I Shouldn’t Worry About The World, But I Do.

Donald Trump sits on my window sill tweeting,

His orange plumage garish in this tropical dawn.

Jo Biden teeters skeletal, colour-blind

To a country split into red and blue.

I shouldn’t worry about America, but I do.

Sure, it is just another empire falling into ruin,

A failed state, by its own definition, but

A third world country in charge of a first world army

Has to be a cause for concern to those

Other world leaders who standby smirking, pointing

And stroking their chins.

But I wonder if the US is also a victim

Of its own success: the spoiled child

Of a marriage between democracy and capitalism

Who ends up murdering its own parents

While they sleep?

 

Meanwhile, Xi Jinping waves dictatorial

Like one of those mechanical golden cats

On a takeaway food shop counter

Where Hong Kong and Taiwan

Are the main items on the menu.

I shouldn’t worry about China, but I do.

With its bellicose rhetoric about sovereignty,

Its militarisation of the South China Sea,

Its Belt and Road Initiative, its economic bullying,

Its silencing of dissent, internment of minorities.

Is this what the future of the world looks like:

A Concentration Camp/Re-Education Facility

Where thinking and speaking freely

Are crimes punishable by death?

Those same world leaders smirking at America

Look to China and hold their breath.

 

All this seems so far away as I water the garden

And watch my daughter pick Hibiscus flowers:

“Daddy, this one is for you.”

I shouldn’t worry about the world, but I do.

It is hers to inherit, and if this inheritance

Turns out to be a broken, dysfunctional nightmare

Then isn’t that our collective failure as parents?

 

 

©shaun patrick green 2020