Darkness loves to be hated
(why are we surprised by this?),
because, when we hate it, we can’t stop watching it.
(Some of us need to shun the
light
of whom we did or didn’t vote for in '16.)
Darkness loves to be hated—
its face is terrifying and its
tweets are outrageous.
“How much we hate you, Darkness!” we scream,
as if we’re afraid that if we stopped watching you,
you’d say something even more
hateful and we’d miss it,
because we were lying down on our civic duty
to give Darkness what it loves—namely, hatred.
It seems somehow that we are fated
to squeeze our eyes wide shut and kiss
a poisonous toad a million times by never ceasing to watch it.
Darkness receives our hatred
with the threatened promise to be with us always.
Darkness loves to be hated,
because, when we hate it, we can’t stop feeding it.
