Dont Mind Me It's Incremental

This is obnoxious. Why, in my one moment of complete permittance to compensate for last nights complete lack of repose with a feeble nap, do I suddenly feel inspired to write on this blog? That blog. Don't answer and I will stop asking. It's a shame that they don't have anything analogous to a 12-step process for those that compulsively confound themselves. Oh well.

The story of the day is not related to this post of the day. Reason being that I am unaware of any stories of the day.

I was up with Ivor at a ridiculously early hour. Acrtually, the hour was still late. Blurrily staggering, I proclaim to myself and to others that I got some rest, because my blinks were like Morse code to Morpheus, like, "Nooooooooooo!" But it wasn't, you know, restorative blinking.

Now Desy's drumming anyway, so I don't think it so strange that I'm awake. He plays loudly, but with a handle on dynamics that expresses something subverbal that evades his hyperarticulate precocity. I am so, so happy that he has that venue. My parents just sent me a beautiful new crash cymbal for my birthday (tomorrow), and its resonance is very warm and embracing. To hear Desmond play with it is so magical.

Aaaaaaaaaaand hypnotic. Now I have to nap. Crap. More soon.
(elapsed 19 hours)

Yes. Well, now I'm thirty four, which is neither here nor there, but my visit last night from the birthday surgeon gave me one obvious white hair near each of my ears. That shit is real.

For everything that defies logic, there is a logical trajectory. I don't know what that means or why that matters, but I desperately need another nap, for sure.

I'm often asked what I want for my birthday. Generally speaking, I don't want much of anything except exemption from unpleasant variousnesses (examples: barking creditors, abrupt neighbors, passive-aggressive mock-friends, my 2 children pummeling each other, loneliness in a state where we feel exiled, headaches, thwarted attempts at romance with my one true love, et al.), which en toto feels exactly like a gift.

Another gift: the right to NAP. Which I'll do now.

(elapsed 2 hours)

I didn't nap, and I should've. I gave up on it when Pat Sajak appeared in some hypnagogic depth. I was like, "This ruinous image can't be overwritten in time for me to enjoy the remainder of the day." So, I went for a walk with Molly, Desmond, and Ivor.

More of Them

oh my gosh i'm working i'm working 
it feels so good to finally be able to procrastinate in a merited manner
i'm joking but only as much as you'll find it amusing


Dig this: I'm doing pseudonymous writing for MTV as their Nerd Rock Correspondent. Thrilled am I. It's crazy. My name is 'Benjamin Daniels'; 'Daniel' is my middle name, and nobody saw fit to consider prior to application of said nom de plume that there just might be an erstwhile MTV personality named "Benjamin Daniels"—and there is! Life, I am frequently assured, is full of coincidental matter.


(Which reminds me—isn't coincidence in the temporal sense of the beholder? On past occasions of smoking cigarettes outdoors, before returning indoors, I would ask my companions, "Shall we coincide?")


Okay. I'm also editing manuscripts for a start-up publishing company. Aaaaaaaaand I'm still doing the freelance (a modest craze), which sort-of ensures that I am unlikely to ever feel stable. I was refused for disability, and they've threatened to take away my Medicaid (the total annual cost of my medicines exceeds $100,000 USD) and food supplement. But I haven't even been paid! And my tax return, due on Friday, is due also to be eaten, most thoughtlessly, by the watersewerelectricphoneinternetmortgagecomputer entities (I refuse to see them as being people) just as soon as it arrives. I am told that solvency is overrated, but it's been years since I've accepted that as a valid opinion.


The rain fell today, onto the snow, creating a town-sized puddle in which every pedestrian (however momentary the stint of their schlepping) was submerged well past their ankles. I call it "Soup of the Day." And now it's going to be March, and I would love a bona fide reason to be cheerful. I shouldn't say that, because I LOVE my family, but I'm hard-pressed to pretend that this current situation's anything other than absolute crap.


But I have to put some more old poems on here. I still don't have most of them, on account of my computer being in the shop, but that matters less than a whole lot else.


I'll start with a love poem. It's from 1998. I had been stunned into aliveness. The title came 5 years later, on the heels of torment that had been unfathomable.




5 years in every direction

i love you and you love yourself in

beams of freckled fringency, with

waves of subtle stringency, with

flat, distinctive englishness, your

landscapes pocked with canvas bare in

summer seas of stars and blood, a

lilted, spacious leavening – these

fruits with roots in heaven bring what’s

told in its unfolding.

(The font just changed, but that's because I've got a recalcitrant touchscreen.)

This next poem is old as shit, which means (in this case) that it's from 1995, when I was seventeen. I don't even think that I was sad when I wrote it, but there you are, and here we go:

Mean Either

fearing not sleep but a missed opportunity

free of diseases but free of immunity

scared and ensnared by a spurious unity

pleading despair to a jury of ghosts

scattered in dollops the reasons for everything

baked underwater i wait for the phone to ring

time that elapsed when i thought myself practicing

rose-tinted glasses proposing a toast

Now another, just 'cause it's a just cause. This is a poem about Molly, whom I adore. This is also old, but not that old (2003). When I met Molly, everything became very exciting very fast. It remains so, and all of my irascibility, so evident in this post, dissipates when I imagine her sleeping and the sound of her voice.

capital letters

it was helpful for me to remind my

self when starting to write this that it

doesn’t have to be new because well

everything was always here in its way

(rusted-out and lethal fire escapes/droppings

on windowsills and awnings/stubblefaced

dirtyshirt laundrysoon me/sink full of

dishes rinsed and unwashed/dying pen and

dead lighter/words and words used and used
/sealed bottle of vitamins /eight o'clock twilight
/hours-old coffee to go/obscenely mild june
/cars parked over crushed containers/people 
attired in various oblivions/sneezes and the 
odd blessing/lilac and refuse and swears in 
the wind/fingernails bitten beyond the quick

/floors and unpacked-box tabletops)—

but what no one would ever know to

look is that every moment that i am

alive is precious beyond prediction

and dizzy with its fullness of you


Thus refined (and in much-better mood), I'll attach a Deep Freeze Mice song onto this post. It's the opening track of their 4th record, The Gates of Lunch. 
"Red Light for the Greens"

Poems (the first of several installments)

One at a time, I'm posting these. Then I'll archive them into a separate area.

this is from 2003.

if you’re looking

check yourself first if

you’re looking for sense

in the city today, always

down the wrong avenue

or via some flawful ex-

press stratagem. where

is it or has it gone?

it’s moping and bored on a

windowsill, potentially.

it’s in every properly running

fridge and faucet, rumored

and pending substantiation.

it’s somewhere spayed

and then neutered and

suited up fancy, it

might be suggested.

it’s in a yesterday

cup of residue, cold and

colder just the same,

dreaming of spring,

somebody is certain.

it may or might be where

inert emotion’s settled

with the silt and the spit in a

disuseful subway station,

scary and sustaining

the roaches and the rats.

is it in a fleeting equity

that kisses each

creature with a last

heavy blink until

each tomorrow? it’s

possible. nothing is

not. nothing suffers

only to be seen so doing.