Arnold Viersen Has a Rhyme for Manure

                    Your lights are on, but you're not home.
                    Your mind is not your own.

The week Arnold Viersen was born, Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" topped the Billboard Hot 100. Who dares call it coincidence?

Like Preston Manning George Pepki before him, the rookie MP for Peace River-Westlock has a rhyming dictionary and knows how to use it. Anyone requiring evidence need look no further than his most recent speech in the House of Commons.

The poet first captured my attention this past May, when he presented this at the Conservative Party Convention:

Straight outta Barrhead, Alberta (pop. 4,432).

Viersen is a seer. Leadership no-shows like Tony Clement were included only because lines like this are to good to let slide:

                        I've got the chops,
                        Like to drink hops.
                        Even on twitter
                        I'm a heavy hitter.
                        In Cabinet for ten years,
                        Leave the Libs in tears.
                        The man from Muskoka,
                        I'm our party's Lee Iococa.

I'll allow that Viersen's not much good at reading prose,

but when it comes to verse he really shines. Consider "Farmers: Heart of Rural Canada," which the MP performed in the House on 6 May 2016:

     Springtime is here; our farmers are in their fields
     Assessing the moisture, gauging their yields.
     When rain is sparse and times are tough
     And the price of hay is especially rough,
     As Conservatives we understand
     It takes hard work to till the land.
     Alberta NDP passed a law for working on prairie farms:
     More expensive food – don’t care who it harms.
     They said, “John dear, we want your food
     But only feed your cows when we’re in the mood;
     No overtime or you pay the price.”
     Beef and pork will cost more than twice.
     We’re standing up for farmers, feeding cows ’till nine.
     We’re standing up for farmers, working overtime.
     You eat their beef, you sit on leather,
     Your feet are shoed in stormy weather.
     Without their food, life would be grim
     Unless you plan to be awfully thin
     Family farms are getting fewer.
     Once they’re gone, we’re in deep manure.
     Don’t egg me on, the yolk’s on you.
     If farmers leave, what will we do?
     Bottom line – You want to eat?
     Support our farmers – Buy their wheat.

"Don't egg me on, the yolk's on you." That line alone is worth every cent of the $170,400 the MP will earn this year.

To think it has been immortalized in Hansard.

Related post:

In Search of George Pepki, Poet