Just one backward glance
Then you were gone;
The dissonance of city traffic
Distorting the sound of your footsteps;
The edge of your long white scarf
Lifted deftly upon the wind
As you turned the corner.
The shadows have now become
more sharply defined
than just one hour ago.
The distant moon, strangely translucent,
Shines through the mottled cloud
Like an electric light through muslin.
For a moment I clearly recall
The smile of my long dead mother
As she watched two restive children
playing together. I thought I could snatch the moon
If I climbed up onto her shoulder.
When memories fail the world turns bitter
Like a dark night with no bright star;
Flowers that have lost their colour;
Windfalls that rot when handled.
The electric moon continues to silver the rooftops
with a cruel and eerie brilliance
that dazzles my half closed eyes.-
London seems empty without you.
Send me word from your distant homeland
The moment that you are free to do so.
I am already missing your soft voice;
Your pale face creasing with laughter.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
29th. - 30th. December 2013.
2nd. - 31st. January 2014.
Sunday, 29 December 2013
Wednesday, 25 December 2013
Doctor Faustus.(Revised)
Faustus, of course, got it wrong,
As necromancers and licensed profiteers
Invariably do;
Relying, as always, on a dead and musty tradition
To validate nefarious activities;
The back stabbing daring do,
The gilded handshakes with politicians,
The abuse of the poor,
The lack of a moral compass.
Faustus followed this tradition to perfection,
Preferring a night on the tiles
To academic success;
And a dead queen really got his pecker up.
But when all is said and done, he was merely
a lousy businessman, sold on an easy profit
and a chance to hoodwink authority.
After twenty four years of not doing a proper job;
Wasting his petty investments; filching illicit sex;
Mocking God; preening like a cut price cowboy;
He got booted down into Hell
To be steamed in a permanent sauna;
A Health-Spa so ultra exclusive
it could not be hired out by the super rich.
Was this final scene worth all the farce and the fury?
The magic circles? The tattooed arms and wrists?
The well scratched backs? The snuggling up to the devil?
Only our hero could answer these pointed questions
Provided the script was made ready,
But his speechwriter went on a binge one starry night,
Got stabbed in the eye, and could no longer come up
with the goods.
Faustus was left without help, lost in the melee; uptight;
Dumb as a mannequin, ditched and out of sorts;
Cursing the day that he devoted his life
To beach party hijinks and amateur sports.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 23rd. - 25th. - 26th. - 30th. 2013.
As necromancers and licensed profiteers
Invariably do;
Relying, as always, on a dead and musty tradition
To validate nefarious activities;
The back stabbing daring do,
The gilded handshakes with politicians,
The abuse of the poor,
The lack of a moral compass.
Faustus followed this tradition to perfection,
Preferring a night on the tiles
To academic success;
And a dead queen really got his pecker up.
But when all is said and done, he was merely
a lousy businessman, sold on an easy profit
and a chance to hoodwink authority.
After twenty four years of not doing a proper job;
Wasting his petty investments; filching illicit sex;
Mocking God; preening like a cut price cowboy;
He got booted down into Hell
To be steamed in a permanent sauna;
A Health-Spa so ultra exclusive
it could not be hired out by the super rich.
Was this final scene worth all the farce and the fury?
The magic circles? The tattooed arms and wrists?
The well scratched backs? The snuggling up to the devil?
Only our hero could answer these pointed questions
Provided the script was made ready,
But his speechwriter went on a binge one starry night,
Got stabbed in the eye, and could no longer come up
with the goods.
Faustus was left without help, lost in the melee; uptight;
Dumb as a mannequin, ditched and out of sorts;
Cursing the day that he devoted his life
To beach party hijinks and amateur sports.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 23rd. - 25th. - 26th. - 30th. 2013.
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
Autumnal Mood Poem, Bankside London; Lovers Strolling. (A Poem in Three Sections).
1.
November sun
A marigold shrouded in white mist
Trying desperately to bloom.
We walk hand in hand
By the black waters of the sluggish river,
The cold wind cutting through our coats.
Summer has packed her bags and flown due south,
Hitching a lift on the spread wings
Of migrant birds.
We are forced to remain here by the chilly Thames
Safeguarding mementoes of warmer days
Deposited in flimsy boxes.
Faded memorandums scrawled on old note pads
More delicate than sheets of ancient newspaper,
Or dead leaves scattered by the wind.
We walk hand in hand,
A couple in thrall to the internet jungle
But more in love with the raw edged past
Than to the pseudo amnesiac twenty first century.
We walk hand in hand
Our lives reflected in the words of the poets
Who long ago burnished the mirror of language.
2.
Deep in the mud beneath these pavements
The ghost prints of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Fletcher
Have marked our environment forever.
We who keep Theatre alive on Bankside
Are not just the keepers of personal histories
But the full time guardians of civilisation.
We work for the world, not just for ourselves,
Nor the petulant flocks of summertime tourists
Who land in plane loads, take pics, then are gone.
We must toil all winter to keep the light burning
In the dark corners where memory shelters,
Locked in documents unread for centuries.
Memory stored in a fossilised shoe,
Or the scored bones of a baited bear
Dug out of the foreshore.
We walk hand in hand,
Our pockets bulging with renaissance play texts,
The newsroom spreadsheets of their era
Cobbled together on the banks of this river.
To safeguard this heritage we toil night and day,
In fear of the vandals who would desecrate history
If it blocked their access to easy money.
3.
A fragile mist rising over the water
Blurs the facade of a bling mad city,
Office blocks flashing a fluorescent cheapness
Rapier slashing the skin of the darkness.
We watch the twilight redden the dull waves
And talk of Leander alone by the sea
Dreaming of Hero, his priestess lover;
And for a time we forget this iron cold day.
For a time we forget the twenty first century
As we walk hand in hand, lost in each other.
We talk of the poets who fashioned our language
And dream of their past locked in London clay.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 21st. - 27th. - 28th. 2013.
December 4th. - 11th. 2013.
For all my friends at the Rose Theatre, Bankside.
November sun
A marigold shrouded in white mist
Trying desperately to bloom.
We walk hand in hand
By the black waters of the sluggish river,
The cold wind cutting through our coats.
Summer has packed her bags and flown due south,
Hitching a lift on the spread wings
Of migrant birds.
We are forced to remain here by the chilly Thames
Safeguarding mementoes of warmer days
Deposited in flimsy boxes.
Faded memorandums scrawled on old note pads
More delicate than sheets of ancient newspaper,
Or dead leaves scattered by the wind.
We walk hand in hand,
A couple in thrall to the internet jungle
But more in love with the raw edged past
Than to the pseudo amnesiac twenty first century.
We walk hand in hand
Our lives reflected in the words of the poets
Who long ago burnished the mirror of language.
2.
Deep in the mud beneath these pavements
The ghost prints of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Fletcher
Have marked our environment forever.
We who keep Theatre alive on Bankside
Are not just the keepers of personal histories
But the full time guardians of civilisation.
We work for the world, not just for ourselves,
Nor the petulant flocks of summertime tourists
Who land in plane loads, take pics, then are gone.
We must toil all winter to keep the light burning
In the dark corners where memory shelters,
Locked in documents unread for centuries.
Memory stored in a fossilised shoe,
Or the scored bones of a baited bear
Dug out of the foreshore.
We walk hand in hand,
Our pockets bulging with renaissance play texts,
The newsroom spreadsheets of their era
Cobbled together on the banks of this river.
To safeguard this heritage we toil night and day,
In fear of the vandals who would desecrate history
If it blocked their access to easy money.
3.
A fragile mist rising over the water
Blurs the facade of a bling mad city,
Office blocks flashing a fluorescent cheapness
Rapier slashing the skin of the darkness.
We watch the twilight redden the dull waves
And talk of Leander alone by the sea
Dreaming of Hero, his priestess lover;
And for a time we forget this iron cold day.
For a time we forget the twenty first century
As we walk hand in hand, lost in each other.
We talk of the poets who fashioned our language
And dream of their past locked in London clay.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 21st. - 27th. - 28th. 2013.
December 4th. - 11th. 2013.
For all my friends at the Rose Theatre, Bankside.
Thursday, 21 November 2013
A Threnody for Josephine Mary.
1
For one hour only
Snow lay upon the roof
And then the Autumn rains returned
To wash the slates clean.
The first night that we spent together
The temperature had dropped to zero
In the streets outside.
You lay as still as a sleeping cat
Snuggled by the fire
In a ball of fur.
Your hand curled under my hand.
Your warm breath brushing my shoulder.
Your heart tapping like a toy drum.
I held you as close as I dared in the rickety bed,
Held you and watched you melt into sleep
With a kind of nervous wonder.
2.
Last Friday night our daughter was born
after five tough years of IVF treatment
that pushed your body almost to breaking point.-
For one hour only you held her in your arms.
For one hour only you hugged her tight and kissed her.
For one hour only she rested on your breast.
3.
Baby died.
Mummy cried.
The neighbours` children played outside
as usual.
There are no healing words to say.
Words are meaningless today.
Baby died.
Mummy cried.
The neighbours` children played outside.
The world passed by
as usual.
There are no healing words to say.
Words are empty noise today.
Baby died.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 20th. - 21st. 2013. December 31st. 2013.
September 1st. - 2nd. 2014.- October 18th. 2015.
For one hour only
Snow lay upon the roof
And then the Autumn rains returned
To wash the slates clean.
The first night that we spent together
The temperature had dropped to zero
In the streets outside.
You lay as still as a sleeping cat
Snuggled by the fire
In a ball of fur.
Your hand curled under my hand.
Your warm breath brushing my shoulder.
Your heart tapping like a toy drum.
I held you as close as I dared in the rickety bed,
Held you and watched you melt into sleep
With a kind of nervous wonder.
2.
Last Friday night our daughter was born
after five tough years of IVF treatment
that pushed your body almost to breaking point.-
For one hour only you held her in your arms.
