First Meeting.

Stunned by the sweetness of your smile
My so obsessive rushing to and fro
Has instantly become irrelevant.
We are standing still, apart, quite motionless,
Captivated by an awkward sense of wonder.

The stars this morning are (perhaps) auspicious;
Well, according to the astrologers I refer to,
Those with gaudy charts in Sunday Mags.
And being of a Quixotic disposition
I tend to by pass common sense reality.

You laugh at my inability to say a word.
The leaflets advertising life insurance
That I dropped the instant you swung wide the door
Are scattered at my feet. I shall not now retrieve them
But, in thrall to your quiet presence, I enter the well lit house.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
 September 20th. 2013. 
Revised 3rd- 4th. February 2015.

Four Seasonal Poems.

               1
The Christmas Present. 

Your book of Japanese poetry
Lay open upon my table.

Winter clouds split by sunlight,
Ice melts from my window.

                             December 25th.-26th.2012.

                   *

                   2.
 Expected Reconciliation.

A face in the dusty mirror
Briefly glimpsed at sunset.

Your hand brushes my shoulder:
Jasmine blooms in the cold garden.

                               December 24th.-26th. 2012.  

                      *

                       3.
             Late Autumn.

    Under pale skies we walk
    Collecting crimson apples
    To taste the sun.

                               April 26th. 1969.-December 26th. 2012. 

                       *

                       4.
           New Year`s Eve.

        Being midnight
        The ants crept homeward
        Touched the grass
        With their little feet
        Leaving no prints.

                                July 1st. 1965. 

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
July 1965 - December 26th. 2012.   
A Happy Peaceful New Year, May all the kindest and best hopes and dreams come true.                

The Statuette of a Laughing Buddha.

I brought him home in a little blue box,
Mi - lo - fo, The Laughing Buddha,
Fat as Falstaff and twice as merry,
Hey merry down derry, hey merry down dee,
but
No fool he, Maitreya, Buddha yet to be,
Re-born to enlighten a future, a time of
                                                  beauty
That only the fortunate initiate shall see.

Laughter his wisdom, wisdom his joy,
Is it all so easy?
                         Can this possibly be? 
Should I really be sitting out in the snow 
   Under the shelter of the Bodhi Tree?

The twinkle that brightens the cup of his eye
Lightens my house, fills me with laughter
Rebellious and free,
                              ho derry down dee;
Like wine that is new his smile intoxicates me
                  Banishing my customary sobriety.

Now out of his box the whole house is his oyster
In which to meditate,        or maybe,     to roister,-

      Whilst lacking a single thought in my head,
                            I snore in bed.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
19th. December 2012.

Black Madonna (Revised Version).

Black Madonna
Scarred hands and twisted arms
Carved in ebony

Boy child
Created with the same ferocity
That replicated her beauty

Strong arms
Lift him to the passing throng
In a gesture taut with longing

Strong hands
Gnarled but strangely delicate
Fingers cracked by hard work

Holy infant
Made from the same hard block
Cut to create his mother

His hands are different however
Soft - reflecting the light
From the ring of votive candles

They are carved in white wood
The grain is faulty
Knots on the polished surface
Contorted like old wounds

The frail Franciscan Friar
Leans forward to kiss the rough wood
His face a mask of sorrow

Almost indifferent
I pause to light a candle
And sip some holy water
Before resuming my journey


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
15th. August 2012. - 12th. December 2012. 
19th. July 2013.

This poem is a response to visiting the ancient Christian shrine of the Black Madonna of Willesden, North West London. The visit, my second since the image was restored, took place in August 2012, but most of the poem was written the following December.

Love & Confusion.(Revised Version).

Tasting your wine

                 Inconsolable-stung by bitterness

The December shadows deepening

                 I think of you

Holding the child towards me



A delightful dark haired girl



I caressed her hand

                  The inconsiderate crowd

Self obsessed-thronged about us

Cold shadows

                     Dancing



Friends-in fact-are distant-strangers

 Stuck fast-in their private-thoughts

  Unaware of our selfless devotion

   They have never-really-seen us



(My thoughts are a vortex of images.
Am I here recalling a dream, 
Or reality refracted through time?)



My Love                          My Love

Your absence darkens my world view

              I miss the lilt of your laughter

The child in your arms



 It is too hard-too hard-to live-alone

Bearing the weight             of memory



Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
4th.-6th.-7th. December 2012. 

Californian Buddhist Wedding.

The cicadas in the distant gardens presaged heat.

In those moments the world seemed transfigured by hope
As we stood side by side on the tranquil beach
Hands barely touching;
The silent stars spun a glittering web beyond our niche in time.

Speaking few words
We watched the moonlight shimmering a fragile path
Upon the surface of the waters.
A magical path that few have dared to follow.

Like discarded fragments of our former lives
The stones that we collected on the shore
Were flicked across the tops of breaking waves.
Bad memories should not linger to deceive us.

Suddenly you kissed me.
A tentative kiss, like those that children give. -
Turning we climbed back up the concrete stairway
And entered the quiet house.

That morning when we whispered our solemn vows
In that Buddhist Temple high on the green hill
We had been changed forever by simple words.
No secular laws were needed then to bind us,
Only our fearless honesty.

But now grey walled Manhattan claims your time;
And here I sit and watch the London rain
Darkening the cold window.
December nights are long and strangely empty.
The distant moonlight seldom splits the clouds.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

27th. - 30th. November 2012.
June 5th. 2014.

