America’s dichotomized, cut in two,
and I can choose to be a red or a blue
but when the primary votes were trickling through,
I wondered, “What is this country coming to?”
Now I live in China, which is probably not the best,
where the government claims Red beats in the chest
of every man and woman throughout the land
who are too disenfranchised to take a stand.
And this morning I read on the news
that the UK voted to leave the EU
partially in fear that others want to live there too,
“So tighten the borders; that’s the smartest thing to do!”
Of course, we have to acknowledge the middle east
where a state of war is more common than a state of peace.
It’s the birthplace of the religion that we use
to treat any others the way that we choose.
And with this onslaught of global news,
we might ask, “What’s the world coming to?”
The answer is: Nothing. We are what we were,
people no better than ancestors before.
We might think we’d learned from the past—we’ve not
and you know that’s true when dancing clubbers get shot.
With Orlando’s rainbows waving down,
you might think the world would finally find love a common ground.
But as long as people can separate a “they” from a “we,”
there’s no need to find any commonality.
So we tighten our boarders and we ready our guns
and we elect a candidate who’ll put our nation on the run
and we pray to our god above that some day
we can create a hopeful tomorrow from a hateful today.
The Chengdu Chapter 