Love’s Day Will Come

Never again sit across from you in the diner.
You, snacking on the bacon I ordered.
Knowing full well you’d poach from my plate.

Nor take photos with your phone,
ironic poses, flexing muscles,
for you to caption

No toxic masculinity here.

It’s not enough that you are dead
to the shrieking ghouls red-oozing
into statehouses, coagulating into school boards.

Their intrusive howls and chants
will never overpower my memory
of the music of your voice.

These ghouls seek enchantments
to overcome their insignificance,
they plunder graveyards

to fill their mojo bags
with our children’s bones
and vials of sacrificial blood.

By gavel and gun, they seek
to unwind
the strands of your life.

Laying drag on rainbow crosswalks,
Leaving black rubber scars,
Black rifles toted to bookstores and libraries

afraid books will free their kids
from the enforced stupidity
of their flim flam minsters.

Wouldn’t know God
if they nailed him to a tree.

It’s hard to imagine better days.
The swindlers, chiselers, and cheats
come and never go.

They trust in the supremacy of gavel and gun
but the youth have power
in the music of their voice –

Love’s day
will come.

Jason O’Toole is the Poet Laureate of North Andover, MA and co-founder of the Anne Bradstreet Poetry Contest. He is the author of two collections and one chapbook of poetry, with a new collection, The Strange Misgivings of the Sadly Gifted, coming out in 2024 from DiWulf Publishing House. He is Treasurer of ILRC San Francisco, an administrator of a hospital north of Boston, and currently curating a green energy poetry exhibit at the North Andover Historical Society.