3 Seasons 3 Poems.- Faded Snapshots of Kyoto - Sombre Winter Poem. - Late November.

            1

Faded Snapshots of Kyoto. 



Below us
The city seethes in heat


Here
Within the temple garden
Even the sound of water is banished



Wavelets of grey sand brush
The ancient rocks

   ------------------------------------

               2

Sombre Winter Poem.



Bowl

White water reflecting

A fractured smile


 
    On the grass

    Frost settles

    Untrodden



How many winter moons to wait

Before your fingers press unbidden

The glass door

      --------------------------            
   
                     3

           Late November.



The mush of autumn clings to my shoes
leaf mould mixed with broken feathers.
I scrape my heal as I enter the house,
Reality            belongs           outside.


    The trees suddenly are skeletons
          Scratching a white sky -
           Summer is long gone.


Must I grow old before the Lark returns?
Never mind.    I have planted a hundred
                   Spring bulbs.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
20th. November 2012. -  23rd. November 2012.- 26th. November 2012.

Willow Pattern.

I am this shadow

You cannot hold me

Only observe the outline


Transformed into birds
We soar high above the arched bridge
Into the white sky
Briefly our song is heard
Among the Weeping Willows

The huntsman skims a stone upon the water
To shatter a fleeting image
But his aim is faulty
We have already flown far and wide
Out of reach

Later in another country
Transformed into our former selves
We sip green tea together
The simplicity of the ceremony
Instils a profound peace


Holding hands in the dark

The certainty of our love feels stronger

Than the rocks that make up the mountains


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
19th. November 2012. The first three lines written 22nd. August 1972. 

3 Poems. A Slip In Time. / Clown Portrait./ Dusk Mood.

                           1.

                 A Slip In Time.


I`ve revamped my space to corner some elbow room,
From convenience living to a cottage kitchen,
Eighteenth century at least.

Irregular flowers lean out of cut glass vases.
A sluggish wasp head butts the window pane.

Our household cat shunts her primeval memory,
Sometimes the weight is light,
Sometimes it weighs her down.

She misses the wasp by the breadth of a feline whisker,
A slip in time saves nine.

I prepare my frugal supper.
The potatoes are all home grown, likewise the peas.
I have adopted the simplicity of an earlier era.

But the computer remains on the table, squat and grey.
A virtual world packed into a plastic pod,
It helps me to complete my skittish poems.

A key is pressed, my space becomes a sanctuary,
Each little room a compact universe.
What can be gained if privacy is lost?

  ---------------------------------------

                2.

      Clown Portrait.


You requested a picture?

I have painted it.

My Clown smiles happily down
From off the back room wall
In a scintillating splatter of colour.
He certainly maketh my day
And therefore I hope that soon
He shall be making your day also,
Out shinning your Braque and Picasso;

(Don`t forget that tiny Kandinsky, 
Humour always wins the day). 

Meanwhile I can only wait
Until rejoicing I hear once more
The chimes of your voice ringing sweetly into the hallway
As you enter the quiet house.

  --------------------------------------------

                        3.

               Dusk Mood. 


The midday heat        burns your delicate beauty
You sit in the shadows waiting for the light to fail

 
        I always walk out in the evenings
   The air so pure blessing the sulphor day
               Of cracked images
                 With a cool cure
            Of patient resurrections


              Hold my arm my love
      We`ll doff our caps to the swans
       Curling their necks from the sun
               Closing their wings


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
(1) October 22nd. - December 1st. 2012. (2) November 15th. 2012. (3) July 1st. 1965.

First Love.

You come into my room

Feet silent

                 like falling

                                  petals



The red leaf rests

                           at last

                      upon the lake

Next month the snow



 Your smile expels the night

Cherry blossom in black rain

 Two Larks            in flight


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
28th. - 29th. October 2012.

Betrayals and Redemption. (Revised).

Infidelity creates poetry,                but don`t try it.
Love that is certain overcomes pain and treachery
But innocence is kinder, less wearing to the nerves,
And in no way corrosive.
We fuck ourselves up when we sleep around, so true
                                                                              My Baby,
Must I remind you? No, not really, and I am not angry about
                                                                   those other men,
Their expertise in the sack is of little concern to me,
Nor the bitter legacies they have scattered far behind them,
Like dropped newspaper cuttings on the sidewalk.-
                                                            I am just a little narked,
That is all;
                Well, that is all that I can ever dare admit to.
I know that you have coveted them in some shallow, simple way,
Like the bling proffered by rich men on the make,.
But our love has always seemed much less provisional than that,
                                                                              my lovely,
Or at least I hoped to think so.
& yet my behaviour has not always been so perfect ,
                                                                           believe you me,
Accepting inferior offers when they just happened to catch my eye
Like off the shelf Lost Leaders.
But I have always only                                      ever wanted you,
My only full term lover.
And so kiddo, perhaps we should now snuggle up and get our act together,
We have broken all the rules, but from now on, let us keep them
Inviolate and certain.        We have never lived at peace without each other.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
13th. November 2012. - August 23rd. 2014.

When reading my poems it is important to know that my first love is Theatre..

Homage to Karole Armitage.

Blonde dancer
Express with living sculpture
A clarity sublime

More cogent than simple messages
Sprayed on concrete balustrades
Of cramped    hermetic   tenements

Blonde dancer
Shape the energy
Of disorder into line

Re-defining warped conventions
Of outgrown      ancient memory
Into modern metaphors -
Graffiti etched in time

Sharp schemes
That refine the grace of nature
Expressed by Watteau`s Lover 
Into fluid     caustic     rhyme

More cogent than simple slogans
Daubed on concrete balustrades
Of cramped   hermetic   tenements
Graffiti shaped by mime

Blonde dancer
From urban squalor
Retrieve the classic line


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
25th. November 1985 - 7th. November 2003. . 

