The Archivist. - After Watching Hamlet (Completed Version).

Searching through the rubble of my life,
The Broken relationships,
The ditched ideals,
I find the charred remnants of a persona
A painted image on a flimsy rag
Long since thrown out on the tip,
The municipal nest of flies.

So this is a portrait of who I thought I was
When trying to make a mark in my local streets,
Impress the girls,
Cadge a kiss or a drink.
I was not the wise guy I made out to be,
Everything I said was an affectation,
A frayed quilt of other peoples words,

A frayed quilt to hide my terrors under
While displaying a lack of purpose at every turn,
A somnambulant clown
With nothing much to say
And scared of being laughed at,
Regarded as a small time proto-Yorick
When Hamlets guile had always been my guide.
But this, my friends, is only half the story,
I find a faded photo in a drawer,
A document I had not seen for years.

There are areas of my life I rarely look at,
But the photographer here caught me unawares
When the masks were down
And the quilt left in the locker.
I was twenty three, my first love killed by cancer,
The only girl I never told a lie to,
And the panic in my eyes was clear to see,
The panic of an infant left alone,

Lost in the haunted dark without a candle
And with no one in the house.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. - 14th. - 15th. 2018.