Looks like Representative Jared Polis has been doing some end of year reflecting.
In an end-of-year email Polis sent out to supporters he wrote two poems. One to reflect on the past year and the other about the year to come.
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.
* * * * * * * * * * *
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.