For one hour only you hugged her tight and kissed her.
For one hour only she rested on your breast.
3.
Baby died.
Mummy cried.
The neighbours` children played outside
as usual.
There are no healing words to say.
Words are meaningless today.
Baby died.
Mummy cried.
The neighbours` children played outside.
The world passed by
as usual.
There are no healing words to say.
Words are empty noise today.
Baby died.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 20th. - 21st. 2013. December 31st. 2013.
September 1st. - 2nd. 2014.- October 18th. 2015.
Thursday, 14 November 2013
(1). November 11th. 2014. (Longer Revised Version). (2). Mr Baxter.
1.
November 11th. 2014.
The silence drifted over England
Like the smoke from a cannon
After the echoes had faded.
A million million poppies fell from the clouds,
At 11 am preciously.
Small drops of congealed blood
Settling on upturned faces
Pale with the cold.
Fear cuts into the silence a cruel wound
Deeper than grief can stab.
A terror of what might occur
Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after,
Is almost more compelling
Than tears for the maimed and the dead.
The past is the past,
What happened is merely what happened.
The dead have buried the dead
In pits dug where they had fallen
On the killing grounds of France.
Dead Man`s Dump has been levelled.
It is the fear of a future catastrophe
That makes us stand here in silence
Under the blood red snow.
The fear that someone just might
Press down a small red button
And blow the world to pieces.
One moment of lazy thinking
Converting the Earth into ashes.
I bare my head to the poppies.
They are lighter than the breath of children.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 11th. - 13th. 2013.
Eight new lines added, September 23rd. 2017.
------------------------------------------------
2.
Mr. Baxter.
He kept me awake all night with his coughing,
Our Mr. Baxter.
His lungs scraped raw by gas
As he crouched in the slime of the trenches
Waiting to kill or be killed.
These fierce wounds saved his life,
But almost a lifetime later I lay awake screaming
And crying out loud for my mother;
A child unable to sleep
In the shadow of his war.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 14th. 2013.
November 11th. 2014.
The silence drifted over England
Like the smoke from a cannon
After the echoes had faded.
A million million poppies fell from the clouds,
At 11 am preciously.
Small drops of congealed blood
Settling on upturned faces
Pale with the cold.
Fear cuts into the silence a cruel wound
Deeper than grief can stab.
A terror of what might occur
Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after,
Is almost more compelling
Than tears for the maimed and the dead.
The past is the past,
What happened is merely what happened.
The dead have buried the dead
In pits dug where they had fallen
On the killing grounds of France.
Dead Man`s Dump has been levelled.
It is the fear of a future catastrophe
That makes us stand here in silence
Under the blood red snow.
The fear that someone just might
Press down a small red button
And blow the world to pieces.
One moment of lazy thinking
Converting the Earth into ashes.
I bare my head to the poppies.
They are lighter than the breath of children.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 11th. - 13th. 2013.
Eight new lines added, September 23rd. 2017.
------------------------------------------------
2.
Mr. Baxter.
He kept me awake all night with his coughing,
Our Mr. Baxter.
His lungs scraped raw by gas
As he crouched in the slime of the trenches
Waiting to kill or be killed.
These fierce wounds saved his life,
But almost a lifetime later I lay awake screaming
And crying out loud for my mother;
A child unable to sleep
In the shadow of his war.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 14th. 2013.
Friday, 8 November 2013
November 5th.
A labyrinth of neon slashing the sky
With disordered art work
Capricious,
Short lived, but burned on the retina;
Cheap fireworks vandalize the autumn night
For a loud half hour
Then dissipate into swathes of acrid smoke
That leave a foul taste on the tongue.
Wearing my loneliness on my sleeve
Like a torn thread,
I remember you fiercely tugging at my shoulder
As you danced me into the neighbour field
For one last hour of larking.
You did not tell me then your private plans;
A one way ticket to an unnamed destination
Already in your pocket.
A distant bonfire crackling under trees
Excites a party of children,
Your grandson leading the riot
As the rockets fizzle and fall.
I shamble over the neighbour field
Half aware of your shadow ghosting the landscape
Cold as the early frost.
I have wrapped your favourite Winter Coat around me,
But it no longer keeps out the weather.
Old "Thorny" Price, freelance Fairground Barker
And feral mischief maker of my youth,
Your absence cuts me deeper than the East Wind
Shaking red leaves out of branches.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
November 4th. - 7th. - 10th.- 14th. 2013.
With disordered art work
Capricious,
Short lived, but burned on the retina;
Cheap fireworks vandalize the autumn night
For a loud half hour
Then dissipate into swathes of acrid smoke
That leave a foul taste on the tongue.
Wearing my loneliness on my sleeve
Like a torn thread,
I remember you fiercely tugging at my shoulder
As you danced me into the neighbour field
For one last hour of larking.
You did not tell me then your private plans;
A one way ticket to an unnamed destination
Already in your pocket.
A distant bonfire crackling under trees
Excites a party of children,
Your grandson leading the riot
As the rockets fizzle and fall.
I shamble over the neighbour field
Half aware of your shadow ghosting the landscape
Cold as the early frost.
I have wrapped your favourite Winter Coat around me,
But it no longer keeps out the weather.
Old "Thorny" Price, freelance Fairground Barker
And feral mischief maker of my youth,
Your absence cuts me deeper than the East Wind
Shaking red leaves out of branches.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
November 4th. - 7th. - 10th.- 14th. 2013.
Tuesday, 29 October 2013
Benedict Canyon.
The moment that my key turned in the lock
your smile lit up the alcove where you waited;
a hundred watt tungsten light
suddenly turned on.
It is now half a century since that meeting
but, almost every night I think of you;
an incandescent, & yet monochrome, image
burnishing the screen;
or, outgrowing a love affair with Hollywood fiction
my memory reinstates a simpler scene,
a single rose bud glistening in a garden
gauzed in October mist.
Yet, perhaps that time we lingered on the beach
to watch the Dervish flight of madcap starlings
whirl in frenzied clouds above the pier,
scratching shadows on the sun
is more relevant to my understated heartache
than all the other mementoes packed together
In a single embossed album.
You took a new address in Benedict Canyon,
wherein one night psychotic strangers entered
and ambushed you into their savage dream world,
a trap from which there could be no awakening.
My life became a car smash when you died,
a constant swerving into road side barriers,
the slammed brakes high pitched screaming
and head lights turned full on, revealing nothing
except the exit signs.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
20th.-21st.-28th.-29th. October 2013.
17th. 18th. September 2015.
your smile lit up the alcove where you waited;
a hundred watt tungsten light
suddenly turned on.
It is now half a century since that meeting
but, almost every night I think of you;
an incandescent, & yet monochrome, image
burnishing the screen;
or, outgrowing a love affair with Hollywood fiction
my memory reinstates a simpler scene,
a single rose bud glistening in a garden
gauzed in October mist.
Yet, perhaps that time we lingered on the beach
to watch the Dervish flight of madcap starlings
whirl in frenzied clouds above the pier,
scratching shadows on the sun
is more relevant to my understated heartache
than all the other mementoes packed together
In a single embossed album.
You took a new address in Benedict Canyon,
wherein one night psychotic strangers entered
and ambushed you into their savage dream world,
a trap from which there could be no awakening.
My life became a car smash when you died,
a constant swerving into road side barriers,
the slammed brakes high pitched screaming
and head lights turned full on, revealing nothing
except the exit signs.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
20th.-21st.-28th.-29th. October 2013.
17th. 18th. September 2015.
Saturday, 26 October 2013
August 30th. 2013. (New Version).
"Today all Ireland is weeping
But, as usual
No one is listening".
The pain of ancestral hurt
Enforced a sudden despair
When the news came on the radio.
Goodnight sweet Prince,
Frail memory cannot invoke you,
Silence now claims it`s due.
Your poems are rough hewn monuments
Slowly remade by the weather;
The cut throat winds of Ulster.
Even raw granite decays,
Worn down by frost and hail blast;
Fierce rivulets of melt-water.
What hope for human words
To survive the tumult of centuries
However deep the carving?
We can only pray, I suppose,
To hone the voice of our culture
Now that our teacher has left us.
We stood stone still by the radio
Hearing but not believing;
Bereft like orphaned children.
We must now truly keep the faith,
Honour his words of devotion
Whispered on the brink of life,
"Do not be afraid".
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
31st. August, - 26th. October 2013.
This poem was started in County Fermanagh on the day that Seamus Heaney died and completed at The Rose Theatre Bankside two months later. The last line of the poem is a translation into English of the last words of the Great Poet.
But, as usual
No one is listening".
The pain of ancestral hurt
Enforced a sudden despair
When the news came on the radio.
Goodnight sweet Prince,
Frail memory cannot invoke you,
Silence now claims it`s due.
Your poems are rough hewn monuments
Slowly remade by the weather;
The cut throat winds of Ulster.
Even raw granite decays,
Worn down by frost and hail blast;
Fierce rivulets of melt-water.
What hope for human words
To survive the tumult of centuries
However deep the carving?
We can only pray, I suppose,
To hone the voice of our culture
Now that our teacher has left us.
We stood stone still by the radio
Hearing but not believing;
Bereft like orphaned children.
We must now truly keep the faith,
Honour his words of devotion
Whispered on the brink of life,
"Do not be afraid".
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
31st. August, - 26th. October 2013.
This poem was started in County Fermanagh on the day that Seamus Heaney died and completed at The Rose Theatre Bankside two months later. The last line of the poem is a translation into English of the last words of the Great Poet.
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
The tears of a Roma Child kidnapped by the State.
Mummy
Why is my hair blonde and your hair is black?
Mummy
Why are my eyes blue and your eyes are brown?
Mummy
Why is my skin pale and your skin is dark?
Mummy
Why are these strangers staring at me?
Mummy
Why are these strangers staring at you?
