America (Krisis: at the Crossroads)

America I would still like to visit you
perhaps even more urgently
– the rough beast slouched
towards Bethlehem now born
– a second coming the world
thought impossible
now come to pass
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

How long before those Great Lakes
are poisoned by polluters
set free to do their dirty work
and national parks still safe
from the graffiti of the poor
but not from the mineral mining
gutting of once again empowered rich
cost corner-cutting pipelines
fracture and spill their black gold
on sacred reservations and beyond.

To appease his base your President
has pulled your role as policeman
to the world citing the cost
but alongside military might
your soft power saved lives
now already doomed as
vaccinations, retrovirals
and simply food are withdrawn
allies against oppression abandoned
in favour of the oppressors
and that is without the chaos
of world markets disarrayed
the world order disrupted
by a thoughtless
human hand grenade.

We British cannot talk
– we also had a Prime Minister
unelected, full of hubris, who
made leader by her party
with no electoral mandate
fancied herself a disruptor
and lasted less time than a lettuce
but whose damage lives on

– small fry compared to POTUS
whose power, mandated, he claims
has already hurt the whole world
in ways no magic reset can reverse
and in truth, his mandate was
less than half of “We the people…”
his vandals slashing government
to smash the laws that hold them back
from moving money – poor to rich
once more…

The “Land of Opportunity” that
favoured my grandfather’s brother
and many another immigrant
now demonises the souls who
would make their way too
to share the possibilities
of a bright future for their families
even as the undocumented
labour that oils the wheels
of the American economy,
– fentanyl and the war on drugs
a fig leaf to the injustice
of forced repatriation of those
already embedded in America
their dreams and families shattered
by the spurious scourge of
anti-immigrant sentiment
pitting the poor
against the poorer still.

So America I would still like to visit you
but I am not sure you would let me in
with my opinions here on record
– sewn into the worldwide web
where creepy billionaires now
rule the roost and spread the lies
that fooled America’s poor
into electing their nemesis
by inflaming the emotion of their
abandoned sensibilities with
false promises wrapped up in fake news
– how long before you see the truth
and can Americans, as they have before
revolt against the white minority
who would install Gilead
the billionaires bent on plunder
the bigoted descendants of
the slave-owning South.

And if you, the people of America
find your voice and strength again
quell the krisis
reassert the values that had
America support the world order
the rule of law, the equality of man
then perhaps I will yet
get to visit America…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

This poem was written for the dVerse Poets Pub call for submission for a soon-to-be-published real world anthology of poems to be entitled, provisionally, Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. It is also a sequel to a poem I wrote in my writing group back in 2023 “America (I Would Like to Visit You)” which in turn was a response to “America (Superstorm)” by Kathleen Graber. I read the previous poem at the dVerse OLN in July 2023 and I am sharing it for the current OLN #383 which is being hosted by  Grace . Since 2023, President Trump has been re-elected for a second term…