Death by Pause

As nothing stretches into nothing,

The more the silence,

The more the senseless, relentless sound

Within the confines of a taskless mind

Lets loose my grasp on what is real

And belief in what is true, strength to keep on

Keeping on time,

With time and with peace, which,

Hypothetically,

Should reign down in heaps

In this empty, gifted space

Full of noisy, numbing, fumbling nothing.

The louder outside, the quieter within;

The mark of the lack of discipline

Emblazoned in and on my head

And in moments lost when, envisioning,

This very, selfsame time to rest

I did not know—I could not!—

That which I thought I'd have killed for

Would end up, at a maddening

And so-slow pace,

Killing me

With what I think

And how, naively, I had thought

I'd avoid this familiar, endless din,

Over and over

And over again.