Loss in November.

              1.

White sunlight slanting
Through cracks in the door
Late roses in bloom


Blind
The old men shuffle
On sticks and stones
Rag Dolls in the wind
tottering           falling
Prisoners to fortune
All bones broken
          Carcinogenesis


Red leaves
                  humped high
On smoking cones
By laughing children
Eyes bright and clear
Tinged     with malice


             2.

       Now listen
I sit by the door
       consulting a void
Glass smashed
                on the carpet
Old photographs
                           faded
The song of your voice
Lost from the hallway


Without you here
The autumn is hateful
A shadow of ash
Smeared on a window


It is five years today
Since we burnt our letters
And you walked through that door
Alone


A touch of your lipstick
Traced     on the mirror


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
November 7th. - 10th. 2012.;  

My American Sweetheart in the Movies..(Revised Version)

& now that you are everywhere but here
I sit and moody about you night and day
When I should really be well out of the house
Working, going to the Mall, seeing friends;
Buying that new TV,
                 promised but never purchased;
Pruning the roses.
One programme seems to dominate the rest,
A look back in time grooved on permanent replay,
Never letting up,
                          Never letting go,
Always on show at the personal Multiplex,
The at home flea pit,
                          The screen that never dies.
& just the one visual treat recovered out of that backlog
of mesmeric in house movies; petrified DVD dreams
In the Odeon of my mind,
                           Your smile the last time that I saw you
As you pulled down the Bedroom Blind.

Yes,          & here you will always be discovered,
                            forever lovely,      forever cool,
Sitting so carefully upright on the polished floor,
Legs stretched out in front of you, ankles crossed,
Hands dropped into your lap, sort of Buddha like;
As though you just lived to meditate, or quietly to
sit, An observer of mischievous life.
                         Spell bound               I listen to you
Like a Fan at a private recital, a compliant devotee,
Your elegant New England accent sings in the room
Lark like,
        Much sweeter than my blunt North London prose.

And then at night, in the privacy of true compassion,
The only lover who has ever completely known me,
Making me laugh and cry in a single ecstatic moment;
Your long and elegant fingers

    Laid resting over my heart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 31st. 2012. - February 18th. 2013  
Written for a very special person.  

September Poem. (Completed & with picture).

                           She loved me
                                                 and in September
She wore the curling leaves in her hair
                           As we walked by
                                                 the mist hued waters
Where geese with clipped wings dipped their beaks for bread

                           and later
                                                 in the park she held me
while the red moon rose while buzzed the night crazed gnats
                           and great boughs
                                                  dropped noon ripe apples
Into our open palms

                         
                           Then quietly
                                              Hands clasped
                                                                      we drifted
                   Towards the dying embers of the sun
                            Out through white gates
                                      into a city
             Where hi tech threads of neon lights were spun
                                 into a flimsy tent
                           Out dazzling faded stars
                                  Until autumnal
                                         mist
Dissolved all sense of wonder - and proved our love talk
dumb

But now you smile                  More loving than at night
And spill a sudden clarity             Into the morning light


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1965.  Final two lines September 23rd.1982. 
Revised October 12th. 2012. - August 29th. 2015. _ April 26th. 2022.

The Artist. ( In appreciation of the work of Marina Abramovic).

So this is what you meant by art
Throwing your self at a pillar until you bleed
Like a prisoner consumed by anger,
Or a child screaming for parental love
Against the blank of a locked door
Slammed tight in a small apartment.

So this is what you meant by art;
Just twenty years after Auschwitz,
The cities of Europe reduced to concrete constructs,
The Berlin Wall newly built.
So this is what you meant when you talked so calmly to us
In a Soho Coffee Bar.
That stark red star you etched upon your stomach
With a flick of a safety razor. Red star of blood
Encasing your womb with unreal barbed wire
While the child that once you were kicks hard and weeps
Within your imagination.
Oh let the prisoner free from the concrete cell
That never opens outwards to the sun
But remains forever snapped up tight
Like a Rat Trap in a metal box.

These are not the images that I could live with
As I tried to voice my pain in the newborn world
Of desolate bomb sites and sterile tower blocks,
I lacked your absolute grasp of truthful imagery.

So this is what I wrote when just gone twenty -

Ask me no more to portray these sordid townscapes 
You Managers of the cruel metropolis. 
A Rauschenberg type horror perforates 
The squared design for living
And sends me running........ 

I can quote no more
My response was real, but just not powerful enough.
I open my heart to your bravery, Maria Abramovic.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
October 19th. - 20th. 2012. 
Plus edit of an unfinished poem sketched 27th. May 1966.  

Love Poem.

These are my words
I throw them high UP into the air
To make their own way in the world
& hope that you will catch them
Before they
                   Fall
                          To the ground.
Like old birthday bouquets
Imitating the fall
Of autumn leaves.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter...
4th. October 2012.

October Poem.

When did I meet you first?
Where did we first speak?
In Germany or on St. Stephen`s Green?
By the Liffey or by the Rhine?
I just can`t recall the day, the month, the year,
And I barely remember your voice,
Or the colours in your eyes.
Recollections distort the logic of all dates,
Disrupt all sense of order.

