David Tennant Photobombs

Song of Smoke

To watch you walk
cross the room in your black

corduroys is to see
civilization start—
the wish-
whish-whisk

of your strut is flint
striking rock—the spark

of a length of cord
rubbed till

smoke starts—you stir
me like coal

and for days smolder.
I am no more

a Boy Scout and besides,
could never

put you out—you
keep me on

all day like an iron, out
of habit—

you threaten, brick—
house, to burn

all this down. You leave me
only a chimney.

Kevin Young

The End

At the end of the marriage they lay down on their big, exhausted bed.
It was crowded with all the men and women they had ever loved.

Of course their fathers and mothers were there and a boy in uniform
she'd kissed on a stairwell. His first wife spooned her first husband.

Ridiculous Affair held hands with Stupendous Infatuation.
There was a racket of dreaming and, though both were tired

from the difficult end and in need of sleep, neither could sleep,
so they began telling each other the long, good story of their love.

She was wearing the red dress. The white boat hitched to the wood dock
filled with rainwater. The swans were again teaching the young to fly.

The story went out to nice dinners, took summer holidays, and by the time
they were done, the old loves rolled over in a jumble on the floor,

and, because this is what they knew to do well with one another,
they made love, and then without thinking it was the last time, said,

I love you, and fell asleep under the heavy, blue coverlet.

Victoria Redel

Myrtle

How funny your name would be
if you could follow it back to where
the first person thought of saying it,
naming himself that, or maybe
some other persons thought of it
and named that person. It would
be like following a river to its source,
which would be impossible. Rivers have no source.
They just automatically appear at a place
where they get wider, and soon a real
river comes along, with fish and debris,
regal as you please, and someone
has already given it a name: St. Benno
(saints are popular for this purpose) or, or
some other name, the name of his
long-lost girlfriend, who comes
at long last to impersonate that river,
on a stage, her voice clanking
like its bed, her clothing of sand
and pasted paper, a piece of real technology,
while all along she is thinking, I can
do what I want to do. But I want to stay here.
John Ashbery

Starting today, August 23rd, I, Shani, take a vow to not step on a weighing scale for a month.

Eeps.

Also lots of commas.

Big Dumb Elephant

I was that big dumb elephant in the room.
I stood there and took it,
pretending you didn't see me,
but I saw you.
I saw you for what you were.
You spoke and thought I couldn't hear,
and now the ears of my memory
are playing the sounds of your words
and your laugh.

Ha. Ha.
The elephant in the room,
deaf, blind, and dumb.
I remember, I remember.
I can hear you know,
I can speak you know.

But I stood there,
mute, deaf, dumb,
and took it.
I took it like the circus elephant,
a flank tougher than than the whip
but a soul as delicate as the inside of a flower.

And sometimes,
in the place my thoughts travel to,
I see her look over and give me a kiss,
and for a second
I allow myself to feel human. 

Mountains

Sometimes, it seems that the problems before me are so immense.

No job, no career, no future.
No education, no life, no money.

It seems the word of the day is "no".

You have nothing. You are nothing.
Are they one and the same?

All these voices telling me who I am not.
You are not her, the girl with the job,
you are not him, the boy with the car,
you are not them, the people who have.

All these voices telling me I am a state of being.
You are disappointment.
You are undeserving.
You are ungrateful.
You are nothing.

Even nothing is something in a world where opposites define the current truth.

Right?

Sometimes, the problems before me are immense
but I choose to not believe so.
I am the mountain that came to Mohammed
but he is the one that has to traverse my distance shores.
He is the one who has to scale my rocky walls
and porous caverns,
and maybe in his journey he will realise that there is grandeur
in me after all.
Hidden, poor, broken,
but on what scale are all things judged anyway?

Names

All the names out there

and we have our own.

Names that seem so familiar and so distant,

yours, mine, ours.

There are so many names out there,

yet the names are the same.

It's just an arbitrary way to call you

and see you turn toward me and smile,
smile like the world was your own at that very moment,

and all would be right.

The way my name runs off your lips,

like it's the same name
you've been saying forever.

Names names names.

Your name, my name, our name.

A word. Simply felt.

Next Time

I'll know the names of all of the birds
and flowers, and not only that, I'll
tell you the name of the piano player
I'm hearing right now on the kitchen
radio, but I won't be in the kitchen,

I'll be walking a street in
New York or London, about
to enter a coffee shop where people
are reading or working on their
laptops. They'll look up and smile.

Next time I won't waste my heart
on anger; I won't care about
being right. I'll be willing to be
wrong about everything and to
concentrate on giving myself away.

Next time, I'll rush up to people I love,
look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick.
I'll give everyone a poem I didn't write,
one specially chosen for that person.
They'll hold it up and see a new
world. We'll sing the morning in,

and I will keep in touch with friends,
writing long letters when I wake from
a dream where they appear on the
Orient Express. "Meet me in Istanbul,"
I'll say, and they will.

Joyce Sutphen