The Selkie. (Revised & corrected Version).

You did not rescue me.
You stole my life.
You stole my mind.
You stole my skin.
You stripped me to the bone,
The veins and sinews,
The small scraped skull.
You tried to break me,
Tried to remake me
Into a gilded image,
Into your private icon,
A reflection of your self.

But this evening while you slept,
And our children lay a dreaming
In the quietness of your chamber,
In the darkness of your house,
I found my skin,
I found my stolen self,
I found my long lost life,
Tied up in a battered bundle,
Tied with a yard of string.

And secretly I wore my skin again,
Disfigured as it was,
So torn and broken,
So scratched and red with sores,
So dry and rotten,
Corrupt with scabs and spores.
I wore my proper skin for just one hour,
But found that it still fitted,
Clung tight to flesh and bone,
To nerve and muscle,
My ain true self,
My home.

And tomorrow I shall wear my life once more,
And hearkening to the thunder of the waves,
Their chill and salty cleanness,
Run to the seal grey shore,
The tumult of the ocean.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 10th. 2015.

Based on the Orcadian legend of the fisherman and the Selkie wife.
He stole her seal skin so that she would remain on shore with him,
but she found it,and hating his dishonesty, which is a kind of cruelty,
put it back on and returned to the sea from which she had first come.

Four Paintings.

8 Paintings

Two More Paintings

Two Paintings

Words.

Words are the skin of silence;

    Cut them if you dare.

Watching you asleep beside me
I lost you the moment you ceased speaking,
The moment you closed your eyes.

You have turned into a distant stranger,
Cocooned in a caul of silence.
Lost in your secret dreams.

Perhaps when you wake up bright and early
You will have become a brand new person,
Not the lover I said good night to.

Turning your back when I hug you.
Speaking a private language.
Not wanting to be touched.

Those roses I gathered this evening
May find a new home in the trash can,
Along with the wedding snapshots.

Watching you asleep beside me
You seem more foreign than the psychic lady
Who begged to tell us our fortunes.

Words are the skin of silence;

    Cut them and they bleed.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 26th. - 28th. - August 3rd. - 5th. 2015.

Black Rain. (Revised)

Tonight the rain is constant,
The sky,
Black as a hangman`s mask,
Presses down hard
Upon our earth bound lives,
Compressing taut veins
Until they nearly burst
When Thor beats his chest overhead.

A rock across broad shoulders
The weight of darkness is,
Pressing down hard
So that we can hardly move.
Tonight I cannot look up
To where last night the stars
Stung wonder struck eyes
Searching for new born galaxies.

Searching for the final exit
From this X rated film script
Into a nicer story,
One with a rainbow ending.

Meanwhile I sit struck dumb
Anchored in the back row
Waiting for the credits to roll,
The lights to switch back on.
I dream somewhere the sun
Is burning up a beach
That is yet to harbour a dark cloud,
Parasols bent back by rain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 25th. - 28th. 2015.

Written during an exceptionally stormy night.
I was thinking about cinema history and Bunyan`s Pilgrims Progress.