(1) A Midsummer Night`s Dream. (2) Painting.

Sorrowful Titania
Lost in the torpor of an immense dark forest
At the hottest hour of summer;
Sleeping fitfully;
Waiting for the cool nights of yellow gowned September
To prise apart her eyelids
With the scintillating strobe blades of Autumn moonlight
Dancing through the stare
Of her ever watchful lover.

And the girl said to me. Nothing.
Walking out from the dark cold theatre
into the driving rain, back to her room,
Four white walls and a simple writing desk.

Well, you did return to me the Indian Changeling
Dressed in a coat of pearls, and riding on a desert camel,
But that is no reason to go all moony eyed
Over that woozy Ass of an Athenian
Who could not even ee aw for his supper.
Next time you think it expedient to be unfaithful
Please choose a better Actor,
Not a horny handed would be Matinee idol.

Well. All`s well that ends well,
and the sweet letter that you wrote to me
From the privacy of your white walled bedroom
Has brought some peace of mind.
But in future when I think of you, Titania,
It will be without the olde world illusions
I spun about your spotlight sculpted face.
The unspoiled ingenue sat in the dark wood
Watching the wild Thyme grow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
14th. August 2015.   

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.