this isn't so much a poem as it is me just trying to catch my breath
the weeks fly by and my friends are already packing their bags
the great unknown lies just ahead and their exit plans are finalizing
and here i am
weighted and thin
winter already purging any signs of pigment in my skin
I'm just trying to breathe
until I can walk outside of my house without instantly regretting everything
I don't have time to process anything
and certainly not prospective affection
but here you are anyway
thin like I like them
blonde like winter wheat
and I know it doesn't mean anything
but I couldn't sleep the whole night after we first spoke
contemplating all the ways I could get to you
cataloging your tweets and analyzing the time it took for you to speak
where you've been all these years and why we never knew each other sooner
I do this all the time
chase your imagery on my bike
stay up late and try to find you in bits of the city
and this isn't so much a love sonnet as it is just another waste of space
unattainable and shimmering and new
tinted golden and blue
god I want you now but I always do
and everything is changing but I still feel the same as I did when I first started writing this
so don't look for resolution
don't look for some cosmic statement about how this is how we were meant to be
or some pretty sentiment of unrequited love
because
this isn't so much a poem
as it is me just trying to catch my breath

I'm stuck inside
The psychosis
I know this

I have a doctoral degree
In Reality

I have been taught
The architecture
And structure
Of the grand psychosis
I know this

I have been goaded
I have been guided
I have been shown
Inside
The minds of men
Who whirl around
Their imagined worlds
Boys and girls
Unaware
Fighting phantoms
In thin air

I should dis appear
Yet
I find myself
Still
Inextricably
Involved
In ordinary appearances

I'm inside
The psychosis
I know this

HELP!

Sean Hunt
Windermere November 9  2015
https://vimeo.com/145132005 (recitation)

What is the crisis
a quarter of the way
through life?

Existentially existing in the moment,
I'm constantly inside of myself
while also out.
Conundrum of being up while
I'm also down,
freedom within a blockade.
Oxymoronic hodgepodge of
tantalizing confusion,
tastes sweet on my brain
and thoughts ponder bitter on
my tongue.

Half and whole,
part and full,
questions answered with questions,
seeing things through in simultaneous
interrogatories.
Top here, bottom there,
rights are right,
and lefts aren't wrong.
Phone, texts and emails,
vibrating inside my skull
as I laugh and I cry,
as I seek to find.

Orange to yellow to green to brown,
seasons coming and going
inside my soul,
and I constantly blossom
and refreeze.
Everywhere feels like nowhere,
nowhere my somewhere as
I await a somewhere that's
everywhere.

Losing myself as I find it too,
letting some parts sail away
at sea,
and too there comes new
horizons,
as I surf, skating on the
foam, on the water's edges.
Wading into one crisis,
I'm swallowed by a
wave,
until I burst through the sea and the
salt;

and then the next wave
comes...
for life, it seems,
is salty and sweet,
one tide coming in to sweep itself away
in place of another.

I am a completely different person than I was seven years ago.
Physically, yes, because my cells have been dying
and renewing so much that
everything is gone and I am new.

Mitosis took care of that in the way that
everyone is a new collection of cells
every seven years.

But we're still the same collection of memories.

I am also different mentally.

I am not a simple eight year old anymore,
but what is a simple eight year old?

I want to be a stem cell,
blank and waiting for instructions.

Either I want to make my own decisions
and take control of my own life
or I can recognize that I don't know what I'm doing
and any control given to me will be lost.

I want to stay blank, ready to be programmed
and have a job
and a purpose.

But maybe I don't want to be a cell
and I want to be the collection.
Maybe I'll find my purpose.
Maybe I'll find my job.

I want these seven years to pass so I can be this
new human.
Maybe they will know what to do.

Am I the stem cell, hidden in the nasal cavity, or am I the human?
Am I really that different from my simple eight year old self?
Am I really different at all?

Tear-stained floor,
Ceilings burn from my gaze.
Why can't I make someone stay?

Once, an old friend asked me; what would my soul look like, if others could see it?

"A bug," I replied.

To crickets, the mantis is terror incarnate--a fierce behemoth, with knives for hands and without mercy. It is to be respected and feared, it is mighty and dignified.

To a human? A mantis is...

