Arts & Literature

Poem 901 – Between the Curtains

/ BenDQ / Leave a comment

A relocation,
Imagination creation,
Transportation of the senses,
Translation from our world
Into another,
For just one moment
The stage becomes reality,
Reality a stage,
Leaving us transformed.

We went to see Stage Kiss on Tuesday (not the photo), a fantastic show which we thoroughly enjoyed. There’s something about live theatre that has the power to take us elsewhere.
(03.06.26)

© Ben Quant 2026

Poem 897 – A Beginner’s Ballad

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I’m trying to write a simple ballad,
A form of rhyming poem,
It uses lines with four accents,
Then three to move without relent,
Mix them together, let them ferment,
And the lines will keep on flowin’.

And now I’ve reached the second stanza,
It doesn’t seem so hard,
I’m certainly glad I gave it a go,
And tried it out, just never say no,
But now I fear I’ve reached my plateau,
I’ll never replace the Bard!

I’m reading Malcolm Guite’s terrific ‘Galahad and the Grail’ at the moment, which is written in ballad form. Rather than always alternating between 4 beats and 3 beats, he mixes it up, my favourite following the above rhyme and beat pattern. Thought I’d try it out, nothing serious this time but I may come back to it.
(30.05.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Taha on Unsplash

Poem 890 – Driven Away

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Today’s been dulled by miles of endless road
And, somewhere south of Kettering services,
I mislaid my muse upon the motorway.
I didn’t do it by design, believe me,
it simply slipped away in silent protest
at the hours of mindless apathy.

Most of today has been spent on the road enduring hot, boring miles.
(23.05.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Haniel Espinal on Unsplash

Poem 884 – Following to find out where it goes

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Taking a word to start a sentence.
Letting it roll around the tongue
and fall upon the page before
eagerly following where it goes.

Will it descend the depths of Hades,
take us to dark and gloomy places,
or raise us up to mountaintops,
to seek sublime horizons light?

Sometimes it will lose its way
and stumble into deadend wastelands
but other times, its serendip-
ity, delightful metaphor and glee.

Oft the line meanders through
the daily stuff of life, the common
everyday, in search of meaning,
or simply keeping hopeful track.

Today, my word has ended here,
a final stanza whereupon
it makes its stand. And now
it calls its friend and end, full-stop.

I didn’t know what to write today, so I just wrote…
(17.05.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Poem 804 – The River

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Tonight I write a line or two to keep
A habit flowing forwards. Like a stream,
Sometimes it finds itself a driving force,
But other days it ambles round slow bends
and detours, lost in dreams and dozy swells.
But either way the current calls it on,
An irresistible tug, a tide, demanding,
‘Cast your words into the aching blue.’

Writing a daily poem has become a deeply ingrained habit. I’d feel wrong if I didn’t.
(26.02.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by ANHELINA OSAULENKO on Unsplash

Poem 793 – Wanted

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Wanted. A renegade poem on the run.
Evading capture and identification,
it slips through my fingers whenever I
reach out to grasp it. Tantalisingly close,
its form remains disguised, its words elusive.
I chase it down abandoned stanzas, past
forgotten metaphors. In dreams I glimpse
it but on waking it remains obscured,
lost in half formed kaleidoscopic snatches,
seen only on the periphery of thought.

I had no idea what to write about today, and so that is what I wrote about.
(15.02.26)

© Ben Quant 2026
Photo by Vivasa Michael Parlow on Unsplash