Author: n.n. benn

n.n benn is fictional and autistic. this is their diary. new poetry and philosophical musings every tues, thurs and sat direct to your inbox. and while you are here, check out my videos on youtube and spoken word poetry on spotify, apple music etc (search for the love epochal)

are we a puzzle, a riddle to be solved, or are we pupils / flawed and inconsistent and driven by unchosen passions, / forced to plump for either irony or idiocy since the dawn of the h bomb?

back to the theme of insecurity. uncertainty. agency. what is it to be one of eight billion? what does it mean to live at the whim of vladimir putin’s nuclear arsenal? what is the best way to live in a universe we do not and can not understand? i feel in the circumstances, the only way forward it with a hint of irony. if you don’t accede to universal doubt, my theorem is that maybe you don’t understand just how much you don’t understand.

#puzzle #insecurity #agency #nuclearwar

another shoe that never drops, no leg too short to scorch the earth


i had never heard the phrase ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ before. had to google it. reminded me of a competition i heard about on radio 4 many years ago for pointless aphorisms. the two i recall are ‘no leg’s too short to reach the ground’ and ‘you don’t need niagra falls to wet a stamp’. it’s weird what sticks with you.

#poetry #writing #autisticart #aphorisms

a nearly new horizon lost, for which i missed legs day at the gym


i feel it is important to celebrate rejection. somewhere buried in the disappointment there is hopefully a lesson. something constructive to be taken. a way to improve. but even if there isn’t, even if you just tried your best and failed, isn’t it better to have given it a shot? and now, a year later, i can look back and i know that if i hadn’t had this rejection, i would have missed out on other acceptances.

#poetry #spokenword #writing #acceptance #rejection

spotting louder nearly home, millhouse coming up everything


remember the episode of the simpsons where millhouse is wearing sort of pedal pusher, calf length trousers? and the flood comes in and he is like, ‘it’s all comin’ up millhouse’? it is a sad day for anyone when they realise that millhouse is the character of the simpsons they are most like.


#autismawareness #millhouse #simpsons #poetry

hullo its jie p. (eftir ra pope) wi’ thi shy pee

i remember being given characters for each letter in primary school. annie apple. bouncing ben. hairy hat man. quite wild. and i was taught that j rymes with i. it was many many years before i learned that the entire world says it like jay. so it was a unique aspect of growing up in glasgow that there were lots of boys my age kicking about called ‘jp’ after pope john paul the second.

and shy pee is a humbling condition which i want to draw awareness to.