I peer back downwards through a hall of mirrors
Into the troubled epic of my life
And discern no clear trajectory,
No clarity of light dissecting time,
No perfect dawn, no corn flower moon,
No ordered flights of galaxies hoarding memory,
Just a fizz of shooting stars;
Inconsequential phenomena that I study
For no particular, no considered reason,
Through the wrong end of a telescope,
And a tiny cracked reflector.
Sadly I accept that all that lives must die;
But nothing cuts deeper than the loss of dreams.

What I cannot forget is the walk we took by the river
That crimson streaked, cold October evening,
When we first linked hands in secret, shaken by fear,
By timidity, by the elemental imperative of love.
The trees cascaded bright flames all around us;
Burnt paper stars descending, drifting, falling,
Like motes adrift in smoke;
Burnt stars crushed beneath our carefree feet
That quiet autumnal evening, a decade or more ago.
Today the woodland fires are burning, burning, burning.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
October 16th. - 30th. 2012. - October 18th. 2018.

The Wisdom of the Shell Borne Goddess.

                          1.

We just hate this cold October rain
It washes out all aspiration from us
And nullifies the brain.
We much prefer the salt tang of the ocean,
A Devonian sand bar, a quiet Aegean beach,
A stunning view.
We sit up close together, watching the ebb and flow,
The heartbeat of the moon dragged water world,
That ex Paleozoic kingdom,
From which amphibious creatures slowly crept
To colonise the pristine, sun baked shoreline,
That time,
before the gods were born & seas grew cold,
                 When life itself was new.

                          2.

Last night you broke all the regulations,
Diving, for all the world, like a naked white fish
Into the stormy rock pool of my bed,
Where I lay, almost sleeping.
We fought like shark and hunter, but lacking malice,
I let you win the fight.
                                 But in truth, I had to lose it,
An immaculate inspiration boosted your meanest arm lock,
The treacherous wisdom of the sea born goddess
Deifying our love lorn spite with a sly benediction
As she wafted up from her beach.
                                  Peace soon prevailed.
The moon, an on - off - on - off search light, flickered out of reach.
We curled up tight, a pair of soft sea creatures in a single shell
Caught in the quiet swell of our gentle breathing.

                         3.

Reborn every moment, ancient Aphrodite,
Is your schedule too frenetic to protect our love?
Required, from your box of goodies, (reject all mud cures),
One olive branch, one turquoise sea, one dove.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
October 8th. - 10th. 2012. 


 

The Night Watchman. (Original Version).

Engraved upon night,
Gaunt, solemn as ruins,
The moonlit wharves appear
Never to have known
The ear splitting dissonance of engines,
The clamour of voices,
The scurry of shoes.

At home in your arms
I do not fear
These hours of silent watchfulness;
The sparse silhouettes
Distorted by moonlight;
The threat of a flick knife
Uncovered in shadow,
The sure footed thieves;
But only know
The warmth of your presence
Curled deep into darkness,
The pulse of your breath,

Your fingers guided by praise.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
April 25th. 1967. - October 23rd. 2012. 

Josephine, Gypsy Girl.

Seeing is believing.

Wandering among the wagons I watch the frost forming on crushed grasses even as I walk.

The tethered horses trample the filigree whiteness.

Fallen leaves have turned brittle in the frost. Snowdrops crouch under a ruination of trees.

An untrained woodsman has hacked deep into the tangled branches.

The moon, a cold white reflector crazed by clouds, intermittently flickers light into the February
bleakness. I stand stock still and shiver.

The darkest nights have passed. Spring is yet to flourish.

In the chill distance a dog barks.

I wait and listen to hear if the horses have once more settled, and then climb the wooden steps up
into your ancient wagon. At first I see nothing.

Hurting my eyes I peer deep into the dark interior. An oriental paradise of carpets and plump
cushions befogged by incense welcomes me. You sit on the narrow bed smoking a cigarette.
You are at home in this musty artifice.

Now only the moonlight illuminates the wagon.

The incense masks the shadows.

We lie side by side but not touching, cocooned in an empathy of silence beneath the patchwork
bedspread that once belonged to your mother, and her mother and grandmother before her.

Once your mother tried to part us. We laugh when we think about that. Deftly we link shy fingers.

Outside the wind is stirring the silhouettes of the trees upon the muslin curtains. Snug in our love
we study each others faces for hour upon silent hour until the moonlight falters. The darkness
does not disrupt the calm within our sanctuary. Your presence comforts me. Not seeing is also believing.

We kiss without speaking.

Eventually we sleep.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
May 6th. - May 9th. 2011. 

October 1st.

Dust motes drifting in sunlight
A soft veil of quietude.

I lift your photograph off the shelf
With a nervous hand.
I should have smoothed back
That wild tangle of auburn
Before I flicked the shutter.
I look deep into the solitudes
Of your startled eyes
Black in their small alcoves of shadow;
Then kiss the shadow of your lips.
Like a child in torment,
Lost on the dark side of the moon.

Will I hear your footsteps on the garden footpath
Before the leaves have fallen?



Trevor John Karsavin Potter. (For J P).
October 1st. 2012.

Starlight Love Poem. (New Completed Poem).

This love I offer is not an empty token.

Cuddle up close against the winter night.
We are the same material as the stars
And should not fear this darkness.

The stardust in your eyes
Is far more ancient than decoded time
And cannot be snuffed out by simple night.
Love invokes an infinity of galaxies
With a single perfect glance
More radiant than a darting meteorite.

Love cannot be unspoken.

Huddle up close against the winter night.
We are the same material as the stars
And should disregard this ordinary darkness.

