In-Between #12 - Sean St. John


ten minutes fast

skin-slashed chopping board artichoke hearts
left over from dinner broken
tipped knives used as back-garden circus throwing stars
pent up anger of adolescent sons stone
flowerpots overgrown on sills with thyme
the metallic clock runs ten minutes fast on purpose
past two am landlady in bed and everyone
a conversation I had this evening about cezanne’s portraits
with a russian artist from germany stays with me
shouting over music brushstrokes technique and images
of snow she loves as we sweat in bars and now
my new apartment has given me a new mind
dormant psychosis energy absorbsion coining words
            only writers awake dreaming about being writers
            and other writers writing hidden in the dark

peacefully drunk I flick through pages
of a Bob Dylan novel I found but psychedelic
lyrics are too long for this decade
I’ve been taught to love one-line philosophies I can paste
into twitter with phone camera shaky pictures
attached to no relevance and animals dancing
at the foot of the stairs leopard-skin high heels
kicked off two weeks ago snapshot for vogue
on black and white criss-crossed floors
where gritty factory photos remind me of watercolour nudes
I’ve never painted and I no longer know my own friends
with ex-fathers of the greed generation
while we suffer from despondent disillusions and diffidence
towards a future rental fee extortion outbid on art
the comfort of piracy everything’s ours on a two week loan

and we only have these thoughts when the sun’s off
duty supervision from the stars climbing
the stairs we hope to find
sex in our beds and forget about fluctuating thoughts
of emotional extremes that really should be
looked into if I only knew a doctor
and ideas for inventions we don’t understand
and messy kitchens inter-continental disputes
untidy phrasing cheap replicas of life itself
we can just fuck until it turns to love
and let the world crumble under someone else’s watch
with no woman to watch him translate beowulf again
serenity in the loneliness of words loneliness
as he embraces the empty concept of humanity
non-existent realism abandoned for stories
personal glories the myth of perfection and connection


Biography: I suffer from the terrible affliction of writing poetry; it’ll be the end of me, I know it. I sleep with an unread classic under my pillow every night, but I’m yet to remember any of them. I daydream about the day poetry becomes a viable profession; those Romantics don’t know how easy they had it.

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