Mummy
Why have these strangers put you in chains?
Mummy
Why are these strangers holding me tight?
Mummy
Why won`t these strangers let me hug you?
Mummy
Why won`t these strangers let me kiss you?
Mummy
I don`t like these strangers.
Mummy
I want to kiss you!
Mummy Mummy
Where are they dragging you to?
Mummy Mummy
Where are they dragging me to?
Mummy
They are rough and brutal and rude.
Mummy
Are they hurting you?
Mummy
They are hurting me.
Mummy
They are shouting words I do not understand.
Mummy
I do not like their words.
Mummy
These people sound like animals.
Mummy
What is Greek?
Mummy
What is Roma?
Mummy
Am I Roma? Am I Greek?
Mummy
I want to be Roma. I want to stay at home. I want to be with you.
Mummy
I love you!
Please Please come back to me
My Mummy.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 23rd. 2013.
There has been an outbreak of virulent discrimination against Traveler Folk in the European Union over the last two years. Settlements have been destroyed or partially dismantled by local authorities in Italy and England. People have been deported from France. Blonde haired children have been taken into Care by local authorities in Greece and Ireland. Blonde gypsy children are not uncommon. People have intermarried openly and legally over many centuries. Also a Roma community works as an extended family, and therefore the adoption of children is often undertaken in an informal manner. Roma folk are often more polite than folk from the settled community. .
Why is my hair blonde and your hair is black?
Mummy
Why are my eyes blue and your eyes are brown?
Mummy
Why is my skin pale and your skin is dark?
Mummy
Why are these strangers staring at me?
Mummy
Why are these strangers staring at you?
Mummy
Why have these strangers put you in chains?
Mummy
Why are these strangers holding me tight?
Mummy
Why won`t these strangers let me hug you?
Mummy
Why won`t these strangers let me kiss you?
Mummy
I don`t like these strangers.
Mummy
I want to kiss you!
Mummy Mummy
Where are they dragging you to?
Mummy Mummy
Where are they dragging me to?
Mummy
They are rough and brutal and rude.
Mummy
Are they hurting you?
Mummy
They are hurting me.
Mummy
They are shouting words I do not understand.
Mummy
I do not like their words.
Mummy
These people sound like animals.
Mummy
What is Greek?
Mummy
What is Roma?
Mummy
Am I Roma? Am I Greek?
Mummy
I want to be Roma. I want to stay at home. I want to be with you.
Mummy
I love you!
Please Please come back to me
My Mummy.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 23rd. 2013.
There has been an outbreak of virulent discrimination against Traveler Folk in the European Union over the last two years. Settlements have been destroyed or partially dismantled by local authorities in Italy and England. People have been deported from France. Blonde haired children have been taken into Care by local authorities in Greece and Ireland. Blonde gypsy children are not uncommon. People have intermarried openly and legally over many centuries. Also a Roma community works as an extended family, and therefore the adoption of children is often undertaken in an informal manner. Roma folk are often more polite than folk from the settled community. .
Thursday, 17 October 2013
(1) October Foundlings. (2) Herne Bay Outing.- A sketch. (Revised)
1.
October Foundlings.
You have come back to me too late,
Returning like a sparrow with one good wing;
Head down against the north east wind
To reach a half remembered homeland.
I cannot now distinguish right from wrong,
Or fathom how to solve intractable problems,
Those that we create to harm ourselves.
Perhaps we should simply rest and wait,
Wait for time to heal all aching wounds
With a kind hand, or the undeniable force
Of an unredeemed necessity.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
14th. October 2013.
------------------------------------==
2.
Herne Bay Outing. - A sketch.
Old people staring out to sea,
Companions with an opaque history
Hand in hand;
Cheep mobiles stashed in pockets;
Tissues up their sleeves;
Complexions smooth like uncooked pastry.
They criticise the young`uns on the beach
That pursue a truculent hound dog into the briny;
Or storm across half rotted wooden Breakers
Like a petulant free range army.
The littlest holler and scream at the crashing waves,
Whilst outflanking an ambush by cantankerous Seagulls
As though the flocks were rife with Bubonic Plague.
These are the holiday outings
that I always seem to remember:
October days colder than December:
Salt adding lustre to Shortbread;
Sand drifting into the tea.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
3rd. - 7th. -17th. October 2013.
November 18th. 2014.
October Foundlings.
You have come back to me too late,
Returning like a sparrow with one good wing;
Head down against the north east wind
To reach a half remembered homeland.
I cannot now distinguish right from wrong,
Or fathom how to solve intractable problems,
Those that we create to harm ourselves.
Perhaps we should simply rest and wait,
Wait for time to heal all aching wounds
With a kind hand, or the undeniable force
Of an unredeemed necessity.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
14th. October 2013.
------------------------------------==
2.
Herne Bay Outing. - A sketch.
Old people staring out to sea,
Companions with an opaque history
Hand in hand;
Cheep mobiles stashed in pockets;
Tissues up their sleeves;
Complexions smooth like uncooked pastry.
They criticise the young`uns on the beach
That pursue a truculent hound dog into the briny;
Or storm across half rotted wooden Breakers
Like a petulant free range army.
The littlest holler and scream at the crashing waves,
Whilst outflanking an ambush by cantankerous Seagulls
As though the flocks were rife with Bubonic Plague.
These are the holiday outings
that I always seem to remember:
October days colder than December:
Salt adding lustre to Shortbread;
Sand drifting into the tea.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
3rd. - 7th. -17th. October 2013.
November 18th. 2014.
Friday, 11 October 2013
Two Poems for Children. (1) The Wodwo. (2) For voice and Percussion.
1.
The Wodwo.
I am the Wodwo.
I am neither a tree nor a man,
Sand nor water.
I am neither spirit nor corporeal,
Earth nor air.
Wild as the Wilderness
I predate archeology.
I am the Wodwo,
Entirely my true self,
Nothing more
And nothing less.
I am certainly not a vortex,
Nor a vacuum,
I am really truly here.
I am the Wodwo.
I whisper through the bare boughs
Wordlessly,
And always at midnight
When the moon is full.
I learn all your secrets
But I can never speak them.
Sometimes I drop dead leaves
To spoil your dreams.
I am the Wodwo,
Watch out for me,
It may be entirely possible
That I am not a stranger,
Nor a shadow in your mind.
I may be the authentic You.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. 2013.
---------------------------------------
2.
For Voice and Percussion.
Who stole the silences?
Who stole the silences?
Who stole
the Wodwo`s soul
From the moorlands
And the woodlands
In a sack
Upon bent back
Running running
footsteps cunning
Fences leaping
Footpaths thrumming
Through the sleeping village creeping
Into shuttered bedrooms peeping
Overriding our deep dreaming
Balancing on thumbs and kettledrums
Balancing hovering
Swaying fluttering
Zooming fumbling
Cringing in fear
in a statuette`s ear
Out of the countryside retreating
Into the godless city creeping
Down the dingy back streets sneaking
Through the midnight shadows fleeting
Dark ways walking
Byways stalking
Half forgotten churchyards haunting?
Listen hard
and you will hear
Phantom footsteps
softly echoing
Diminishing out of our time.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th. 1964. - October 11th. 2013.
The Wodwo.
I am the Wodwo.
I am neither a tree nor a man,
Sand nor water.
I am neither spirit nor corporeal,
Earth nor air.
Wild as the Wilderness
I predate archeology.
I am the Wodwo,
Entirely my true self,
Nothing more
And nothing less.
I am certainly not a vortex,
Nor a vacuum,
I am really truly here.
I am the Wodwo.
I whisper through the bare boughs
Wordlessly,
And always at midnight
When the moon is full.
I learn all your secrets
But I can never speak them.
Sometimes I drop dead leaves
To spoil your dreams.
I am the Wodwo,
Watch out for me,
It may be entirely possible
That I am not a stranger,
Nor a shadow in your mind.
I may be the authentic You.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. 2013.
---------------------------------------
2.
For Voice and Percussion.
Who stole the silences?
Who stole the silences?
Who stole
the Wodwo`s soul
From the moorlands
And the woodlands
In a sack
Upon bent back
Running running
footsteps cunning
Fences leaping
Footpaths thrumming
Through the sleeping village creeping
Into shuttered bedrooms peeping
Overriding our deep dreaming
Balancing on thumbs and kettledrums
Balancing hovering
Swaying fluttering
Zooming fumbling
Cringing in fear
in a statuette`s ear
Out of the countryside retreating
Into the godless city creeping
Down the dingy back streets sneaking
Through the midnight shadows fleeting
Dark ways walking
Byways stalking
Half forgotten churchyards haunting?
Listen hard
and you will hear
Phantom footsteps
softly echoing
Diminishing out of our time.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 19th. 1964. - October 11th. 2013.
Friday, 4 October 2013
(1) October Sketch Book, Impressions of The Kent Coast. (New Version) (2) Duff Translations.(Revised Version).
1.
October Sketch Book, Impressions of The Kent Coast.
The purple flowers of Autumn
Stand tall
On the salt scarred cliff
Like ragged vagabonds.
Bees hovering in the muggy air,
Sluggish,
Heavy,
Mourn the loss of summer.
Time weighs them down
But rest is not an option,
There is still too much to do.
The well appointed hive,
Clogged and sticky,
Emits a sullen music.
The old Queen
Gross,
Unwieldy,
Locked into the centre
Under the weight of her tribe.
She barely moves,
This crucible of the hive
Locked deep in tumultuous darkness,
Enslaved to a cruel fecundity.
Outside her narrow home
The purple flowers of Autumn
Sway in a soft sea breeze.
Small children flick the petals with fidgety fingers,
But do not attempt to pick them.
These children are galvanised by other priorities,
Games and parties; pleasure their reason for living.
They are busy rushing down onto the beach;
Flocking like querulous geese scudding the estuary;
Or a petulant swarm escaping over the shore
Chasing an inchoate dream.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
4th. - 5th. - 6th. - 7th. - 9th. October 2013.
