Windmills of my mind

It's long past midnight.  I have nothing to say.  Nothing to write.  I want to, but I can't.  The frustration is almost physical.  There's nothing there.  If there is, I can't find it.  My mind is turning furiously, feverishly searching for something to write about.  Whirring, spinning, churning.

Round.

You know how sometimes a song resonates exactly with the way you are thinking?  You listen and the lyrics express precisely the ideas, emotions or feelings you are experiencing in a way you never could.  The words capturing perfectly, unequivocably, your state of mind.

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever spinning reel

I have been struggling to think of something to write, bogged down in a swamp of failure.  I get so frustrated, because I can feel the words inside my head, struggling to escape, lurking below the surface, rising, only to get sucked back down again.  I can see them, floundering, their shape so close yet indistinct and impossible to make out. I feel there must be something to be written if only I could find the time.  Capture a moment.  But time passes. 

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space

I get anxious, the anxiety surrendering to despondency, desolation and finally desperation.  I know it's there, lurking, hidden.  The fear of failure drives me on, drives me down into the dark places, where secrets lie hidden, waiting to be disturbed.

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone,
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half forgotten dream,
Or the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream

The ideas sweep around inside in my head, words spinning, spiralling out of control.  Jumbled incoherent phrases. A maelstrom of fancies, theories, concepts.  Chaotic, turbulent notions, cast about carelessly, randomly, offering glimpses of a tale to be told, a story to write.  My consciousness wants to scream, but the sound is drowned out by the noise of  my unconscious.  Reasoning, regard and sanity are squashed by the anarchic disorder, too powerful to permit logic. 

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore
And leave their footprints in the sand

Is the sound of distant drumming 
Just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway
And the fragment of this song
Half remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong?

I'm trapped on this carousel.  Endlessly turning, always moving, never achieving.

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind
Like the circles
That you find
In the windmills of your mind!

I have nothing to say.  So it starts again.

Round.