the clicking, the droning, the dying
— I cannot keep my count
and so I watch out this window
while on bone dry land I drown.
4, 5… 1, 2, 3…
the clicking drips like raindrops
yet I can’t make heads nor tails
and so I cannot find the center
nor can I endure the gale.
the counting keeps me lucid
constrains the circles in my head
but if the clicking means to kill me
within the hour will I be dead.
3, 4, 5… 1, 2, 3…
and that droning clouds my judgment
confounded dissonance plaguing me:
the onslaught of un-music
less than a whisper on the breeze.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…
paranoid puppets are the primal
urges within my mind
but if only to stop the clicking
if only to keep in time
I would give up on the conscious,
and to my death I would resign.
1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3… 1, 2, 3…
image credit: Schloss Milkel in Moonlight (1833-1835) by Carl Gustav Carus