Loosely linked impressions of Herne Bay.
-------------------------------------------
2.
Duff Translations.
You recreate my poem
As you read it,
Memorize it,
Making it your own.
My carefully structured cadences
Hacked out of recognition,
Down graded,
Swiped,
Turned inside out,
No longer mine.
My clear straight forward imagery
Graffitied by your word games;
Your Catch All
List of sayings,
Tabloid speak.
A collage of random news bites
Inconsequently flung together
That mutate like Chinese Whispers
In your mind,
Or
Strange heretical flowers
Abandoned to grow wild
In a once well ordered
Garden,
The dreamscape I designed,
But
As printed on the page
My carefully structured poem
Remains entirely mine,
Inviolate.
It is simply hashed up in your head
When you wilfully misread it;
Customize it for your schemes:
And despite your worst endeavours
My words retain integrity,
My mind remains unchanged.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
16th. - 19th. August, 26th. September, 4th. October 2013.
Sunday, 29 September 2013
(1) Autumn Travails, Original Version (2) A Fragment.
1.
Autumn Travails. Original Version.
Perhaps we are already in mourning.
The passengers all appear to be wearing black.
We huddle inside this commuter train,
Jolted unceremoniously towards London
Like a jumble of nondescript freight.
As has often been the case in my life
I appear to be the odd one out.
I am dressed in grey.
Black is too formal for me.
October will begin tomorrow.
The golden month with the cruel edge,
A knife in the belly of the old year
Slowly draining the last warm dregs of vibrant colour.
Even now the sun grows mellow, indistinct;
Soon it will vanish completely,
Submerged under a bruise of Autumn clouds
Mauling the pastel skies.
The sun will remain dead to us.
The sun will remain dead to us.
Dead until the raw winds of March
Worry the gaunt trees
Out of their gnarled sleep;
Worry the dead colours back into life.
The sun will remain dead to us.
Dead until the dark bruise disperses
And warm blood pulses through the healed veins,
Pumped by a vigorous heart.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 28th. - 29th. 2013.
February 11th. 2014.
---------------------------------------------------
2.
A Fragment.
The fragility of moonlight frosting your face
Reminds me of swans drifting through mist
Upon still waters
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
May 10th. 1984. - September 29th. 2013.
Autumn Travails. Original Version.
Perhaps we are already in mourning.
The passengers all appear to be wearing black.
We huddle inside this commuter train,
Jolted unceremoniously towards London
Like a jumble of nondescript freight.
As has often been the case in my life
I appear to be the odd one out.
I am dressed in grey.
Black is too formal for me.
October will begin tomorrow.
The golden month with the cruel edge,
A knife in the belly of the old year
Slowly draining the last warm dregs of vibrant colour.
Even now the sun grows mellow, indistinct;
Soon it will vanish completely,
Submerged under a bruise of Autumn clouds
Mauling the pastel skies.
The sun will remain dead to us.
The sun will remain dead to us.
Dead until the raw winds of March
Worry the gaunt trees
Out of their gnarled sleep;
Worry the dead colours back into life.
The sun will remain dead to us.
Dead until the dark bruise disperses
And warm blood pulses through the healed veins,
Pumped by a vigorous heart.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 28th. - 29th. 2013.
February 11th. 2014.
---------------------------------------------------
2.
A Fragment.
The fragility of moonlight frosting your face
Reminds me of swans drifting through mist
Upon still waters
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
May 10th. 1984. - September 29th. 2013.
Sunday, 22 September 2013
Loss.
Tasting your wine
Inconsolable
Stung by bitterness
I think of you
Holding the child towards me
My Love
Your absence darkens my world view
An iron curtain shutting down
The light that I had always lived by
As though I was not there
Tonight I miss you talking to me
Enigmatic
Soulful
Almost priest like when you lied
I would note the oblique lilt of your laughter
Those times you sorted dried flowers in the kitchen
Your chair tilted back
The child asleep in your arms
It is too hard - too hard - to live alone
Bearing the weight of a memory
That
I cannot now shrug off
With the ease that I shredded your photo
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
22nd. September 2013.
Part sketched 4th. - 7th. December 2012.
Inconsolable
Stung by bitterness
I think of you
Holding the child towards me
My Love
Your absence darkens my world view
An iron curtain shutting down
The light that I had always lived by
As though I was not there
Tonight I miss you talking to me
Enigmatic
Soulful
Almost priest like when you lied
I would note the oblique lilt of your laughter
Those times you sorted dried flowers in the kitchen
Your chair tilted back
The child asleep in your arms
It is too hard - too hard - to live alone
Bearing the weight of a memory
That
I cannot now shrug off
With the ease that I shredded your photo
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
22nd. September 2013.
Part sketched 4th. - 7th. December 2012.
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
(1) At First Sight. (2) Untitled.
1.
At First Sight.
The moment I arrived at the Theatre
Your smile revoked the dark spaces
With a fierce light
That for that moment dislodged cold reason.
I wanted to kiss you,
But your smile also flickered a warning,
An indiscrete Stop - Go innuendo
Designed to repel hasty actions.
I stood stock still in the door way
Fearing examination by spotlight,
My new script already waste paper.
Love is not so easily accomplished.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
17th. September 2013.
Note: I mean "Indiscrete" not "Indiscreet".
------------------------------------------
2.
Untitled.
September clouds
Dirty washing
Grey as a bat`s wing
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
14th. September 2013.
At First Sight.
The moment I arrived at the Theatre
Your smile revoked the dark spaces
With a fierce light
That for that moment dislodged cold reason.
I wanted to kiss you,
But your smile also flickered a warning,
An indiscrete Stop - Go innuendo
Designed to repel hasty actions.
I stood stock still in the door way
Fearing examination by spotlight,
My new script already waste paper.
Love is not so easily accomplished.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
17th. September 2013.
Note: I mean "Indiscrete" not "Indiscreet".
------------------------------------------
2.
Untitled.
September clouds
Dirty washing
Grey as a bat`s wing
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
14th. September 2013.
Friday, 6 September 2013
Dream Laden Spring. (First, rejected version)).
The morning after we celebrated your birthday
the wind turned mild;
Wild daffodils rocked like dreaming children
beside the quiet river;
Skeletal trees ducked and weaved under clouds
That drifted silent as swans.
Winter had slippered off for an early sleep over
On the peaks of far away mountains.
And then, as was usual at this time of year,
Numerous rumours awoke and swiftly flourished
Among old wives crouched around the camp fire;
A cornucopia of worried Fortune Tellers
Whispering informally together.-
The phoenix was seen alive upon a Monday,
She zig zagged through a galaxy of branches
To scorch dead wood; scintillate the nascent blossom
Into life with sacred fire.
A unicorn, tamed by a young girl`s simple kindness,
Pranced in a distant meadow for one whole Sunday,
Then misted away in a trice like April snow.
A dog faced boy was found half dead in a cellar;
A wolf brought shame on a black eyed red cloaked virgin;
A milch cow cited Homer to the vicar;
A cockerel outmanoeuvred a ravenous vixen;
A horse gave birth to a cat.
Tall tales that were clutched to old hearts like tainted silver
Now that the cold time was over.
But we could not rest, you and I.
We could not hide our fears in a corner.
We had known too much pain
that morning in early December
When the surgery failed to save
Our unborn daughter.
We could not join the dreamers, you and I,
But remained inside your ancient Gypsy Wagon
Curled up tight together
Listening to the changes in the weather:
Anticipating a knock of muffled heartbeats;
Your doctor`s benediction; a nascent tear;
A sharp kick in the belly;
The new life turning, yearning deep within you,
The longed for twins conceived so quickly after
The passing of their sister.
We do not care for the strange talk of the dreamers:
This new, unexpected, late in life reality
Demands our full attention.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 5th. - 6th. - 9th. 2013. From an idea sketched March 10th. 2011.
October 21st.2013.
Prefered rewritten version published June 15th. 2016..
the wind turned mild;
Wild daffodils rocked like dreaming children
beside the quiet river;
Skeletal trees ducked and weaved under clouds
That drifted silent as swans.
Winter had slippered off for an early sleep over
On the peaks of far away mountains.
And then, as was usual at this time of year,
Numerous rumours awoke and swiftly flourished
Among old wives crouched around the camp fire;
A cornucopia of worried Fortune Tellers
Whispering informally together.-
The phoenix was seen alive upon a Monday,
She zig zagged through a galaxy of branches
To scorch dead wood; scintillate the nascent blossom
Into life with sacred fire.
A unicorn, tamed by a young girl`s simple kindness,
Pranced in a distant meadow for one whole Sunday,
Then misted away in a trice like April snow.
A dog faced boy was found half dead in a cellar;
A wolf brought shame on a black eyed red cloaked virgin;
A milch cow cited Homer to the vicar;
A cockerel outmanoeuvred a ravenous vixen;
A horse gave birth to a cat.
Tall tales that were clutched to old hearts like tainted silver
Now that the cold time was over.
But we could not rest, you and I.
We could not hide our fears in a corner.
We had known too much pain
that morning in early December
When the surgery failed to save
Our unborn daughter.
We could not join the dreamers, you and I,
But remained inside your ancient Gypsy Wagon
Curled up tight together
Listening to the changes in the weather:
Anticipating a knock of muffled heartbeats;
Your doctor`s benediction; a nascent tear;
A sharp kick in the belly;
The new life turning, yearning deep within you,
The longed for twins conceived so quickly after
The passing of their sister.
We do not care for the strange talk of the dreamers:
This new, unexpected, late in life reality
Demands our full attention.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 5th. - 6th. - 9th. 2013. From an idea sketched March 10th. 2011.
October 21st.2013.
Prefered rewritten version published June 15th. 2016..
Saturday, 31 August 2013
(1) August 30th. 2013.(2) Late May Morning.(3) Farewell. (4). Repost.
