The Bench Dreamer
He woke in a jumpsuit, the orange color of rusty dust and regret.
Someone was shaking his hand, or maybe he was shaking his own, the gesture looping back into itself.
Jump[suit] hand[shake] — a memory of greeting, or arrest.
He sat on a public bench near the chain-link fence of a half-forgotten parking lot. The air smelled faintly of tree sap and exhaust. A clot of something - thought, grief, or just the thick remnants of a cold - clung to his throat. Clot [of snot rake on mind pour and a bench], he muttered. Words came to him as scraps of graffiti, fractured signage, junkyard poetry.
Behind him, someone played a broken tuba, its deep note warbling like a wrench turned in metal. Tore [and wrench tuba].
He smiled, or thought he did, the kind of smile that only half appears before it fades. The fence shimmered, thin as thought. Through it, the world wavered: rabbits of light, cars passing, a man eating a sandwich, a woman laughing into her phone. All of it distant. The fence for a smile and rile on mind pour and mingle.
Then, as if called by rhyme, the word [dingle] appeared in his mind. [Dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]. It was nonsense, but it was good nonsense. It had taste. He repeated it until the meaning slipped away and became song.
He thought of guile, of favor, of cleverness that goes nowhere. Never be so clever to sit and mingle, he told himself. Cleverness doesn’t keep you warm on a bench.
Somewhere nearby, a velvet trap flapped in the wind—a poster half-torn from a wall. A face smiled down at him from it, syrupy with promise. Flap [a velvet trap in hiding].
Then came the snore, his own, echoing back like thunder from a cardboard sky. The tuba droned again, low and wet. The parking lot swelled into dream:
Guile on trial with tree sap.
Flap a velvet trap in hiding.
Snore on trial with tree sap.
He drifted into the recurring loop of his life: the same bench, the same fence, the same smile. The flavor [to be savored without waiver]. The sound of a wrench turning. The ache of repetition disguised as rhythm.
Now and then, he thought he heard someone say his name, but it was only the breeze crossing the lot, moving from one empty space to another. The single [thought on mind pour and rile on mind pour and a cap rot covered with tree sap].
Even the words began to nap.
Nap [in a parking lot].
Nap [in a death] sentence.
When the wind stilled, he opened one eye. The light had changed; evening lay thick and amber over the asphalt. The trees glistened with their own slow tears of resin. He felt almost part of them.
The world seemed to whisper its refrain again, half lullaby, half indictment:
Jump[suit] hand[shake]
Clot [of snot rake on a parking lot]
Flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
Snore [on a death] sentence.
And he thought: perhaps this is all the same thing — greeting, labor, fatigue, and release — all one long handshake between being and forgetting.
Then he slept again, under the long slow hum of the tuba, the world folding back into itself.
The wind shifted, carrying a paper scrap across the asphalt.
He reached for it as though it were an old friend returning from the dead.
The tip of his pen—he didn’t remember having a pen—touched the crumpled page.
He began to write, or maybe to recite. The words came through him more than from him.
He wrote the lines randomly this way and that, turning the page in every direction to fill the empty spaces like word constellations the way Eminem writes.
He wrote:
jump[suit] hand[shake]
clot [of snot rake on mind pour and a bench]
tore [and wrench tuba]
the fence for a smile and rile on mind pour and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on a favor]
never [be so clever to sit and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on a smile and rile on mind pour and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on trial with tree sap]
flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
snore [on trial with tree sap]
flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
snore [on a favor]
never [be so clever to sit and rile on mind pour and a favor]
never [be so clever to sit and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on a bench] tore [and wrench tuba]
the fence for a cap rot covered with a smile and rile on a bench]
tore [and wrench tuba]
the single [thought on the fence for a parking lot]
nap [in a cap rot covered with a bench] tore [and wrench tuba]
the fence for a smile and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on a bench] tore [and wrench tuba]
the single [thought on the single [thought on mind pour
and rile on mind pour and rile on mind pour
and a cap rot covered with tree sap]
flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
snore [on a parking lot]
nap [in a smile and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on trial with a bench] tore [and wrench tuba]
the single [thought on a parking lot]
nap [in a parking lot]
nap [in a parking lot]
nap [in a death] sentence
jump[suit] hand[shake]
clot [of snot rake on a parking lot]
nap [in a cap rot covered with tree sap]
flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
snore [on a bench] tore [and wrench tuba]
the fence for a parking lot]
nap [in a cap rot covered with tree sap]
flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
snore [on trial with tree sap]
flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
snore [on trial with a smile and rile on mind pour and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on a favor]
never [be so clever to sit and rile on a favor]
never [be so clever to sit and mingle]
[dingle] flavor [to be savored without waiver]
guile [on a cap rot covered with tree sap]
flap [a velvet trap in hiding]
snore [on a death] sentence
When he finished, his hand trembled. The page was blotched with sweat, or sap, or tears—he couldn’t tell which.
The words looked foreign and familiar at once, like a language he had known in childhood and forgotten through long neglect.
He whispered the last line again:
snore [on a death] sentence.
