Author: n.n. benn

n.n benn is fictional and autistic. writes a quotidian line of poetry then makes songs/videos from them each month. calls it the love epochal.

chorus number nine

brazen child, pray share your toblerone with me

i know you pinched it but i’m no a grass

i have a theory that the criminal law system propagates violence in place of justice

different but the same

it’s funny that i find myself writing this blog on the day i was a victim of attempted violence (see tues 2 – i postulate a remedy). should i report the crime, and myself propagate violence (the criminal justice system) on my assailant? 

the punishment is often worse that the crime. i need to think this through. i believe we shouldn’t judge people by the worst thing they ever did. but i also realise that if crime is unpunished, criminals become our rulers.

degenerate cosmopolitan

i’m not jewish but i am a degenerate cosmopolitan

tagging my archive, overwhelmed by the burden of time, 

the library extends my being

to a new dimension, my mind fleeing

to the shelf. and when i see a single magpie i blurt, i say

there was a second one but i scared it away 

down glens and valleys,  down spirits and sedatives

my love is unambiguous

but the good souls may as well forgive us

i often reflect that if i lived in nazi germany, i would have been a victim, not a perpetrator. i’m left wing. i believe in individual freedom. i’m an artist. i’m disabled.

i am very scared about the turns being taken in many so called western liberal democracies.

the tempo of doms

to the sweetie shop why stop there’s no consequence 

i run and i come as close as i’ve came since whence,

rage rover through the stroll pastoral 

cape town to mugdock bog, 

wide spectrum gossip, conspiratorial 

prone to panic about other’s perceptions

a tendency revealed through a habit of projection 

concept album? i am living a concept life

into the tempo of doms i go, abandon strife

the internal rhyme rolls the rhythm, through indecision to precision

yes i am getting organised, on a mission

to rise up contra to mindless repetition

yet once again i combine olive oil, chilli and paprika in the kitchen

back in the mid life crisis phase, one thing that happened that partially led to my initial interactions with the medical industrial complex, was that i unexpectedly lost a load of weight for no particular reason. i’ve been fit and active for most of my life, but i’d never had visible abs. then suddenly, i couldn’t maintain my weight. it was a bit scary at first but by this stage i was more thinking well i may as well just eat sweeties whenever i want.

i do try and eat healthily but i’m still lazy and i require daily treats. and i think i have gained a bit of the weight back now. i stopped weighing myself and the problem became less stressful. it doesn’t make any sense, but i can’t waste my life looking for the answers to absolutely everything can i?

the crops blaze

a sunny eve with keith, watch the crops blaze

dump, no whiff of a gap, sewer works (the job pays)

i dispel return to indefinite limbo

doing surveys shirtless on the deckchair, a himbo

you know i cried every day for a year after i left

and 17 months on my life’s still a mess

weirdly, this same pun was in private eye the other week, but done much better. they had ‘water treatment works’ – with the punchline ‘well why aren’t they doing it?’

mortal again

in how many people’s memories do i still live?

what degree of blur, how precise an image?

there is nothing mere about mortality

there will be humdrum finalities like the last cup of tea

the last step in the sea. the last shag

the last time taking out taking out the bin bags

so i say memento mori at least every day

and when things get hard, i’ll try to be there

i genuinely do try and say memento mori every day. there are so many sad things about life. but life, as far we know, is the whole show. so you’ve got to try and make the most of it really. try not to spend all day reading the news. remain in denial about creeping authoritarianism and the collapse of the world order. who knows, maybe things will get better eventually.

i think i’m going to start watching star trek from the beginning. i think i’m ready.

smash and ooze

you smash the avocado, bring the force within you down

your zeitgeist, your energy and spirit

oozes, you infuse us in it

but our guests left us with an odd moment

mutually dysregulated, endlessly in torment

good souls do forgive all souls, but is every corpus soulful?

i was randomly flicking through my old emails from university and noted quite a few where i had emailed tutors chasing for essays. i hate uncertainty, hate waiting for the answer. i remembered logging into to websurf, the university’s online student platform, to check my exam results. just mindlessly refreshing the page. then eventually, my degree certification was there. it came through first, before the rest of my exams were uploaded, and i felt such relief. joy, general excitement, but essentially relief. a non-shameful result.

i had dropped out of uni after first year. had a difficult time after leaving school, suffering from autistic burnout. after a few years i was ready to try again. i didn’t really have any expectations, the best grade i had got in first year was a c i think. i just wanted to stop myself from drifting into a life of unrewarding cycle of repetitive work, burn out and unemployment. which felt like not just a real possibility, but probably the most likely outcome for me at 19 years old.

anyway, that relief and joy was tempered almost immediately when i realised i didn’t have a job, wasn’t especially suited to one, to be honest struggled with all the entry level positions i’d ever had, and was useless in job interviews.

i’m proud anyway.

plug stuck

am overwhelming day, a meltdown throws my phone away

the bath is full of soapy water, the plug stuck in its circlet

it’s thursday the 12th, what the fuck will tomorrow bring?

i start the drill and it’s enough 

to scare the plug from its crown 

when you find out you are probably autistic, there is a tendency to temporarily get more autistic. i have actually only had a few meltdowns. i am a quite person. i am prone to shutdowns. i don’t like to draw attention to myself.

the few meltdowns i have had have tended to get me in serious trouble. like, arrested, or hospitalised.

on this occasion, i merely smashed a phone that was already quite scratched up and to be honest i probably wanted an excuse to buy a new one.

oh and the plug got stuck in the bath. i have written about this before! it was annoying! check the archives!

5 beta 1

i make a million lists 

and enjoy morning mist 

from november 2016

us cyclists are cut from different stuff. 

but not very much of it

aged 39, version 4.0, aged four-zero, version 5 beta 1

you gotta believe me, life comes for you, son

so i had a mid life crisis from 2022-23. i got misdiagnosed with emphysema and spiralled a bit. got very depressed. went through a break up. fell in love. then got unmisdiagnosed.

i sort of jokingly referred to my mid life crisis as benn 4.0. but before i even really got into the swing of it, i found out i was autistic. so i decided i’m not on benn 5 beta 1.

diarrhoea and dandruff

put primo down, nobody cared, not even humoured 

zapped and solitary, unarchiving and decrypting 

violent gut, cash drop, 

shy black sheep dribble down a gravel path…

as a poet it frustrates me no end that I am able to articulate my identity crisis

only through the bodily language of diarrhoea and dandruff.

i’d just recorded the first song of my album, toblerone, but nobody was very interested. that remains the case – it is available on spotify and all other good record streams though if you are interested. seach for ‘the love epochal’. at the time i was planning on releasing a new song and video every month.

one of the things about autism is that it can be hard to work out how time consuming a plan is going to be. it turns out that schedule was incompatible with having a job. but i managed it for six months and that’s quite good i reckon.

and when i wrote these lines, i was having an identity crisis and was suffering some physical symptoms. itchy scalp. bad gut. good thing i had my poetry to keep me going.