1.
August 30th. 2013.
Today all Ireland is weeping
But, as usual,
No one is listening.
Goodnight sweet Prince,
True memory cannot invoke you,
Silence now claims it`s due.
Your poems are rough hewn
monuments
Slowly remade by the weather.
We must not, for any reason, be afraid.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 31st. 2013.
Last line added September 4th. 2013.
-------------------------------------
2.
Late May Morning.
Translucent leaves
Green glass on black boughs
Absorbing the sun
Exposing the bones of the world
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 31st. 2013.
-----------------------------------------
3
Farewell.
Ending quietly
A small leaf dropped
On a moonlit pond
Causing no ripples
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 11th. 2013.
----------------------------------------
4.
Reposte.
My ex wife snarled
"Mujak"
as I cleared the household rubbish.
But she never danced a single night
with Karsavina,
And she could not dig up cabbages.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 3rd. 2013.
August 30th. 2013.
Today all Ireland is weeping
But, as usual,
No one is listening.
Goodnight sweet Prince,
True memory cannot invoke you,
Silence now claims it`s due.
Your poems are rough hewn
monuments
Slowly remade by the weather.
We must not, for any reason, be afraid.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 31st. 2013.
Last line added September 4th. 2013.
-------------------------------------
2.
Late May Morning.
Translucent leaves
Green glass on black boughs
Absorbing the sun
Exposing the bones of the world
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 31st. 2013.
-----------------------------------------
3
Farewell.
Ending quietly
A small leaf dropped
On a moonlit pond
Causing no ripples
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 11th. 2013.
----------------------------------------
4.
Reposte.
My ex wife snarled
"Mujak"
as I cleared the household rubbish.
But she never danced a single night
with Karsavina,
And she could not dig up cabbages.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 3rd. 2013.
Monday, 19 August 2013
The Rose
The Rose of all our hopes
Lies deep in Southwark mud
A hostage
A smothered dream
Crushed
But not forsaken
I lift it from the mud
Just like a broken keepsake
And offer it to you
A gift of love
A token
Please take it from my hand
And plant it in your Heart
Your living garden
There is life locked in these roots
This gnarled and broken stem
Old life we still can honour
Care for
Cherish
So please accept this gift
This sacred bond that links
Historic generations -
The Britons with the Greeks -
The Renaissance with the Modern
Please take it from my hand
To nurture in your Heart
That it may prosper
Flourish
Grow tall
And once more blossom
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
19th. - 31st. August 2013.
For my friends at The Rose Theatre, Bankside.
Lies deep in Southwark mud
A hostage
A smothered dream
Crushed
But not forsaken
I lift it from the mud
Just like a broken keepsake
And offer it to you
A gift of love
A token
Please take it from my hand
And plant it in your Heart
Your living garden
There is life locked in these roots
This gnarled and broken stem
Old life we still can honour
Care for
Cherish
So please accept this gift
This sacred bond that links
Historic generations -
The Britons with the Greeks -
The Renaissance with the Modern
Please take it from my hand
To nurture in your Heart
That it may prosper
Flourish
Grow tall
And once more blossom
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
19th. - 31st. August 2013.
For my friends at The Rose Theatre, Bankside.
Sunday, 18 August 2013
(1) To J M the D T`s. (2) Fatal Secrets.
1.
To J M the D T`s, ie, Victimized by a Fashion Queen.
Blue hair,
Those orange eyes
Tigerish, Open;
Curving lips seethe through the suburbs
Like Smoke.
Jack Frost
Supersedes Not
Your Sharpness: Nor can
Quick ore burn deeper than your
Silences.
You turn,
I follow. You glance
Hypnotic Curses through me
Making ME perform YOUR Measures,
Spin Until I fall.
But soon
The strings will SNAP
Beneath YOUR Fingers,
Jangling notes in your brain`s
Museum:
Then I`ll DANCE..................
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 14th. 1968. Slightly revised January 8th. 1973.
--------------------------------------------
2.
Fatal Secrets.
Consigned to anonymity
The skeleton of King Richard the Third -
A wrecked oak lying in the undergrowth
The top hacked through by a crude axe
Branches snagged
Caught in the foetid marsh
The last leaf fallen
Even now
The final question has not been ventured -
The most important information
Lodged in the Mortician`s Pending Tray
His little black box -
We need to know what happened in The Tower
That sultry summer evening
But so far no one has blabbed
Leaning forward to stare into the vortex
The heroic patience of the Archaeologists
Certainly impresses
Keeps us on our toes -
But the harsh light of forensic technology
Has yet to guide us closer to the truth
Or laser open an unexpected clue
Crouched beside the tangled hedgerow
That masks the ruined oak tree
I watch a single Kestrel swoop and glide
High above the edge of Bosworth Field -
No other signs of life disrupt the landscape
Irk the mist drenched morning
Except perhaps a slight breeze smudged by woodsmoke
Nudging some nearby thorns
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
12th. - 13th. August 2013.
To J M the D T`s, ie, Victimized by a Fashion Queen.
Blue hair,
Those orange eyes
Tigerish, Open;
Curving lips seethe through the suburbs
Like Smoke.
Jack Frost
Supersedes Not
Your Sharpness: Nor can
Quick ore burn deeper than your
Silences.
You turn,
I follow. You glance
Hypnotic Curses through me
Making ME perform YOUR Measures,
Spin Until I fall.
But soon
The strings will SNAP
Beneath YOUR Fingers,
Jangling notes in your brain`s
Museum:
Then I`ll DANCE..................
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 14th. 1968. Slightly revised January 8th. 1973.
--------------------------------------------
2.
Fatal Secrets.
Consigned to anonymity
The skeleton of King Richard the Third -
A wrecked oak lying in the undergrowth
The top hacked through by a crude axe
Branches snagged
Caught in the foetid marsh
The last leaf fallen
Even now
The final question has not been ventured -
The most important information
Lodged in the Mortician`s Pending Tray
His little black box -
We need to know what happened in The Tower
That sultry summer evening
But so far no one has blabbed
Leaning forward to stare into the vortex
The heroic patience of the Archaeologists
Certainly impresses
Keeps us on our toes -
But the harsh light of forensic technology
Has yet to guide us closer to the truth
Or laser open an unexpected clue
Crouched beside the tangled hedgerow
That masks the ruined oak tree
I watch a single Kestrel swoop and glide
High above the edge of Bosworth Field -
No other signs of life disrupt the landscape
Irk the mist drenched morning
Except perhaps a slight breeze smudged by woodsmoke
Nudging some nearby thorns
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
12th. - 13th. August 2013.
Tuesday, 13 August 2013
Anne. (Revised Version).
1
Anne,
These photographs do you no justice,
They are the evidence for the prosecution
With no defence allowed.
A scribble of black and white lies
Disrupting a blank surface.
They mock you with their lack of colour,
Lack of life.
They are the smoke that rises out of dry ice;
Ashes cold and brittle.
2
There is no sense of you permitted.
No tangible presence. No true Anne
Revealed, printed on this yellowing paper
Designed to fade, to fall apart, become dust.
One Album hoarding a lifetime in snapshots,
Each image besmirched with a layer of gloss
Now split and cracked like a shattered window.
3
Your truth is not locked in this Photograph Album,
Entombed in implacable black and white.
Not the dance of your eyes; not your voice;
Not the raw young fire of your body;
That catastrophe known as your mind.
These photographs fabricate uncertain epitaphs,
Simplistic memos chalked on a slate.
4
Your kisses tasted of Gauloises,
And sometimes of whiskey and gin.
Your laugh leaped out of the darkness
Scorching the East London night.
Your fingers danced in my open hand
Like a troupe of feral Gypsies.
You teased me with your poetry,
Cracking down on my conventional dreams.
5
Anne, You fracked the mould;
Hijacked my heart;
Kick started my gung - ho high life;
Showed me the ways of the world.
These prints do not compliment memory,
They can only make certain my grief.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
5th. - 6th. - 13th. - 14th.- 31st. August 2013.
(Dedicated to A S, my long lost friend).
Anne,
These photographs do you no justice,
They are the evidence for the prosecution
With no defence allowed.
A scribble of black and white lies
Disrupting a blank surface.
They mock you with their lack of colour,
Lack of life.
They are the smoke that rises out of dry ice;
Ashes cold and brittle.
2
There is no sense of you permitted.
No tangible presence. No true Anne
Revealed, printed on this yellowing paper
Designed to fade, to fall apart, become dust.
One Album hoarding a lifetime in snapshots,
Each image besmirched with a layer of gloss
Now split and cracked like a shattered window.
3
Your truth is not locked in this Photograph Album,
Entombed in implacable black and white.
Not the dance of your eyes; not your voice;
Not the raw young fire of your body;
That catastrophe known as your mind.
These photographs fabricate uncertain epitaphs,
Simplistic memos chalked on a slate.
4
Your kisses tasted of Gauloises,
And sometimes of whiskey and gin.
Your laugh leaped out of the darkness
Scorching the East London night.
Your fingers danced in my open hand
Like a troupe of feral Gypsies.
You teased me with your poetry,
Cracking down on my conventional dreams.
5
Anne, You fracked the mould;
Hijacked my heart;
Kick started my gung - ho high life;
Showed me the ways of the world.
These prints do not compliment memory,
They can only make certain my grief.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
5th. - 6th. - 13th. - 14th.- 31st. August 2013.
(Dedicated to A S, my long lost friend).
Friday, 2 August 2013
(1) Moon. (2) The Pianist. (Revised Version).
1.
Moon.
The Moon and I are pals.
She rests in the branches of my apple tree
Like a white fruit;
An Arctic Owl,
Her hooded eyes the texture of raw shale,
Her smile a curved shadow,
Her laugh is silent.
In her presence I keep no secret.
My transgression starkly exposed
Under the spotlight.
