Poetry: Ashraf AboArafe
WHAT unfolds
is not a conflict,
but the hunger of power
disguised as order.
America
lifts the world
like a file on its desk,
turns it over,
presses hard,
then asks:
this is freedom—
who paid?
China
waits.
Not out of mercy,
but calculation.
It knows history
has no patience for the hurried,
and that power,
when it shouts,
has already begun to fear.
Hegemony
cannot breathe
without blackmail,
and blackmail
never asks
for the names of the wounded.
Venezuela
stands in the middle,
its oil a chain,
its sky sealed.
Punished
for refusing to bow,
besieged
for daring to say
no.
There,
bread is an international decision,
medicine a political position,
and the people
hang suspended
between sanctions
and speeches.
Taiwan
is an island
carrying more of the world
than the world carries of it.
America sees a firewall,
China sees an unfinished mirror
of its own past.
So the sea becomes accused,
and geography
turns into a question
of who owns the right
to name.
The world trembles
to the rhythm of the dollar,
watching the yuan
learn how to walk
without collapsing the market.
Energy is a weapon,
technology a siege,
food
a switch
that can close a mouth.
There is no salvation
in one eagle,
no justice
in one dragon.
Only in learning
that the world is not a casino,
and humans
are not leverage.
That Venezuela must be freed
from the role of punishment,
and Taiwan spared
the fate of a spark.
Before history
writes its next chapter
in blood.
