Dread Multiplied

A Poem

Hardness rocks the little bit of world you keep hidden beneath you You don’t sleep anymore You can’t your diary overburdened by the fact you thought you needed one The persistent etching out of singular pain in its multiples disorganizes the day, split into epic parts with no resolution I can talk about pain for hours, but I think you hope I’ll quit at some point Put the bottle back in your mouth or the can or some such clever remark I’ve neglected so many pages for months now thinking about getting back into letter-writing to excuse the laxness of my syntax You think about law as if it was going to join us in bed but we don’t really want to see it naked Coming to force by way of a critical upset I’ve no way of knowing just how far I’ve gone

J.D. Harms 2020