The surgeon`s hatchet honed.
I have sensed her forensic gaze skewer me as I sleep;
Slicing into my dream world
Like twin diamond points
Polished to kill.
But she commits no murder this time,
She is merely a cool observer,
A non judgemental spy. -
My lover watches the Moon for half the night,
But she is not an expert astronomer.
I have been a rover more years than I dare remember;
Living from moment to moment,
From hour to hour;
Grasping unlikely luck with both strong hands.
The Moon, as ever, the only reliable witness,
Impaled in the old apple tree,
Unable to alter her view point;
Unable to find her tongue.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 12th. - 28th. - 29th. 2013.
Opening two lines only, September 1971.
----------------------------------------------------
2.
The Pianist. (Revised Version).
You play every note right
But do not touch my heart
The soul lives in the gaps
Between the plunging octaves
Haunts the empty spaces
The sudden depths of silence
You play every note right
But never get the point
The beauty of life is found within
our everyday mistakes
So please pack up the sheet music
Before you come to bed
You have played every note right
Staccato rhythms knock me dead
But if truth were told Miss Horowitz
Your style is a touch too smart
I had rather get you in the raw
Than refined by Liszt and Bach
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 2nd. - 3rd. - 4th. 2013.
April 23rd. 2015.
Wednesday, 17 July 2013
(1) The Destruction of a Simple Man. (2) Stages of Cruelty.
1.
The Destruction of a Simple Man.
The empty space on the Gallery wall;
A hole in the heart;
A world of tears.
The thief was a pyromaniac;
He danced in fire.
His need to burn the painting
Killed the artist
With the strike of a single match.
The kidnapped painting,
Cut out, transported,
Pressed flat inside a suitcase
Half a year,
Suddenly revealed to the midday sun
A new darkness, a pile of ash;
A lost child;
A question mark
Scratched on the wall of time.
(The suitcase was preserved,
even cherished,
For the thief it had some purpose,
some meaning;
It could be used until worn out
Like a raincoat, a pair of sturdy Brogues).
It should be noted
The thief was a practical man,
His priorities simple;
Not to be caught in the act;
Not to face The Beak;
Not to go down for decades.
Self preservation his only mantra,
His hour had not yet come.
He could not sell the painting
But he had to save his skin,
Preserve his aching joints.
Even Hitler knew much better:
He razed the Cathedral at Coventry
To clarify one or two points;
The eradication of rock hard history;
The nihilism of naked power.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 30th. - 31st. - June 1st. - July 16th. - September 3rd. 2013.
-------------------------------------------------------------
2.
Stages of Cruelty.
Under the cats paw
The grey mouse shrieks
Under the Vets needle
Moggy falls asleep
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 2nd. 2013.
The Destruction of a Simple Man.
The empty space on the Gallery wall;
A hole in the heart;
A world of tears.
The thief was a pyromaniac;
He danced in fire.
His need to burn the painting
Killed the artist
With the strike of a single match.
The kidnapped painting,
Cut out, transported,
Pressed flat inside a suitcase
Half a year,
Suddenly revealed to the midday sun
A new darkness, a pile of ash;
A lost child;
A question mark
Scratched on the wall of time.
(The suitcase was preserved,
even cherished,
For the thief it had some purpose,
some meaning;
It could be used until worn out
Like a raincoat, a pair of sturdy Brogues).
It should be noted
The thief was a practical man,
His priorities simple;
Not to be caught in the act;
Not to face The Beak;
Not to go down for decades.
Self preservation his only mantra,
His hour had not yet come.
He could not sell the painting
But he had to save his skin,
Preserve his aching joints.
Even Hitler knew much better:
He razed the Cathedral at Coventry
To clarify one or two points;
The eradication of rock hard history;
The nihilism of naked power.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 30th. - 31st. - June 1st. - July 16th. - September 3rd. 2013.
-------------------------------------------------------------
2.
Stages of Cruelty.
Under the cats paw
The grey mouse shrieks
Under the Vets needle
Moggy falls asleep
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 2nd. 2013.
Monday, 8 July 2013
(1).Pastoral. (2). The Kill.
1.
Pastoral.
The rabbit listens, and
Hearing no sharp sounds,
No thrashings in air,
Moves deftly, swiftly
With no trick, no fear,
Into the wind flecked lace
Of the meadow;
He savours the cold spring morning;
The sobs of the streams are music to his ears;
His leaps and runs barely shake the grasses.
Suddenly he stops, half startled,
Alert, but not yet afraid.
He sits stock still, a grey stone;
His heart now fiercely racing,
His dark eyes fixed, intent.
The distant farmhouse seems to be asleep.
The distant lane dips empty between trees.
The distant sheep bunch silent in their field.
Poised in the mouth of the wind
On wings as still as ice
The fierce hawk hangs.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1967. - January 13th. 1972. - July 8th. 2013.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.
The Kill.
Deep in the moonlit valley
All life is hushed;
Nothing stirs, nothing wakens,
Only the quiet breathing
Of the wind.
Like a scalpel a rodent`s cry
Rips open the womb of night.-
Wing beats thrusting upward
Crush the wild sound.
Scratched on air a living shadow
The young hawk soars
Riding the breath of the wind:-
For a moment the wood is alive
With a hundred thousand voices
Shrieking alarm.
A dark shape cuts the pocked face
Of the dumb cold moon
Then drops out of sight........
For a time the danger has passed.
The panic subsides.
Slowly the raw wound closes.
Trevor John karsavin Potter.
June 4th. 1974. - June 27th. - July 8th. 2013.
Pastoral.
The rabbit listens, and
Hearing no sharp sounds,
No thrashings in air,
Moves deftly, swiftly
With no trick, no fear,
Into the wind flecked lace
Of the meadow;
He savours the cold spring morning;
The sobs of the streams are music to his ears;
His leaps and runs barely shake the grasses.
Suddenly he stops, half startled,
Alert, but not yet afraid.
He sits stock still, a grey stone;
His heart now fiercely racing,
His dark eyes fixed, intent.
The distant farmhouse seems to be asleep.
The distant lane dips empty between trees.
The distant sheep bunch silent in their field.
Poised in the mouth of the wind
On wings as still as ice
The fierce hawk hangs.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1967. - January 13th. 1972. - July 8th. 2013.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2.
The Kill.
Deep in the moonlit valley
All life is hushed;
Nothing stirs, nothing wakens,
Only the quiet breathing
Of the wind.
Like a scalpel a rodent`s cry
Rips open the womb of night.-
Wing beats thrusting upward
Crush the wild sound.
Scratched on air a living shadow
The young hawk soars
Riding the breath of the wind:-
For a moment the wood is alive
With a hundred thousand voices
Shrieking alarm.
A dark shape cuts the pocked face
Of the dumb cold moon
Then drops out of sight........
For a time the danger has passed.
The panic subsides.
Slowly the raw wound closes.
Trevor John karsavin Potter.
June 4th. 1974. - June 27th. - July 8th. 2013.
Thursday, 27 June 2013
(1) Girls at a Salford bus Stop.revised version (2) The Eternal Round-a-bout. (3) Love Is Not What We Do.
1.
Girls at a Salford Bus Stop.(Revised Version).
Where on Earth have they gone to
Those teenagers waiting in line
for the Saturday morning trolley?
Waiting dumb struck, quiet as dead
mice. There they were, close by the
factory gate, Sitting in line high up on
the red brick wall Like a row of broken
bottles, Waiting for the Artist to sketch
them, Or a schoolboy to throw a stone.
Where on Earth have they gone to
Now that the painting is done, Framed
and on public display, as their white knees
were That long ago Saturday morning
Before the boyfriends came to call
And the infants kicked up a fuss? Perhaps
they have been put out to grass, Like so
many of their generation, Now that their
era has passed. Or perhaps they have simply de-
camped To the elegant charms of Southport,
Where they now wait in line for tea. Or maybe
like the cat eyed Artist, Who stood with his note -
book and pen, Observing their every movement,
Have long since chucked out their glad rags
And dropped off their clogs in the dust.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 30th. - July 1st. - 7th. 2013.
Recalling some quirky paintings by Lowry.
----------------------------------------
2
The Eternal Round-a-bout.
Love drops in like a Sky Diver
First there were no roses
Now there are a million
All things changed in an instant
Just like you and me Babe
First we were
Then we were not
And now here we go again
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
26th. June 2013.
--------------------------------
3.
Love Is Not What We Do.
Love is not what we do
It is what we are;
Let me explain
Before we melt away
Into wind and rain
to become what we were
Before what we are
And so go round again,
Love is not what we do
It is what we are.
I should`nt repeat myself
Or I might be packed up on the
shelf but
To remind you while I remain,
Love is not what we do
It is what we are;
Now let me explain
Before we melt away
And vanish down the drain,
Love is everything
That we live and do
and is good and true
About me and you,
And so, to go round again,
It is all that we are and do,
Not what we were.
So far So good,
All this seems true,
but when there is no more love
What can we do?
It will mean goodbye to me
And also goodbye to you;
So let me explain
Before we melt away
Into wind and rain
And do not come back again
As me and you,
Or indeed as what we were,
Love is not what we do
It is what we are,
So good So far
tra la.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
3rd. - 7th. March 2013.
Girls at a Salford Bus Stop.(Revised Version).
Where on Earth have they gone to
Those teenagers waiting in line
for the Saturday morning trolley?
Waiting dumb struck, quiet as dead
mice. There they were, close by the
factory gate, Sitting in line high up on
the red brick wall Like a row of broken
bottles, Waiting for the Artist to sketch
them, Or a schoolboy to throw a stone.
