December 30, 2009 08:47 AM UTC

Happy New Year! (My holiday poems)

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• by: Jared Polis

(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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