Poem 249 – Dedicated

Aug 2, 2024Aug 3, 2024 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

My to-do list is ready,
tasks hungry to be ticked,
I’m waiting for the gun.

Today I will be productive
and focus on the job –
no time for mindless scrolling.

I turn off notifications,
say no to interruptions
and put aside my phone.

But before I start
I’d better check
just one more time…

Is it procrastination, lack of discipline or dopamine release trigger by mobile alerts? Whatever it is, I’m guilty like so many of us by being distracted by the lure of one more look…
(02.08.24)

Poem 244 – Now I’m 52

May 16, 2024 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

You know it’s your 52nd birthday
when you keep thinking it is Friday
when in fact it is Thursday.
Is my subconscious telling me
to simply skip over it?
Being an Englishman
I don’t know where to look
when people sing Happy Birthday,
how to configure my face,
or if I should join in.
You’d have thought I’d have
worked it out by now.
I celebrate by trimming nostril hairs
I never used to have and
stretching out stiff limbs.
Perhaps I’ll treat myself
to a proper coffee while I work.
As a child I received cards,
as an adult, thumbs up from Facebook.
Internet forums I once joined,
but have long since forgotten,
emerge from the mists of time
to offer congratulations.
Will I do the same one day?
A dusty poem popping up
in someone else’s Google search?
I do some sums.
Three score years and ten?
Just eighteen left;
that doesn’t sound so good.
Let’s change the parameters.
Doubling makes one hundred and four
and allows the same to come.
Possible? Perhaps.
And as every day’s a gift
and I’m a half-full glass guy
I’ll gratefully take every one.
Yes, happy birthday to me
and many more to come!

For some reason I’ve got it in my head that today’s Friday, when it’s Thursday, and more significantly (to me at least), my birthday…
(16.05.24)

© Ben Quant 2024
Photo by Becky Fantham on Unsplash (you may need to change your window shape/size to see the picture properly…)

Poem 236 – Entangled

Mar 12, 2024 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

What is this alien brain/no brain
that weaves its weft and warp, pervades
the world? A web of teasing fingers
that, tangled, threads through soil and roots.
It rules without our recognition
hidden beneath/within/without
blurring boundaries, one yet other.
Silently it speaks and calls
in foreign words, articulates
beyond our comprehension; this
mycelial ‘deity’ in whom
‘we live and breathe and have our being’.

I’m finally reading Merlin Sheldrake’s ‘Entangled Life’, an exploration of the world of fungi that I referred to in ‘Poem 77 – WWW‘. What a glorious enigma they are, I had no idea of the extent to which life is pervaded by and dependent on them.
(12.03.24)

Poem 201 – Genetic Verse

Aug 31, 2023 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

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)

Poem 197 – 3 Slip, Chatham Docks

Aug 16, 2023Aug 16, 2023 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

This vaulted canopy, cascading wave,
cathedral to the men who crafted ships.
Your hall of mirrors draws past scenes towards us
and paints them in an overlapping vision
so ghosts of shipwrights, echoes of the age
of sail, now walk with us beneath your cage.
Their sweat lined muscles stretch and strain in labour,
slipways delivering hard won art down birth
canals to Father Thames, whose eager arms,
outstretched, lap forwards to receive them.

We recently spent a happy day exploring the historic docks at Chatham. At the heart of them stands 3 Slip, this magnificent building in which the boats were built. It’s vast and glorious – ignore the floor in the picture, that’s a mezzanine level erected so you can view the roof. It didn’t take much to imagine the sights, sounds, feel and smells of the place as it was when it was open.
(16.08.23)

© Ben Quant 2023

Poem 174 – Fusion Cooking

Mar 23, 2023Mar 23, 2023 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

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)

Poem 150 – Merry Christmas

Dec 3, 2022 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

Some thirty years ago. The first text.
A simple ‘Merry Christmas’ changed the world.
One SMS and now we’re glued to both,
Our screens in digital isolation and,
Each other in a myriad of ways.
In Bethlehem, the birth of a different sort
Of revolution, was in a manger laid.
Two thousand years ago it needed angels,
And shepherds with their sheep to share the news.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the first text message, a simple Merry Christmas https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63825894.
(03.12.22)

Poem 140 – Brother Sun (or The Summer of ’22)

Aug 15, 2022Aug 15, 2022 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

Lethargy reigns, the air is all sucked out
We slope around the room, moving as little
As we can get away with, stultified
Regretfully wishing the time away, we long
For rain, an end to endless heat, but then
I know we’ll wish for sunny days once more

A companion to Poem 139 – Sister Moon. I know I said I was taking a bit of a break from writing to focus on my these, but I woke up with the first line in my head. It’s been a long hot summer…
(15.08.22)

Poem 136 – Captain Nature

Jul 2, 2022Jul 2, 2022 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

Life finds a way somehow
Its superhero strength
Will overcome even
The most formidable
Opponent in its path
Yet even superman
Was vulnerable, made weak
By kryptonite struck down
So as the temperature rises
I wonder if we’ll prove
To be Achilles’ heel
Ushering in its downfall

I spotted this sapling impressively bursting through a nearby tarmac path, and it got me thinking about the patient strength of nature.
(02.07.22)

© Ben Quant 2022

Poem 119 – Changes

Apr 22, 2022Apr 22, 2022 / BenDQ / Leave a comment

A jellied blob hangs in suspended spew.
Within, a dot becomes a growing eye,
That stares continually with many colleagues.
This froth, a stew of rich ingredients,
Together with the spark divine provides,
Impulse to life, wriggling in expansion.
A heart is born that beats the blood along,
The forming tail that from its cell propels,
The tadpole into water’s liberty.
This state is not its end, however, but,
A transitory phase. Before our eyes,
Impossibly it strains beyond, fingers,
Outstretched, extending from new reaching limbs.
New features grow as old ones fade, along,
With its truncating tail as with a croak,
The frog appears and fully free leaps skywards;
Yes, even greater than Bowie’s, this is
The miracle of metamorphosis.

Over the long Easter weekend we went looking around local ponds on the lookout for frogspawn. The journey from dot to frog never ceases to amaze me.
(22.04.22)

Ode for the Day

An experiment in poetic doodling

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