Poem 159 – A Sonnet for Jeff Beck

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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

Poem 158 – Le Vélo Villanelle

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I pedal steadily, wheels go round and round
The mercury rises, up and up it goes
And booming in my head, my heart pounds loud

My eyes are vacant, focussed on the ground
I find my rhythm, legs begin to flow
I pedal steadily, wheels go round and round

Though station’ry, the passing miles confound
Monotony grasps and drags, the grinding grows
And booming in my head, my heart pounds loud

The tension hangs, a dark’ning electric cloud
My will is draining, boredom bites alone
I pedal steadily, wheels go round and round

Obsessing over every wayward sound
Mechanical stutters grating down below
And booming in my head, my heart pounds loud

No winner in this race, no victor crowned
All energy gone, I’m spent, yet no one knows
I pedal steadily, wheels go round and round
And booming in my head, my heart pounds loud

I’ve recently started training for the London-Essex 100, a 100 mile bike ride, to raise funds for Parkinson’s UK (you can sponsor me here), but the weather’s grim right now, and so I’ve been using an indoor turbo trainer. It’s really not the same… I finished this villanelle (no, not the assassin in Killing Eve) last night as another stab at rhyming in a formal form, but didn’t get around to uploading it. I’m pretty pleased with it.
(10.01.23)

© Ben Quant 2023

Poem 157 – Was George Lying?

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I wake to find the sun still hid away,
    And wonder where. Begin to search it out.
It’s simultaneously both night and day.
    Question: how are the laws of physics flouted?
    It surely must be somewhere hereabouts!
This darkness grips me, makes me feel entombed,
And isolated, life sucked from the room.

My shrill alarm sounds like a countdown’s end,
    Is this some childish game of hide and seek?
This daily madness drives me round the bend,
    ‘I’m coming!’ I cry, as if I now compete,
    And bleary eyed I stumble, weary feet,
Into the bathroom where I pull the light.
Insipid! This won’t set the night to flight…

Still adrift I sit behind the wheel.
    Ignition turned then mirrors checked and drive,
Into the line of mo(u)rning cars that feel
    Deadened, numb, yes anything but alive,
    Striving to find some way we might survive.
Grumbling that our work is never done, we
Feel the lie that’s sung, ‘here comes the sun’.

I’ve been dipping into Stephen Fry’s ‘The Ode Less Travelled‘ again, a great introduction to the nature of poetry, particularly metre, form and rhyme. Rhyme is something I have generally avoided, in my hands it becomes something twee and distracting, but he’s persuaded me to give it another go. Here’s an offering in rhyme royal form. It was dark this morning when my wife went to work…
(09.01.23)

© Ben Quant 2023

Poem 156 – Twelfth Night

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Tonight come tear the tinsel down
Twelfth Night is nigh, now is the time
The curtain call, the climax of
Our festive feast, is finally here

The cards are crumpled, cast aside
The lights are loosed and limply tossed
With cardboard characters created through time
On toilet roll tubes with cotton wool tufts

Stripped bare to the bark, its boughs devoid
Our tree is trashed and turned outside
Its baubles boxed and banished upstairs
The house is harrowed, hoovered throughout

No food to feed the family remains
Instead our stomachs stretch our waists
And prick and prompt our pilgrimage
To push and pull and pound at the gym

This fullstop flung confounds our fun
Its hangover hangs and haunts our heads
As Winter’s waves unwelcomed wash
And dark descends and dampens dreams

The house seems strangely bare today…
This is a rewrite of yesterday’s annoyingly twee effort. Switching to alliterative verse gave it back its bite.
(06.01.23)

© Ben Quant 2023

Poem 155 – Four Candles

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Sunday we’ll light four candles,
Our perennial joke,
Anticipated for weeks.
Someone will shout ‘nah, fork ‘andles’*
And we’ll laugh. Again.
It’s strangely fitting. Back then
No one saw it coming.
Now we hold our breath and
Open doors until Christ’s
Born; God’s Son, the perfect
Joke who laughs with us
Divine anticipation.

In the church calendar, this Sunday is Two Ronnies Day, or at least it is in my head (*If you don’t get the joke, you’d better watch this: https://youtu.be/CNTM9iM1eVw). The following Sunday is Christmas Day, the day when God caught everyone by surprise.
(16.12.22)

© Ben Quant 2022

Poem 154 – A Literary Diet

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I’m told we’re what we eat,
If so, I’m made of words.
My mum discovered this
On catching me red-handed,
The soggy contents page
Of the Oxford Dictionary
Left mushed between my jowls.
It seems I am comprised
Of definitions and vowels.

My limbs are formed of nouns
Like leg and arm and elbow.
Elbow is one of my favourites.
Say it slow. El-bow.
How satisfying it is
To wrap your tongue around
It’s form, enunciate
It carefully and full,
Admire its letter form.

Then there are the others,
Obscure and strangely named,
Like supercillium,
And islets of Langerhans.
I learnt of them at school,
But haven’t mentioned them,
Again until the present.
Turns out such beautiful words,
Can never be unlearnt.

But nouns are not the whole
Of me, I’m also made
Of verbs like dream and think,
And leap and hesitate,
Gesticulate and frown,
Digest, impress, caress,
And rest, oh yes, let’s rest
Our tired nouns a while
And let the verbs address.

Or better still send out
Our adverbs, illumination
Their one and only role.
They slyly, kindly find
A motivation for me.
Swiftly, powerfully, patiently,
Reveal me. Show what lies
Hid deep within me. Yes,
It’s true. I’m made from words.

True story, I was discovered as a little one, eating a dictionary! Reminiscing got me thinking about language, and how our understanding of the world and ourselves is framed by it.
(15.12.22)

© Ben Quant 2022

Poem 153 – Blank Canvas

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This is a liminal place,
Where sky and earth do meet,
And merge in bright harmony.
Autumn’s colours spent,
Erased, left brilliant white,
Perhaps, a new beginning?
A chance to make our mark,
Afresh. Along with spiders,
Who have already traced,
The outline of each edge
In brittle silk, picked out
And sparkling, crystalline.

Yesterday we woke to find Lea Valley submerged in snow. Beautiful and mysterious. On our afternoon walk, at each turn I expected to find Mr Tumnus, but alas he never showed, only the muntjac deer and robins. We did not return, however, disappointed.
(13.12.22)

© Ben Quant 2022

Poem 152 – Sharp December

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The paper air is sharp
Airways are invaded
Eyes begin to water
Cold smears across my face
Malicious needles prick
In bitter unison
My feet go numb and die
A death by a thousand cuts

This morning’s North wind brought a bitter bite alongside Jack Frost’s winter beauty.
(08.12.22)

© Ben Quant 2022

Psalm 151 – The Reckoning

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It’s the strangest feeling,
When someone else is pouring,
Over words that you,
And you alone, have known.
Your baby, your secret, yours
But now no longer so.
It’s out there, in the wild.
It’s prone, susceptible.
Exposed to public whim.
How will they handle it?
With care or carelessness?
Indifference or joy?
Now the time of reckoning.

My thesis is rewritten and has just returned from my proofreader. Soon it will be submitted, and this labour of love and anger will be handed over to others to judge…
(07.12.22)

© Ben Quant 2022

Poem 150 – Merry Christmas

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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)

© Ben Quant 2022