Spellbound by sleep, snuggled tight,
Cusped in charity of perfect loving,

Our dreams are bright with elemental power
Eliminating voids with dazzling light.
We are wise children of the universe
And should not be afraid.

Snuggle up close against the winter night.
Our love is stronger than reason dares. 

Our love cannot be broken.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
27th. September 2012.  - 4th. - 5th. - 16th. April 2022.

This is the corrected version I like the best.

Clog Dance. (Revised Version).

All my yesterdays - deep in my head
Telling me to write.

The gypsy woman - with eyes that pierced me
Telling me to write.

The Irish girl - who crashed my heart
Telling me to write.

The old despair - deep in my head
Telling me to write.

The English girl - who cleared the wreckage
Telling me to write.

Dead friends - who stayed for half one night
Telling me to write.

Dear friends - who stayed for half my life
Telling me to write.

The Yankee girl - with the white haired child
Telling me to write.

Her outstretched hands - breaking the dark
Holding me tight.

Her northern voice - soft as the night
Telling me to write.

Her father - telling me right from wrong
Making me fight.

Over the rooftops - wild geese in flight
The beat of their wings loud in my head
Telling me to write      WRITE      WRITE...........


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
26th. September 2012.  - 21st. February 2013. 
25th. January 2016. 

Planting Bulbs. (A Poem in Four Sections).

                                1

I slice open the summer hardness with a steel spade
Breaking through a scattering of stones and soil
Compressed into slabs more solid than flat rock.
The work is so tough that frequent rests are needed
Between the bouts of shoulder grinding spade work,
Hands raw, my back curved into a shallow C.

I stop to take a drink, and then another.
The flask you filled for me is almost dry.

                               2

Preliminaries completed, I shove a sack load of early bulbs
Deep into the swart earth, punching all down to no set order
With trowel and gnarled thumb. I pause to recollect
A decade of Springtime mornings in this our garden,
This discreet North London sanctuary, well hidden from
the neighbours. Here winters are usually drab, a miserable
inconvenience. I look forward to an abundance of loveliness.

                               3

Well that is enough hard grafting.
I put the kettle on the hob
And take time out for a sandwich.

Then the phone rings and rings.
You terrified in the surgery.

The cost of that IVF treatment 
Is completely beyond all reason. 
The doctor`s concern is the money, 
Not our welfare. 

Nor the child`s, no doubt.

I drop the phone on the step
and start to cut back the roses.-
Love is too often beyond our means,
Even you must see that. 

                          4

Quietly melancholic in this downturn of the year,
I sit and stare at the dun tilth. Maybe that doctor will find
The time to contact me, or then, more likely, not. Gardening
tools lie scattered over the patio, discarded bits and pieces
dropped by a desolate child. Without much interest I watch
An angle of shadow decline in steep slow motion
Across the irregular curve of the garden wall.

With one disaster digging out another 
It will take a good seven years to pay back that loan. 

The equinox provokes a distinctive shift in the weather.
I watch the steep descent of a watery sun.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - September 25th. 2012.
Revised March 25th. 2013.

First Time.

When you first caught me
I was frightened to life
Like a schoolboy having a prize flight
In a jet fighter.

The fairground horses that stood around us
Neighed their quaint approval,
But the morning grass was wet and slippy
Where their hooves had trod.

"So this is being grown up", I whispered
Taken aback by how easy it was.
You choked back a laugh, watching the clouds
Scudding over the same old sun.

Later you gave me a cigarette.
The smoke tasted of camp fire kisses.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
September 16th. 2012. 

Divorce

I was in the One Tun Public House in Goodge Street London when the Beatle Song "Norwegian Wood" was written; well the words at least. At the time I thought it was a piece of fun. Now I wonder what it was really about.I am still not sure that I will ever know.

           *

Norwegian Wood?

Memories burn bitter.

Black ash scuffed in the bedside grate.

Sheets grabbed and thrown.

The chair smashed.

"You Even Took The Radio You Bastard!" 

Silence is icy on Sundays.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
14th. September 2012.

A Response to Dorothy Parker.

    Men recover their senses
When girls wear contact lenses.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
September 9th. 1986.    
 

The Mad Hermit and The Owl.

The quotation in italics at the top of the poem is not exact, it replicates my first conscious response to the entry in the Intimate Journals of Charles Baudelaire dated 23rd January 1862, an entry that terrified me when I first came across it in the early 1970`s. I have included it here to help elucidate the poem. Goya and Yeats have also had some influence on the imagery.

The Mad Hermit and the Owl. 

"The wind of the wing of madness 
Last night passed over me." 

                         1

The Owl shadows the dark wood.
The Owl is the essence of night.
A silent hunter haunting the northern wilderness.
A desolate shadow descending through the pines.

                          2

I cannot sleep when his shrill cries pierce the moonlit forest.
I cannot sleep when his shadow falls across my window.

I cannot walk free, out of the moonlit forest.
I cannot escape the malignity of that shadow.

My darkened window reflects a sudden movement.
I panic and shake when he passes.

His wing beats echoing through the winter stillness
Awake dark fears in the depths of my mind.

                          3

In folklore the Owl is a bird of evil omen,
A lord of the underworld come to gather souls,
A portent of evil.
When I hear his shrill cries piercing the snow hushed forest
Those ancient legends flower like wounds in my brain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
May 23rd. 1974.-December 9th. 2003.-September 8th. 2012.

Owl in Winter.

