I was eating a microwavable pizza while watching Doctor Who recently (literally the best show ever, alongside Parks and Recreation) via Netflix, specifically the Tenth Doctor‘s episode The Shakespeare Code, when I started to think up some lines to a free-verse poem on the Gallifreyan hero that is the Doctor, and particularly the ninth, tenth, and eleventh forms of his regeneration. It started out with a pretty simple first stanza, with an ABCCDD progression:
Traveling all through eternity
Of which he is Lord
Helping those in dire need
Stopping those of bad deed
His box spans all space
And all time without trace.
Next, I wanted to include a bit about Bad Wolf and Shakespeare, so I decided I’d add another bit, this time pullin’ the ol’ switcheroo and changing the progression to EFEFEF:
This blue box of time
Leaves bad wolves in its wake
Gives Shakespeare his rhyme
And works for our own sake
And all of that time
Just one week it would take.
For a while I thought this was pretty decent. After two more microwavable pizzas and three more episodes, I decided that I needed a bit more to end the poem. I ended up giving this final stanza one of my favorite progressions for ending poems, GHGHII:
Helping writers
And monarchs
And fighters
And lost arks
The last Time Lord lives
To help those he forgives.
Overall, I think it ended up pretty decently, although I had at least seven different versions of each stanza before reaching the final versions that you see above. For those of you who cannot or do not like to read each stanza and skip a bit of text and then read more, here is the final edit of the whole thing:
Traveling all through eternity
Of which he is Lord
Helping those in dire need
Stopping those of bad deed
His box spans all space
And all time without trace.
This blue box of time
Leaves bad wolves in its wake
Gives Shakespeare his rhyme
And works for our own sake
And all of that time
Just one week it would take.
Helping writers
And monarchs
And fighters
And lost arks
The last Time Lord lives
To help those he forgives.
If you would like to review this at all, feel free by all means to criticize the poem and tell me how it really turned out.
