Most of us treat thinking as something we do on purpose, like picking up a pen. In jayanad's "thoughts," it is something that happens to the speaker. The poem is built on a paradox stated in two plain lines: "I can't think anymore / But I cant stop." The mind keeps producing thoughts the speaker can no longer bear to have, and the poem is about being trapped with that machine and finding no off switch.
There is no rhyme and no regular meter, and the poem is better for it. Rhyme would give a sense of closure and comfort, and this speaker has neither. The lines are short and the vocabulary is simple, so the poem reads less like a composed performance and more like something said quietly and straight out. The missing apostrophes in "dont" and "cant" add to that unpolished feel, although "can't" appears once with its apostrophe, so I wouldn't read too much into it. The form also acts out the problem. "From one thing / To the next / To the next" is stacked so that the second "To the next" feels unnecessary, and that is the point. The repetition mimics a thought that jumps and then jumps again without arriving anywhere. The line stops, but the sentence never really lands.
The middle of the poem turns abstract worry into physical symptoms. Thinking brings "trouble breathing," "a knot in my stomach," "a tightness in my heart," "a pain in my head." The list moves upward through the body, from gut to chest to skull, as if the distress were climbing. The nouns are all concrete and bodily, which makes the suffering feel real rather than merely mental. Then comes a strangely incomplete line: "It showing through my art." The missing verb makes the sentence feel unfinished, as though even the grammar is worn down. It also hints, judging by the text, that the speaker makes art and that the strain can no longer be hidden there. It is easy to wonder whether the poem itself is part of that art.
The second half is built on a pattern of attempt and defeat. "I sleep to not think / But they invade my dreams. / I eat to distract / But they ruin the taste." Each pair gives an action, a purpose, and then a "But" that cancels both. The parallel phrasing makes the pattern feel inescapable, and every attempt at relief fails in exactly the same way. The pronouns shift as well. At the start it is "My thoughts," something owned. By now they are "they," plural and hostile, and the verbs are "invade" and "ruin." Thoughts that were once the speaker's own have become an occupying force, and sleep and food, the ordinary comforts, are the territory it has taken. "I can't stand thinking" is a quiet pun. It means "I can't tolerate it," but it also suggests having no ground left to stand on.
The ending turns away from the speaker alone. "But what can you do / What can anyone do" moves from "I" to "you" to "anyone," pulling the reader into the question. There is no question mark, and the second line begins with a capital as though starting a new breath, so the question seems to hang in the air unanswered. The poem could have ended on a note of hope or advice. It doesn't, and that refusal is its most honest decision.
That honesty is what makes the poem worth reading. It never names a diagnosis or offers an explanation, and it doesn't need to. It records what overwhelming thought feels like from the inside: the racing, the physical dread, and the failed escapes. A reader who has felt something similar may recognise it at once, and a reader who hasn't gets a clear view of why "just stop thinking about it" is such useless advice. The poem is built on the experience of being unable to stop, and by ending with a question instead of a cure, it trusts the reader to sit with that.