Short days.
The cold nights encourage the work of the Owl,
A feral holocaust on the altars of Nature
Accomplished with impartial efficiency
Between the nightly birth and death of the moon.

Cloaked in his straight jacket of wings
The Owl sits still and waits.
A precision crafted machine
Primed to perfection,
His keen eyes cutting the dark like razors
Scan the forest for prey.

The wind threads like ghosts between bare trees
Shaking the undergrowth with tiny waves
That expose the darting movements of a vole.
That instant life and death have just one face.

A cry stark as the winter forests
Acts as prologue to the deed of terror.
Quick talons grip and dig.

Wisely the Owl hones silence like a blade,
His iron secret,
A silence that hangs like Arctic water
Knifing toward the snow.
This is the Owl in his moon cold fury,
The barb and craft of a dark vocation
His infinite skill.
Only the sunlight can mellow his actions
Moulding his wings around sleep.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
December 18th. 1972. - September 6th. 2012.  
Revised June 17th. - 18th. 2016.

Uncertainties

A slight change in the evening light
To remind us of less settled times
Stirred up by a colder wind;
August scrapes the edge of Autumn.

Tonight we cannot see the stars,
A sail of cloud flaps high and wild
To drive this ark we crouch within
Against the dark.

Frozen, scared, resisting sleep
We huddle like children in the dark
Knowing that the moon wont rise,
But we stare & stare at the cloth grey skies.

Surgeons braced your delicate womb
With a web of stitching that must not break:
Last night the moon was red like blood
But the breeze as soft as an angels breath.

We snuggle up tight against the dark
In hope of new life to brighten the ark
And mock old death.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
August 29th. - 30th. 2012.  

Dark Beginnings.

I have found your poems
Inscribed precisely on scraps of paper
                Fifty years ago
And left to my safe keeping.

I can see you now, pen in hand,
Kneeling low on the kitchen floor
                in my mother`s house;
Thick black hair swung over your face
As you fought to refine an exuberance of words.

You were just fifteen then,
A fierce Irish girl intent on a brawl
                for the smallest slight,
Your adolescent dreams deeply in thrall
To macabre images of death.

Just like a child you hated the night,
But your true fear was honed to a sharper edge,
The elemental urgency of adult love
               More terror filled than dying.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
August 27th. 2012.  

A Song of Longing.

Torn from my dreams by grief
I swear to keep
This precious gift you gave me
Safely lodged
In that box of trinkets stashed
Close by the bedroom window.

Shutters swing out like hands
Spread open wide to snatch
The first glimmer of the sun
In a gesture of pagan prayer
Whilst night dissolves, then dies.

The morning light reveals
A glissando of many colours
Distilled in muted reverie
On lake and mountain top.
The night lamp loses relevance.
Shadows slink back into corners.

This precious gift I clasp
Out dazzles the morning light
With an intensity that burns
Beyond the powers of reason.
It cannot be cheated of beauty
By clouds or wintry weather.

Last night I searched for your photograph
Deep down in my clutter of keepsakes,
But I am sorry, I could not find it.
My love you have been away for so long
I can barely remember your face.

I think of you in India
At prayer in an ancient mosque
As the evening shadows lengthen.
Outside that guarded sanctuary
The noise and heat of the market
Stuns like a fierce narcotic.

Caught in this mayhem of commerce
I stumble from doorway to doorway
In search of that secret mosque.
But the crowds are forcing me deeper
Into a labyrinth of chaos.

Torn from my dreams by grief
I swear to truly keep
This gift of trust you gave me
Lodged deep in the layered box.
I crave for your safe return,
Until then I am dark with longing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
August 25th.- 26th. 2012.

A Tramp describes his One ever Love.

This little sketch is based upon a character who roamed the streets of London when I was a boy. I clearly recall him wearing a battered Top Hat while dancing an improvised solo gig at Speakers Corner. According to legend and rumour he departed the family home forever on the very day that he had inherited the property from his wealthy father. From that day forward he lived as a vagrant. On one occasion I shared my packed lunch with him in Regents Park.He seemed to be the type of person who loved a simple life.- I dedicate this poem to my Sufi Soul Mate , who will fully understand.    


She asked me to cut holes in my shoes
to prove that I love her.
I did so, with romantic swagger
and theatrical gesture;
It was no mean act to hole my only shoes.


When finished, she quietly thanked me
and then, kissing the tips of her fingers, neatly
turned upon her heal, smiled whimsically
and skipped off down the pathway
Lifting her skirt from the puddles.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
July 18th. 1966 - August 23rd. 2012. 
August 7th. 2015.

Resurgence.

Thus now we discover Candlemas,
Unexpectedly awoken in the frost white city,
A barren metropolis restored to humanity
As we walk hand in hand through the concrete streets.
You hold onto me tightly as we enter the church.

Thus now we are consecrate to Candlemas,
In a sudden cold movement of uncertain intensity
Electrifying the depths of this February evening
With the frigid fire of ancestral memory
Arcing from taper to taper, from Officiator to Acolyte
But barely illuminating our hands, our faces
As we bend forward in a moment of prayer.

Yes now we are consecrate to Candlemas.

(Cometh ye sermon./ Lingo Moderne./ neo Tabloid Speak.)

Ignoring the priest you kiss my cold fingers
And smile at me archly.-

                                     Oh How I Do Love Thee!
Winter is diminishing. The Spring is now certain,
Soon the white snowdrops shall cover the Heath.
Oh God, How I Do Love Thee! .
                                      But I must whisper oh so quietly
As the choir intones plainchant into the night.