Where on Earth have they gone to
Now that the painting is done, Framed
and on public display, as their white knees
were That long ago Saturday morning
Before the boyfriends came to call
And the infants kicked up a fuss? Perhaps
they have been put out to grass, Like so
many of their generation, Now that their
era has passed. Or perhaps they have simply de-
camped To the elegant charms of Southport,
Where they now wait in line for tea. Or maybe
like the cat eyed Artist, Who stood with his note -
book and pen, Observing their every movement,
Have long since chucked out their glad rags
And dropped off their clogs in the dust.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 30th. - July 1st. - 7th. 2013.
Recalling some quirky paintings by Lowry.
----------------------------------------
2
The Eternal Round-a-bout.
Love drops in like a Sky Diver
First there were no roses
Now there are a million
All things changed in an instant
Just like you and me Babe
First we were
Then we were not
And now here we go again
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
26th. June 2013.
--------------------------------
3.
Love Is Not What We Do.
Love is not what we do
It is what we are;
Let me explain
Before we melt away
Into wind and rain
to become what we were
Before what we are
And so go round again,
Love is not what we do
It is what we are.
I should`nt repeat myself
Or I might be packed up on the
shelf but
To remind you while I remain,
Love is not what we do
It is what we are;
Now let me explain
Before we melt away
And vanish down the drain,
Love is everything
That we live and do
and is good and true
About me and you,
And so, to go round again,
It is all that we are and do,
Not what we were.
So far So good,
All this seems true,
but when there is no more love
What can we do?
It will mean goodbye to me
And also goodbye to you;
So let me explain
Before we melt away
Into wind and rain
And do not come back again
As me and you,
Or indeed as what we were,
Love is not what we do
It is what we are,
So good So far
tra la.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
3rd. - 7th. March 2013.
Thursday, 20 June 2013
(A) Greek Midsummer Solstice.Revised Version. (B) The Rite of Spring.
(A).
Greek Midsummer Solstice. (Revised Version).
1
After the rain
The earth is black as blood
Drawn from a dead Calf.
The Goddess Aphrodite,
Born of the dank earth
And not from the sea
As the Ancient Greeks
Would have us believe,
Is herself dark as
The Calf`s blood.
We sacrifice our selves
Totally
To her fierce deity
Without a thought,
Without a care.
Our bodies intertwined
Tightly together
In the still house
Like children stung by dreams.
We sleep fitfully
Afeared of the crescent moon
That hangs in the June sky
Like a sickle;
Or a flint knife lifted high
over a sacred altar.
2.
The Roman Gods are routed;
Diana turns aside,
Emphatically defeated;
Mars discards his armour,
His sword is pitted with rust.
Aphrodite now assumes
All their ancient powers,
Their sacred arts and symbols.
She sorts them with due ceremony
To neatly pack away
In her Shoulder Bag of tricks.
3.
The cool rain has returned,
Hiding the sharp faced moon
Behind a curtain of torn silk.
In the dark we become aware
Of the cruel smile of the Goddess,
A smile that she rarely shows
Except when the moon is black.-
We snuggle up tightly together,
Caught in our mutual dependence,
The dark gift of the Goddess.
We snuggle up tightly together
To welcome sleep.
A sleep bereft of dreams.
The quiet sleep of the just.
Outside the tethered calves
Low softly in their pens.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 15th.-19th.-20th.- 21st. 2013.
February 23rd. 2014.
--------------------------------------
(B)
The Rite of Spring.
Dance ugly
Give your education the boot
Be yourselves
Spit in the eye of the critics
Don`t give a damn
Dance ugly
And love it
Love it all the way to the archives
People don`t believe you
When you dance ugly
They think you are lying
Making them look like fools
Gargoyles
They think you cannot dance at all
They think you are just thrashing in air
Meaninglessly
Trashing the heirlooms of reason
Idiotically
Like mythologised Vandals
Goths
When really you are forcing
Deep Deep Deep
Right into the heart of all things
The rock drill of intelligence
The diamond edge of truth
What is truth?
Pilate asked that question
But never got the answer,
It was just too easy for him,
Sacrifice was a masculine issue,
Nothing to do with the feminine,
Resurrection was not in his remit.
Dance ugly
Be true to yourselves
Thrust your fierceness into my face
Open up the jungle
The battles of life and death
Reality
Show us what we are
Trevor john Karsavin Potter
May 26th. 2013.
Greek Midsummer Solstice. (Revised Version).
1
After the rain
The earth is black as blood
Drawn from a dead Calf.
The Goddess Aphrodite,
Born of the dank earth
And not from the sea
As the Ancient Greeks
Would have us believe,
Is herself dark as
The Calf`s blood.
We sacrifice our selves
Totally
To her fierce deity
Without a thought,
Without a care.
Our bodies intertwined
Tightly together
In the still house
Like children stung by dreams.
We sleep fitfully
Afeared of the crescent moon
That hangs in the June sky
Like a sickle;
Or a flint knife lifted high
over a sacred altar.
2.
The Roman Gods are routed;
Diana turns aside,
Emphatically defeated;
Mars discards his armour,
His sword is pitted with rust.
Aphrodite now assumes
All their ancient powers,
Their sacred arts and symbols.
She sorts them with due ceremony
To neatly pack away
In her Shoulder Bag of tricks.
3.
The cool rain has returned,
Hiding the sharp faced moon
Behind a curtain of torn silk.
In the dark we become aware
Of the cruel smile of the Goddess,
A smile that she rarely shows
Except when the moon is black.-
We snuggle up tightly together,
Caught in our mutual dependence,
The dark gift of the Goddess.
We snuggle up tightly together
To welcome sleep.
A sleep bereft of dreams.
The quiet sleep of the just.
Outside the tethered calves
Low softly in their pens.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 15th.-19th.-20th.- 21st. 2013.
February 23rd. 2014.
--------------------------------------
(B)
The Rite of Spring.
Dance ugly
Give your education the boot
Be yourselves
Spit in the eye of the critics
Don`t give a damn
Dance ugly
And love it
Love it all the way to the archives
People don`t believe you
When you dance ugly
They think you are lying
Making them look like fools
Gargoyles
They think you cannot dance at all
They think you are just thrashing in air
Meaninglessly
Trashing the heirlooms of reason
Idiotically
Like mythologised Vandals
Goths
When really you are forcing
Deep Deep Deep
Right into the heart of all things
The rock drill of intelligence
The diamond edge of truth
What is truth?
Pilate asked that question
But never got the answer,
It was just too easy for him,
Sacrifice was a masculine issue,
Nothing to do with the feminine,
Resurrection was not in his remit.
Dance ugly
Be true to yourselves
Thrust your fierceness into my face
Open up the jungle
The battles of life and death
Reality
Show us what we are
Trevor john Karsavin Potter
May 26th. 2013.
Thursday, 13 June 2013
(1) Recollections of an Old Dancer (Revised).(2).Shadow Play: The Ballerena Replies.
(For Zoe Smith, 1950 - 2011, who never was a dancer,
but, perhaps, should have been).
1.
Recollections of an Old Dancer.(Revised Version).
The doctors were wrong.
That old problem has not crippled me.
I could have continued dancing.
But now I can barely think about those times,
The hours in Class;
Those hard won Terpsichorean movements
When we were partners, collaborators,
Before that faulty diagnoses
Fractured our relationship, (forever)?
You were my White Swan,
My Cinderella, my Snow Maiden,
The girl who melted away at the start of summer,
Only to return to haunt me
When those sudden winds, announcing the onset
of autumn, Rattled the window panes
And scurried fallen leaves along the pavements.
You remained with me for most of that winter,
A white kitten lodged in our tenement apartment;
The coal fire, that seldom warmed the grate,
Flickering red lights deep down in your eyes;
My enigmatic friend, my Snegurochka,
Pale Cinders with her besom and ancient scuttle;
Fraught scion of Les Saisons Russe,
Pale as ivory, fresh ice on the Neva.
And then you were gone.
The moment that I ceased to dance
You deserted me; waltzing out of the apartment
Into the frosty night, the enveloping shadows;
A filigree figure dissolving, like the sleet,
That shifted the bolted shutters.
I was devastated, a Pierrot dashed into several
tiny pieces, My dreams cut dead by reality.
So please now tell me, where did you flounce off to?
How did you escape the vigilant paparazzi,
The boys on the five star bikes?
Did you Troika deep into Siberian forests;
Or sail to the edge of Antarctica,
The albatross haunted seas?
Did you circle the face of the moon?
Tip toe on the North Pole of Mars?
You had often promised yourself such trips
In our volatile moments together.
You always hated hotels.
Declined to visit your friends.
You left no letter, no clue to your intentions,
Not even an old publicity shot
Designed to enchant your fans.
No remnant that I could decipher.
But now, in this bleak December,
A decade, or more, after your disaffection,
I am daily pestered by rumours of your returning,
A face, like yours, ghosting the edge of a mirror,
A guarded whisper discerned in a darkened theatre,
A shadow darting silently out of a crowd;
A discarded glove:
A newspaper cutting drifting upon the wind;
Dogs barking in the back yards;
A crystal shoe dropped down an empty stairwell;
Strange noises late at night; a shimmer of ice.
So now I sit and wait, diligent with expectation,
For the tap of your footsteps crossing the patio,
Your willowy figure, at ease in the unlit hallway
Poised to confront me en pointe.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 30th. 2010. - June 14th. 2013.
Revised July 31st. 2013.
-------------------------------------------
3
Shadow Play: The Ballerena Replies.
Hooked to no fixed strata
No ticking time
Unchecked I visit various orbits
In one quick conscious day,
Not marching, as you, clockwork towards your moon
But in free space suspended, juggling fates,
Times, perspectives
Until clear patterns shape.
As to you, your blindness appals me,
Commuting through flecks of experience
One point in mind,
Scared to unmask and review
The intricate complex of suns.
Yet, though separated by distances, by depths
and shadings immeasurable
Our challenging voices scan
To receive appropriate token;
By this we are defined?
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 1965.
Written in The One Tun Goodge Street, when it was at the heart of the London Scene.
Thursday, 6 June 2013
(1) Poet in Suburban Extremis. (2) Early Morning Walk.