The tuba somewhere in the distance sighed a single note, low and final.
He folded the paper and slid it beneath the bench, as though planting a seed.
Then, eyes half-open, he let himself fall once more into that velvet trap of hiding, where sound becomes sleep, and sleep becomes word again.
Bench Cipher (The Remix)
He woke with a start, the world humming in bars and breaks. The poem he’d written now pulsed like a bassline beneath his ribs.
He began tapping the bench, mumbling, looping phrases until they started to rhyme.
The tuba’s ghost joined in, blowing smoke-blue chords. He grinned, cracked his neck, and started to spit:
(Verse 1)
Jump[suit], hand[shake], back from the gray gate,
Mind pour, heart sore, clean up the slate.
Clot of thought, yeah, it’s thick on the brain,
Snot in the rhyme, but it’s washing the pain.
Bench-top preacher with a wrench-tuba moan,
Fence round my dreams, tryna make it my own.
Smile on trial, tree sap flow,
Drip that truth where the roots still grow.
(Chorus)
[Dingle] flavor, savor it slow,
Life’s got guile but a shine below.
Never be clever just to prove you glow,
Sit, mingle, breathe, let the rhythm go.
[Dingle] flavor, the sweet decay,
Velvet trap hums where the sleepers lay.
Mind pour rising, night to day,
Tree sap healing in a parking bay.
(Verse 2)
Cap-rot cover, yeah, nap in the heat,
Bench my bed and the street my beat.
Death sentence? Nah, call it parole,
Dreams get written where the engines roll.
Flap that trap, the velvet’s divine,
Snore on a favor, the favor’s mine.
Guile on a smile, I’m trial-born wise,
Fence for a thought where the crow still flies.
(Bridge)
Clogged up heart, gotta rake that mind,
Tore that pain just to see what I’d find.
Rile on the pour, spill truth on the grind,
Mingle with ghosts who got left behind.
Bench confessional, asphalt hymn,
Life leaks sap when the light grows dim.
Still I rap that loop in a circle wide,
Death don’t scare me, it’s just another ride.
(Chorus)
[Dingle] flavor, savor it slow,
Life’s got guile but a shine below.
Never be clever just to fake that glow,
Sit, mingle, breathe, let the rhythm flow.
[Dingle] flavor, the sweet decay,
Velvet trap hums where the dreamers lay.
Mind pour rising, night to day,
Tree sap shining in a parking bay.
(Outro)
Jump[suit], hand[shake], back from the gate,
Ghost of the tuba says it ain’t too late.
Flap that velvet, sap that fear,
Smile through the trial, I’m still right here.
[Dingle] flavor—remember the sound—
The rhyme keeps spinning where the lost are found.
Yeah, nap on the bench, but the soul don’t rot,
Got love on trial in a parking lot.
The rhythm faded, but the words hung in the air like mist after rain. He leaned back on the bench, smiling for real this time. Somewhere in the distance, the tuba hit a low note of approval. It wasn’t just a poem anymore.
It was a confession, a resurrection, a beat that refused to die.
Bench Cipher, Part II: The Kids from the Lot
Weeks passed. The man on the bench stopped showing up. Some said he was picked up by a van with no markings. Others swore they’d seen him walking into the woods at dawn, jumpsuit glinting like wet bark. But the poem—his rap—stayed behind.
Someone had recorded it. A kid named Milo from the apartments across the street had been filming that day, half-bored, half-curious, with his cracked phone camera.
He caught the whole thing: the tapping bench, the ghost tuba’s low moan,
and that wild refrain:
“Dingle flavor, savor it slow...”
At first it was a joke between him and his crew. They looped it, cut it, dropped a beat under it from an old boom-bap sample. Then his friend Ria laid a hook on it, soft and smoky,
“Life’s got guile but a shine below…”
And suddenly, it wasn’t a joke anymore.
They called their group The Velvet Trap—after his line.
They recorded in a basement studio with foam mats and borrowed gear. When the first track dropped online, people didn’t even know what it was. Was it gospel? Spoken word? Postmodern street sermon?
But it hit.
The beat was dirty and clean all at once, and the lyrics sounded like prophecy,
as if some cracked saint had freestyled his way out of purgatory.
Soon everyone was humming it.
College kids made remixes. Club DJs looped the tuba. The chorus became a hashtag:
#DingleFlavor.
A meme. A mood. A mantra.
Nobody knew the man’s name.
On the album cover, Bench Cipher (Vol. 1), they used a blurry photo still from Milo’s phone - a silhouette in a jumpsuit, one hand raised in mid-rhyme, the other holding a page that fluttered like a leaf.
The track climbed the charts for a while.
But even after the fame faded, the sound lingered - in the skate park, in the subways,
in the mouths of kids who didn’t know they were quoting a ghost.
And sometimes, when the streetlights flickered just right, people swore they heard a tuba sigh beneath the bass line, and the faintest whisper behind the beat:
“Never be so clever to sit and mingle...
Dingle flavor... savor it slow.”
This story is based on my 2009 book poem “Markov Suit Shake - for John M. Bennett”