I have loved thee since childhood
                                       Since our first frenzied school days
When we laughed and we danced and we kicked and we screamed
And we battled and sprinted across the High Heath,
Chasing our shadows like a pair of mad puppies,
                                         A disorder of fox cubs,
                                         A convulsion of geese.
Young poets of mayhem mocking a dull world,
them teachers in grey coats, them boring old priests,
                                          Old ladies in snow boots,
Widowers in weeds.
Oh then we shouted and sang at the dumb winter world scape
Our disconsolate, irreverent, fierce dialects of passion,
Raw songs of new shaping rough hewn, so much to our liking,
From that wild pagan language, our dear piratical English,
The tongue of sea traders, kings, bandits, dissenters,
Ancient and Modern, sap heavy with new strength
Distilled from a fusion of epochs in the sacrament of making;
Dragged into feral life like a child torn out of the darkness
By the conjuring of Shakespeare, of Middleton and Rowley.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 1st. 2011. - 21st. August 2012.

Dark Transfigurations (Original Version, Poem re-written December 2015)..

The Feast of the Dormition
A threnody of weeping
Solemn as winter
The church almost empty

Nails break upon hard wood
A taper gutters
A baby cries

I step aside from the golden curtain
Stumble and shiver
Walk to our home

The silence shimmers

You enter my room
An ivory Angel
White naked breasts
Blatant with summer

A baby cries
We hardly perceive her
I caress your beauty
Hands golden with worship

But you turn from my loving
To comfort the child
I watch your curved shoulders
Weighed down with compassion

I stumble to help you
But sleep comes to part us
A cold hard door
Slammed in the darkness

Love opens my senses
To dying haunting us always
Nails break upon hard wood
A threnody of weeping

Silence returns
Solemn as winter
Night shades out the beauty -  the sweet beauty of life
A taper gutters

I step aside from the golden curtain


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 

August 17th.- 19th.- October 12th. 2012.

Storm Spite, Some Lincolnshire Impressions.

In the middle of this night
Dense winds paw the trees
That sing like prisoners

Whipped branches tap the windows
Lift and splinter slates
As if demanding entry

The broken Norman tower
Sinks slowly back to sand
The sea gulls wheel like vultures

A house proud hunch backed mole
Steers a careful tunnel
Between the upright gravestones

Tall fields of wheat
Buck like giddy seas
The farmer counts black sheep

A tiny dust grey moth
Whirls against the light bulb
The wind beats back the silence

Buffeting the locked doors
The storms last hammer thrust
Slams back upon itself

Shimmering the still air
Dawn nudges the grey horizen
Softly into view

A fragile splendour stirs



Trevor John Karsavin Potter
August 1st. 1968, Market Raisen.

Collage.

elusive
                 shadowy
shifting
deeper than reason
                  the gods
Christianity
                  Holy Fools
The Face on the Icon
The face in the crowd
                   tears
laughter
wise virgins of Strasbourg
Chartres
The Tears of The Virgin
Cathedral glass
                  Buddha
bats in the belfry
the stillness of water
the ship of death
                 and
                 after time
singing
swinging
Saints in the pub
                   in mufti
                   serendipity
uncensored
or poetry
                    a window
cracked
shards of scattered highlights
                    mended
crafted
cut
cannily into elegant patterns
maybe reflecting the truth



Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
9th. August 2012. 

Post Modern Beauty. Revised Version.

Mona Lisa`s face without the smile, yet flawless,
never to be scarred by age or exposure to the sun.
Groomed for the cat walk. The camera`s prying eye.
A Fashion Plate image refracted through amber glass
as the doors swing open wide, spilling the winter air
deep into the pub. She was not seen to enter then, but
for a moment her face flickered in the alcove mirror
like a faded video image.
            
                    Candle light obscured her finest features
with filigree shadow.
                 
                                Unaware for a moment where dreams
begin or vanish, I set down my glass and left the mirrored
alcove, hoping to find her in the swirling crowd.

                                                                                    Was that her 
there, dancing in the shadow?

                                                     I reached out to touch her shoulder;
but only the air seemed tangible, seemed real. I turned back to my seat
defeated.

Her face had quit the mirror.            The door slammed shut in the wind.

A shrill laugh echoed in the street outside.

  



Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
August 5th. - 6th. 2012- June 28th. 2014.        ( From an idea dating back to 1962).

London - 1966.

I broke my promise,
I did not visit you,
I sat all alone in the pub
Nursing my self regard
Like a pampered pop star.
Disturbed by your candid truthfulness
I had become afraid of intimacy.

You waited all day in your room
Staring out of the window at the busy street
Hoping to spy the visitor who never came.
The day cooled and darkened,
A shower sluiced the dirt into rivulets of mud.
The weather mirrored your mood.
Your friends told me that you cried then
But you never showed me your tears,
Nor your anger, nor your love,
But your silence was familiar to me.

The next day I arrived on the doorstep,
Dishevelled, unkempt, just like the weather.
You said nothing, your face was a stern mask,
You turned away from my glances. Frozen out
I snatched some chit-chat with your neighbour,
Snippets of news and some general tittle-tattle.
You never said a word, but hunched by the fire
Studied my every move, listening.

And then you stood up, head lowered, just like a nun,
Or maybe a Pre-Raphaelite priestess nursing a grief.
Gently you brushed my face with your fingers
As you slipped passed me, not speaking, to your room.
I stared at the lino, now noting how worn it was,
Spotted by cigarette burns and greasy yellow stains;
The bare patches looked like sacking.

