society, and live the American Dream.
Copyright Jared Polis 2009
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heartfelt and that counts for a lot.
and stellar bang up job on healthcare reform. No really, top notch. After all that great work on behalf of the American people it is only appropriate that you get some quality time navel gazing and writing poetry.
No more support for you !
Don’t quit your day jobs!
Good points, though!
to critique an elected’s poetry….
Let me first say this critic prefers poetry where dicipline of verbage and meter trump sentimental overreaching.
Your meter is atrocious, your syntax stilted and if you’re going to use rhyme, make it symetrical or patterned in some way rather than finding rhymes for rhyming sake.
While the sentiment and the feelings are legitimate and heartfelt, and the challenging environment you find yourself in daily shows through – stick to politics.
A poem’s style says a lot about the poet and your style is free forming yet fighting the edges. There is structure only in a way a dust devil swirls – a spiral of wind with no set point of reference. Your words reflect the frustration of finding balance yet you can’t recognize what needs to stay and what should go.
You try to tie together complexities without having the discipline to see the basics. If you wish to disregard the basics, find the discipline necessary for a different style.
Poetry isn’t just forming words into stanzas, it is about finding the right words, in the right meter that captures the theme you need to say.
To put it another way, you’re writing a bill without looking at the prior work done that would make the bill better.
In this humble critic’s opinion, after wading through the muddy musings, the final paragraphs of your poems say everything you need to:
With all that said, Happy New Year to you and wishes that you’re able to find the style that not only fits you but fits your job as you continue the good fight.
I just had no idea you were such a poetry critic Car. Happy New Year to you too.
The Congressman asked for a critique, and Car 31 served him well.
The Congressman’s post came right after my wife and I were analyzing the trochaic octameter of Poe’s “The Raven”.
Yeah, date night at my place is a hoot!
Happy New Year RSB – may the new year bring many more of your posts to COPols!
…go ahead and steal everything I was going to say. And feel free to take credit for it; I don’t mind.
🙂
Thank you Car31, I always took you to be more of a legal type, but it sounds like you have a good grounding in literary analysis!
than what is shown on this blog.
I’ve always loved reading and studying poetry – it seems to me the purest form of communication, yet the hardest form to master.
I guess the same could be said about writing legislation….
“I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”
I really do. That’d make a great sig line.
Here it comes….gag reflex upchuck.
It’s one thing to be filthy rich from a web business. That’s great. It’s another to flip-flop on issues that matter to people who are hurting during Depression 2.0 (those who are not lobbyists, millionaires, or otherwise beholden). Then, it’s still another to write fish-wrap poetry about the suffering and strife while it’s happening, and you continue to vote whichever way has the most lobbying.
Had I but a sliver’s smidgen of Mr. Polis’ flatulent yearnings at competent poesy I should quiver in my pointed boots! This lurching is no more congruent than an acrobat is in a polio ward, sir. I beg you return to the 2nd District’s ether, that my ears may stop their infernal ringing.
🙂
I’m no judge of poetry or any sort of art, but you have shown great courage to put your poems in front of this opinionated and occasionally tactless audience. Kudos.
It takes courage to post anything for the public to rip into. For that alone, I give a big thumbs up to Jared.
is almost as bad as Steve Harvey’s.
Not quite, but in the case of Steve Harvey’s poetry, “almost” ought to send you back to your day job.
Feeling obliged to prove the above point (about my poetry, not yours), here’s an adaptation of one I originally wrote with a different final verse and a campaign fund-raising punchline:
Land of ruddy red rock and river,
Of ores and lores and scores from thither,
Of fruits of the mind left on the vine to wither,
Of too many who stand but too few who deliver;
Now it is time to at last leave behind
The politics bereft of reason and rhyme,
The poisonous fruits of ideologies blind,
Which seek to exalt the crude and unkind;
It’s time, instead, to be well-advised,
To examine the systems of which we’re comprised,
To derive our policies from thought well-apprised,
And become harmonious, healthy, and wise;
May the new year see us joined in shared cause,
Fighting the good fight to pass the best laws,
Pulling ourselves back from these Hobbesian jaws,
Holding out helping hands, not self-serving claws;
May those who thrive on the pain of others,
Strive instead to become as sisters and brothers;
May hearts open wide and minds learn to grow,
And pettiness melt like late summer snow.
-steve
Thanks for posting your poetry Steve!
I like your last stanza best.
Jred
n/t
We all see.
Do us a favor JP–vote down any health care “reform” bill that comes through the House, especially if it looks anything like the current Senate bill, and then get out of politics.
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