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Hi Matt, It always pays off to spend time with your poems, deconstructing them to understand what is just below the surface. In this poem I found who I think the Daniel is — although it is a shared identity of Daniels to my ear: the Daniel of The Book of Daniel with his apocalyptic interpretations of dreams, and the Daniel of my childhood catechism who was fed to the lions (but I think miraculously saved by a Guardian Angel) So that is my frame of reference as I go about deciphering how to translate it to understand the personal pain that is present in the poem. The N is projecting.
I continue to wonder what the type of intervention it is. The poem clearly states that what transpires in the poem takes place after the intervention. Personally, I don’t hear it as the conventional intervention that Julie implies. I see it as a medical intervention of some type that succeeds in partially dismantling the demons, but not wholly ridding him of them. They remain at bay. It feels like something of a mashup of a strange recounting of a biblical story combined with the N’s personal struggle to stay in control of his thoughts. How the two connect is the stuff of nightmares. (I sometimes think life itself is best described as a mashup: making resonance from the dissonance).
I agree that on first reading it came across obscure and comes clearer with subsequent readings, but unlike Nemo I still haven’t found much traction to latch onto and say with any confidence I know what the poem is about. But I have a feeling. The built-in obscureness of it reflects the high symbolism that can sometimes grow from intense mental anguish, pain, etc.
But as always, I am rewarded by taking the time to let this settle and take shape, however amorphous.
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