Your father put down his newspaper.

The door closed softly behind you.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter, May 16th.2008 - August 2nd. 2012.
Revised January 6th. 2013.

The Limner`s Fairy Tale.

Today I ruined your portrait
Re vamped that slab of old pine
With swift fierce brush strokes,
Blotting out the mask of vanity
That so haunted my day lit dreams
Like the shadow of a scream.
I repainted each crack and crevice
That had scored the surface of the slab,
Smearing out each little memory
With brush and palette knife
Until the offences were removed.
But I retained one telling image,
One link with the broken past,
The scar of your snow white face
Scratched deeply into the wood.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.  July 31st. 2012.

Midday in December, Lovers Strolling.

Sunshine in December, ultra bright, ice bright,
A shimmering, an arctic light, searing through the
                     frosty air
Incandescent, scarring the naked eye, scorching
With a cold flame, a direct flame honed to cut
Fiercely through the heart of the day, this drear
                     December noon day
With imagined heat; a burnished glimmer,
                      a false beauty,
A sharp, iridescent strangeness forged to inscribe
A fantasy of summer, a fallacy of hope, deep
Deep into that frozen heart, the core of this day
Like a picture scored into ice, or graffiti scratched,
Etched by a diamond, deep, deep into a polished mirror.

Sunshine in December, incandescent, ice bright;
And we two walking, arm clasped in arm, close
Knit like frightened children, eyes smarting; heads,
Shoulders, pressed together, hunched tight against
The sear wind, the fierce light, the raw edge of winter;
Hunched tight, heads close, arm clasped in arm, we talk,
Talk of our unborn child, our proudest hope, our terror,
                       our future curled
Deep, deep inside the snug, the warm soft home
                       of your body;
Trusting, waiting, curled safe and sound, a true beauty.
Untroubled innocence,               a harbinger of Spring.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
18th. December 2003 - 22nd. July 2012.

Solstice.

               1

Beauty stuns my eyes,
I stare at the scorched horizon.

                2

Retreating out of the dawn world
The old Owl soars
Rising like the Phoenix
Ascending swiftly towards her pyre.

Feathers the colour of embers
Blackened by desolate rain;
His eyes, earth swallowed fires,
Scorn the light of redemption.

In the anguish of a resurrection,
Sought but barely conceived,
He darts deeply into the sunlight
That dazzles, torments, then stuns him.

Retreating into the dark cave
He embraces the ashes of sleep.

                 3

The morning light enthralls me.
Midsummer fires challenge the stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
9th April 1974. - 25th. June 2012.

BBC 2 Henry Vth.

I was extremely disappointed with the new (July 2012) television adaptation of Shakespeare`s play King Henry Vth. The actors were all brilliant, but the major speeches, for which the play is justly famous,  were mutilated, and whole scenes and characters went missing. The night before Agincourt in the French camp was reduced to a few short and barely intelligible tableaux, whereas the night scene in the English camp was played almost complete. Pistol did not get an opportunity to see a Leek let alone eat one, and the Boy apparently survived the battle despite the fact that Shakespeare informs his public that all the boys have been killed. I have never heard Shakespeare`s verse spoken so slowly and so portentously. If the lines had been spoken at the quick fire rate that Shakespeare`s art requires then fewer cuts would have been needed to squeeze the play into the time slot that the BBC had allocated. This was the fault of the direction, not of the actors. I was made so angry by this production that I threw my hat at the television. - Trevor Potter.22/07/12.    

In The Hospital.

Those caustic tears
Cut deep into your features
Like liquid barbed wire.

Sweet aspiration had faltered within you,
Changed by some fierce agency
into a stone.

For a moment the silence contained you.

Then your body cracked open
On an anvil of pain.

You screamed defiance,
Screaming, screaming, screaming,
Nailed to the cross of your solitude.

The ward echoed to your screams.

No one seemed to hear your anguish.
The peremptory remarks of the nurses
Were as bayonets in the hands of soldiers.

Blood dripped into the plastic container
Held between your knees.

Somehow you survived,
A little less innocent,
A little less hopeful,
Seeking a blank consolation
In the stasis of empty spaces.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

December 14th. - 15th. 2010.

Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.1

       
      Distilled fear terrorises this vision of perfection,
A tumult of lonely confusion snagged on the townscape
Like a fraught dream that is yet to materialise, erupt, overwhelm,
      Dissolve the quiet hinterland of Dante`s imagination
      With an abrupt squall of chaotic emotion
As he leans upon the narrow parapet, a courtly, half bidden admirer
Unconscious of danger, the caricaturist of Hell confirmed as a poet
       Entranced by her smile illuminating her beauty
As she steps, momentarily, across the half hidden courtyard
       Of the orderly house that he dare not enter.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter

August 7th. 2009  -  March 23rd. 2010.

An Introduction to this blog...

I was educated by artists and actors, trained in ballet and music. I have written poetry since age 13, but have rarely published. it can take a lifetime for a poem to evolve into something near a fully developed work of art. A painting can take five years to complete. Ideas evolve out of ideas, questions out of questions, until some sort of equilibrium, precarious balance is achieved, and there we have the finished work of art, which often provokes further questions. I have no sense of stability, of permanence, probably because i was born in London during the 2nd. World War. Destroyed buildings, sooty and weed covered, marked the city-scape that I grew up with, and the memory of the stark and ruined streets remains like scar tissue distorting my intellectual horizons.

Matisse

In my opinion, the works of Matisse and Picasso are still the back-bone of modern art.