"A bug."

It is the debris among the mud between the treads of your sneakers. It is the gross infatuation, the scientific fascination--it is weak. It is small. It is inconsequential.

I yearn for a life of primitive needs and void of wants.

I yearn for the mantis, seeking only to destroy enough to line his stomach, all in a day's work, back to the safe spot where the "bigger and badder" can't reach you.

Life would be eat, sleep, repeat,

and I detest my self-awareness. I'd rather fail the simple life of a mantis and die without need of fulfillment,

Than to realize I'll no sooner discover what "fulfillment" is to myself than reach it--and to be torturously aware of that,

So very, very, existentially aware.

"My soul would look like a bug."

Lately I've been thinking about becoming bigger than my body
I've been processing you through **** demos on my phone
Through grey skies and empty bottles
Through blank stares and perpetuated silence
( I used to need a rhythm to write but the white noise in my head seems to work)
I've been turning corners and changing lanes
Doing the dishes and doing my time tangled in empty sheets
And it seems okay
As long as I'm not by myself for too long
Because if I let the white noise in I'll be swimming in black till the weekend
I'll numb myself in neon shades
White hot and weighty
Glimmering image of the silver screen dream
Spent shadowed twisting out into the intersection until I remember that you are not the same as you once were
And I am not the girl you needed
I'm just processing
And working on becoming bigger than my body
More than my bones more than my skin more than my gender more than a character in someone else's life
More than a thin wristed timid thing weighted down by years of neglect and indifference
More than a pair of wide dim eyes
More than myself.
I'm sorry I didn't call you back.

I can't stand this world.

It's a place filled with lies, a world filled with sorrows
A place of violent madness and pitiful tomorrows.

Truth is ineffable, saddening, and out of grasp
and some days I just can't take it,
because the sum of all we are is something that just can't last.

And I promise all these tomorrows will be sunnier day's,
Yet the sun is sinking, sulking and withering away.

My mind just won't stay quiet, it's running and spinning'
and dizzying in shades of grey.

If I could find a point, a purpose, or a meaningful way
I'd trade all my treasure, my pleasure and call it a day.

"I love you."

It feels like;
Last week,
Everything in your house
moved--
Inexplicably--
Two inches left.

You still haven't yet found
Why your hip is
Permanently purple
From kissing the desk
You've never collided with before.

The words I'm looking for
Are two inches to the right;
But if I took that phrase and
Shifted it it,

All that would leave my throat
Was the sound of
Bruised skin;
Permanently purple
From hitting the words
I've never felt were less than satisfactory before

Because the words I need don't
Actually exist.

A gray cat with a white tummy sat upright in his owner’s living room. Yet, it was his living room, too he thought. Though he only perceived the lower half of their bodies, Tom felt he had fooled the humans into relinquishing nearly all their luxuries to him. Their food, their sitting spots, their sleeping spots. Yet, the humans would not let Tom enjoy these luxuries in complete freedom. Sometimes, when Tom laid on the couch or in the bed, he was kicked onto the floor - but that wasn’t the worst of it.  Whenever Tom put together a sandwich using every single item available in the kitchen, Tom’s owner’s plucked the violin strings clear out of him, with broom whacks and concrete body slams.

“No food until you catch that mouse, ya stupid cat!” they’d yell.

Some nights - as he watched his beneficiaries drive off to the opera nightclub - Tom pondered his predicament. So if I catch this mouse, I get free reign over the house. He thought. Unlimited fridge access and legendary furniture spots. Mmmmm. Better catch me a mouse. Tom chuckled.
            
Mice came and went throughout the house, but one always remained. Jerry. In fact, all of the mice coming through the house only came over to chill with Jerry!

Tom stooped low to the ground in a pounce and placed his eyes millimeters from Jerry’s pint sized stance. Jerry felt as though he was pierced by a slew of razors. When Tom quickly relaxed his gazed and let out an enormous sigh.

“There is no magic ideal is there Jerry? ”Tom asked “We’re enchantingly random. Just automatic creatures with base desires. I hunger in the void, so I still want nothing more than food from the human fridge.  In this universe, and a number more, I will pursue what seems the easiest means to human food, whether hunch or trick, or, right or wrong.”