Black Moon. - Full Moon.

      Black Moon.   (For two voices)


The nights are drawing in.

The heating turned up high in the hallway.
The blinds pulled firmly down.

No people talking outside in the street
until the light returns.
All hint of summer gone.

I feel empty.
A shell without a kernel.
A room without a door.

Tonight a black moon hides among the stars;
a bruise punched deep into the Autumn sky
by some malevolent god.

When I leave the house at eight
I am a stranger among many,
a shadow lost amongst pale shadows
drifting slowly through the town.

I try to talk to no one,
although the streets are crowded.
Every face I see is blank and weary.

The black moon seems to make the sky more dark.
The stars are hollow eyes that do not sleep.
They glint with silent tears.

My lover phoned to say she had miscarried,
the third time in just so many years.

Hope is a child weeping below stairs
unable to reach up to find the light.


                      *

              Full Moon.  (For one voice).


Well yes, she really does exist,
the White Goddess, dressed in vapour trails
that drift like veils across her stony face.
She makes us quarrel,
fight all through the night,
conceive disruptive children full of chatter,
weird ideas that challenge adult thought.
She is divinity gone mad and feral,
fierce as a teenage army on the march,
beating up the town.
And yet she is the true goddess of love,
pouring balm upon our splintered hearts
as we sit alone all night on vacant beds
waiting for a calm voice down the phone.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 3rd. - 4th. 2016.