Improved version!
For Christmas I got Kate a copy of Cain’s Jawbone for Christmas. Fiendish. This may take some time...
(28.12.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Poem 225 – Where’s Sherlock When You Need Him?
Arts & Literature
Poem 223 – Boxing Day Anecdote
Catching up on poems from the last few days…
A little weary, out of rhythm,
we rise to scattered festive relics.
An anecdote is told about
a former poet laureate.
Required walking to clear our heads
and settled Christmas lethargy.
We stop to feed Egyptian and Canadian
geese and opportunistic pigeons.
Back home it’s time for lunch, comprised of
yesterday’s offcuts before
a most unexpected reprise,
“You know that story? I missed a line,
‘I woke besides the ugliest woman…'”
A true story…
(26.12.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Poem 219 – Sleep
The light switch flicked and only we prevail
And as we sleep as one, one breath we breathe
I don’t recall when I forgot to marvel
Before, we talked and read, then after, we leave
And as we sleep as one, one breath we breathe
Miraculous contained within mundane
Before, we talked and read, then after, we leave
The ordinary matters and, shared, sustains
Miraculous contained within mundane
Two pillows bound together by one sheet
The ordinary matters and, shared, sustains
Your daily life around my form completes
Two pillows bound together by one sheet
I don’t recall when I forgot to marvel
Your daily life around my form completes
The light switch flicked and only we prevail
This poem takes the form of a pantoum, a Malaysian form with eight lines repeated in a strict order, and is inspired by Pádraig Ó Tuama’s post on the ordinary. After almost 30 years of marriage, the simple act of sharing everyday life and daily routines, such as sleep, is simultaneously both ordinary and surprising.
(30.11.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Krista Mangulsone on Unsplash
Poem 201 – Genetic Verse
Your verse hasn’t faded,
just merely passed along
Watson’s famed double-helix,
finding a new voice in me,
your son. Your words still speak.
I may not have your humour,
my poems don’t twinkle like
yours do, so mimicking
your eyes as you read them.
They have a different accent.
But underneath they share
that same urge to be spoken,
to find a way to be
formed and found and so heard.
Nature and nurture guide me.
I write and hear us speaking
shared turn of phrase, and see
a familiar gesture.
I smile in recognition
and wonder whose turn’s next.
Dad has always written verse, verse that’s made me smile and groan and think. Recently he’s found his fading memory has militated against this. I think he’s felt the loss. Dad, your poems have inspired mine. I hope that in some way through them you speak on.
(31.08.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash
Poem 192 – An Artist? Me?
I wonder if the street artist
who paints the lines along the road,
finishes with a signature,
a declaration: ‘This is mine!’
Or does the cashier get a credit
in recognition of the music
performed skillfully day by day
extemporaneously at their till?
And how about the office temp
who chisels out the perfect script
incisive words carefully cut
and sculpted on their laptop screen?
Or what about the manager
who orchestrates the staff,
conducts with policies and emails:
please take a bow for your performance!
There’s something in the way we’re made,
embedded deep within our soul,
that leads us to express ourselves:
the truth is everyone’s an artist.
A throw away joke over our church drop-in lunch about signing road markings got me thinking…
(23.06.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Grooveland Designs on Unsplash
Poem 177 – The End
The closing chapter,
the final leg,
I’m almost home.
No longer looking
back but forward,
my destination
hoves into view;
the uneven creasing
of the spine
accompanied by
evasive wriggling.
Compelled I pick
up speed. I find
I’m skipping words
and tumbling over
myself to reach the
closing full stop.
But even as
I strive, inside
a simultaneous
braking competes.
Although my story
draws me on
I find I do
not want my journey’s
end. Not yet.
I’m currently reading Simon Armitage’s ‘Walking Home’, the account of his journey along the Pennine Way, enabled by the hospitality of strangers and poetry readings. Towards the end he recounts the unexpected feeling of not being elated at approaching home, having slipped into the habitualised routine of walking; a feeling not confined to walking.
(27.03.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash
Poem 174 – Fusion Cooking
Ingredients:
blend together
two unrelated
cuisines or musical
languages
Outcome:
a fusion dish
of novel taste
an auditory
revelation
Ingredients:
two particles
accelerated
at speed into
a forced collision
Outcome:
explosive wave
of energy
reveals sub-
atomic secrets
Ingredients:
grab unrelated
ideas and hurl
together hard
to see what happens
Outcome:
metaphorical
generation
conceives surprising
ideas and insights
Ingredients:
a man, a woman
heat up their hormones
stir DNA
and leave to sit
Outcome:
new life erupts
through pain and joy
familiar yet
distinctly different
But still…
we build
our walls
close down
the channels
shut down
surprise
take cover
behind
our slogans
fearful
of what
might be
and be
discovered
This started life as a poem about poems and metaphors for World Poetry Day, but finished up as something quite different as I combined not just this and other interests of mine whilst reflecting on a local hotel housing asylum seekers.
(23.03.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by John Legrand on Unsplash
Poem 170 – To Those Tempted to Censor
Don’t steal my words,
make me say what I did not say.
If I’m offensive either
be offended or do not listen.
Let people see me as I am,
judge me on my words.
Shun me, shame me,
even expose me,
laugh with or even at me
but do not steal my_____.
I feel uneasy about the reported changes to Roald Dahl’s books, made in order to align them with contemporary attitudes (I suspect they weren’t even in line with the attitudes of his day!) Whilst I appreciate the sentiment behind this, I’m unsettled by the idea of changing an author’s words because we don’t like them.
(21.02.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash
Poem 164 – Flights of Fantasy
With flick of fanned out tail, the Kite flies deftly,
With dancer’s grace, descends through applauding sky,
Performs a pirouette, majestic dive,
Then swoops and thus commits audacious theft.
Through avian guile she artfully steals my breath
And gripping firm, takes flight, and rises high.
Leaving my standing ovation behind, she flies
Into the distance, fading. I’m bereft.
Sometimes I wish that I possessed her freedom.
Perhaps I do! I have no wings but in
Their place imagination’s feathers thrust
Me upwards seeking visions of what could be.
Their range is more than hers has ever been,
Could dreaming meet this reaching wanderlust?
Red kites have recently established themselves in our neighbourhood. One regularly frequents the air above our garden. Watching it’s effortless flight inspired this sonnet, although it’s taken most of the week to knock it into some sort of shape.
(28.01.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Image: Tim Felce (Airwolfhound), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Poem 159 – A Sonnet for Jeff Beck
The news of Jeff Beck’s passing was a shock.
Disciple, six string warrior, he played
Uniquely. He was peerless to this day.
We cry. The king is dead, the king of rock.
It’s true, perhaps, that thousands did not flock
To catch him on the stage, perform the way
He could, making it speak and wail and spray
The air with song-like notes; an ease that mocked.
Despite this, his guitar will always stand
Unique, unmatched by those within his wake,
Pale copies of this effortless control.
Unrivalled, fusing different sonic lands,
So few attain the sounds that he could make
That reach inside and pluck our very souls.
Last night I was stopped by the news of Jeff Beck’s death. Another guitar hero of mine gone, joining the likes of Garry Moore and George Harrison. Very much a guitarist’s guitarist, uniquely blending jazz, soul and rock, along with inventive tremolo and bending techniques he was one of a kind. Continuing to grapple with rhyme, I fancied trying a petrarchan sonnet today. He seemed a fitting object.
(12.01.23)
© Ben Quant 2023
Photo by Mandy Hall – originally posted to Flickr as Jeff Beck, CC BY 2.0
Ode for the Day 