1.
Poet in Suburban Extremis.
The jagged wound is healed,
The raw skin sealed,
And in a poem
I myself revealed.
There was no poetry in our so called love.
You wanted a house, a car, a radio, a fridge;
Someone to dig the garden, pay the mortgage,
Keep your body clear of that irksome itch
As you lay supine in the bath, pretending to be rich.
But life just aint like that my lie low babe,
When it cometh to terse reality, you never made the grade;
You brandished self respect like a junkie`s razor blade.
love hurts,
We all know this must be true,
But the stark intensity of love
Never cut through to you.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 15th. 2012. - April 3rd. 2013.
-----------------------------------
2.
Early Morning Walk.
This morning I watched the sunrise
A pearl in an indigo sky
A blank of silent water
Denuded of ships
A solitary bird sang in the hedgerow
Pining for a long lost mate
Another lonely traveller
Hands stuffed in woollen gloves
I walked towards the cash point
That emblem of insecurities
More feared than a broken phone
I looked up at the new found pearl
And wondered how soon it would burn
A large hole in my pocket
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 4th. 2013.
The pearl often represents purity in medieval poetry.
See Blog Page for July 3rd. 2015 for rewrite of this poem.
Poet in Suburban Extremis.
The jagged wound is healed,
The raw skin sealed,
And in a poem
I myself revealed.
There was no poetry in our so called love.
You wanted a house, a car, a radio, a fridge;
Someone to dig the garden, pay the mortgage,
Keep your body clear of that irksome itch
As you lay supine in the bath, pretending to be rich.
But life just aint like that my lie low babe,
When it cometh to terse reality, you never made the grade;
You brandished self respect like a junkie`s razor blade.
love hurts,
We all know this must be true,
But the stark intensity of love
Never cut through to you.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 15th. 2012. - April 3rd. 2013.
-----------------------------------
2.
Early Morning Walk.
This morning I watched the sunrise
A pearl in an indigo sky
A blank of silent water
Denuded of ships
A solitary bird sang in the hedgerow
Pining for a long lost mate
Another lonely traveller
Hands stuffed in woollen gloves
I walked towards the cash point
That emblem of insecurities
More feared than a broken phone
I looked up at the new found pearl
And wondered how soon it would burn
A large hole in my pocket
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 4th. 2013.
The pearl often represents purity in medieval poetry.
See Blog Page for July 3rd. 2015 for rewrite of this poem.
Friday, 31 May 2013
London - June 1966.(Revised).
1
London - June 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 awkwardness
I had become afraid of intimacy.
You waited all day in your room,
Staring out of the window at the passing crowd,
Hoping to spy the visitor who never came.
The day cooled and darkened.
A shower sluiced the road with rivulets of mud.
The weather mirrored your mood.
You closed the window against the driving rain.
Your friends told me that you cried then;
Turned your face to the wall, tore at the curtain.
You had never shown 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 greeting. Frozen out
I snatched some chit-chat with your neighbour,
Snippets of news and some general tittle-tattle.
You were watchful, aloof; but hunched by the fire
Took note of my every word, thinking.
Bare footed , head lowered, eyes half closed,
A scorned Pre-Raphaelite Icon nursing grief;
Gently you brushed my face with your index finger
As you walked slowly, not speaking, to your room.
I stared at the lino, now noting how worn it was,
Spotted by cigarette burns, heel dents, grease stains;
The corners scuffed up and broken.
Your father put down his newspaper and sighed.
The door closed quietly behind you.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 2008 - Revised June 2nd, - 10th. 2013. - May 16th. 2017.
first Version blogged 2nd. August 2012.
London - June 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 awkwardness
I had become afraid of intimacy.
You waited all day in your room,
Staring out of the window at the passing crowd,
Hoping to spy the visitor who never came.
The day cooled and darkened.
A shower sluiced the road with rivulets of mud.
The weather mirrored your mood.
You closed the window against the driving rain.
Your friends told me that you cried then;
Turned your face to the wall, tore at the curtain.
You had never shown 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 greeting. Frozen out
I snatched some chit-chat with your neighbour,
Snippets of news and some general tittle-tattle.
You were watchful, aloof; but hunched by the fire
Took note of my every word, thinking.
Bare footed , head lowered, eyes half closed,
A scorned Pre-Raphaelite Icon nursing grief;
Gently you brushed my face with your index finger
As you walked slowly, not speaking, to your room.
I stared at the lino, now noting how worn it was,
Spotted by cigarette burns, heel dents, grease stains;
The corners scuffed up and broken.
Your father put down his newspaper and sighed.
The door closed quietly behind you.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 2008 - Revised June 2nd, - 10th. 2013. - May 16th. 2017.
first Version blogged 2nd. August 2012.
Thursday, 23 May 2013
Three Poems (1) Bonjour Sunshine, How Soon the Dog Days?.(2) The Lost Doll (Revised Version). .(3) Julia Agrippina.
1.
Bonjour Sunshine, How Soon the Dog Days?
Something the Press named Summer surprised me
Leaping into my face like a bitch on heat
Licking me all over with a pumice tongue
Making my day
And then
At the very first hint of a Nordic wind
Skedaddled to hide in a distant corner
Yelping
No "on your marks" thoroughbred this
Nor even a jumped up loser
Just an eye on the main chance Mongrel
Or so it seems
This is the English Summer that we busted the Bank for
Teetering on debt fuelled tenterhooks
day after raw skinned day
Waiting for the trap to spring
Open
Stubs in our hands
Watching the young Hares gambol
But because we are feckless
Snobs to the raw
We have often seemed coldly abashed when she comes
Prancing on hind legs
Prattling out of the blue
Larking
Tongue down our throats like a fair weather friend
Stinking of sodden blankets
Not even the on hand Vet can master this miscreant canine -
His Strong Man grip proves useless
Likewise his throw away needles
All day to day methods fall flat -
This megawatt scallywag is much too much her own mistress
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 27th. - 28th. - 29th.2013.
___________________________________
2.
The Lost Doll (Revised Version).
Just tossed into a ditch
A Spanish doll
Staring sadly out at an upturned world
Through cracked green eyes.
Matted eyelashes;
Her nose broken;
Hands drooping helplessly
Over her torn dress;
Porcelain face blackened.
The wooden body swollen;
Dead straight stockined pegs
Disguised as nimble legs
Fit for a Gypsy dancer
Trapped under slabs of pine,
The trashed and scattered remnants
Of a chucked out chest of drawers
Drenched in black water.
I wanted to rescue that doll,
Steal her from the grip of the water
That would rapidly break her down
Into sodden bits and pieces,
The usual unloved garbage;
But her crude cut beauty repulsed me,
Her feline cracked green eyes
Staring blankly into my face
Forced me to keep my distance,
Leave her to her fate.
I continued my trek down the rutted lane
Just once I looked back
Before I reached the corner
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
20th. April - 21st. - 24th. May 25th.- 26th.- June 2013.
---------------------------------
3.
Julia Agrippina.
After murdering her husband
She slipped the leash
And went out to tend the roses
The Guard Dog on the patio
Scratched himself lazily
When she passed
She opened the gate quietly
Side stepping a pool of shadow
Beneath the Emperor`s window
She stretched her hands up
into the roof of the trellis
To reach the tardy blooms
The rare buds of October
The flowers in the garden
Reeked beauty from her touch
Her fingernails were golden
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 21st. - 22nd. - 23rd. 2013.
From an idea first dreamt up in May 1964.
Bonjour Sunshine, How Soon the Dog Days?
Something the Press named Summer surprised me
Leaping into my face like a bitch on heat
Licking me all over with a pumice tongue
Making my day
And then
At the very first hint of a Nordic wind
Skedaddled to hide in a distant corner
Yelping
No "on your marks" thoroughbred this
Nor even a jumped up loser
Just an eye on the main chance Mongrel
Or so it seems
This is the English Summer that we busted the Bank for
Teetering on debt fuelled tenterhooks
day after raw skinned day
Waiting for the trap to spring
Open
Stubs in our hands
Watching the young Hares gambol
But because we are feckless
Snobs to the raw
We have often seemed coldly abashed when she comes
Prancing on hind legs
Prattling out of the blue
Larking
Tongue down our throats like a fair weather friend
Stinking of sodden blankets
Not even the on hand Vet can master this miscreant canine -
His Strong Man grip proves useless
Likewise his throw away needles
All day to day methods fall flat -
This megawatt scallywag is much too much her own mistress
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 27th. - 28th. - 29th.2013.
___________________________________
2.
The Lost Doll (Revised Version).
Just tossed into a ditch
A Spanish doll
Staring sadly out at an upturned world
Through cracked green eyes.
Matted eyelashes;
Her nose broken;
Hands drooping helplessly
Over her torn dress;
Porcelain face blackened.
The wooden body swollen;
Dead straight stockined pegs
Disguised as nimble legs
Fit for a Gypsy dancer
Trapped under slabs of pine,
The trashed and scattered remnants
Of a chucked out chest of drawers
Drenched in black water.
I wanted to rescue that doll,
Steal her from the grip of the water
That would rapidly break her down
Into sodden bits and pieces,
The usual unloved garbage;
But her crude cut beauty repulsed me,
Her feline cracked green eyes
Staring blankly into my face
Forced me to keep my distance,
Leave her to her fate.
I continued my trek down the rutted lane
Just once I looked back
Before I reached the corner
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
20th. April - 21st. - 24th. May 25th.- 26th.- June 2013.
---------------------------------
3.
Julia Agrippina.
After murdering her husband
She slipped the leash
And went out to tend the roses
The Guard Dog on the patio
Scratched himself lazily
When she passed
She opened the gate quietly
Side stepping a pool of shadow
Beneath the Emperor`s window
She stretched her hands up
into the roof of the trellis
To reach the tardy blooms
The rare buds of October
The flowers in the garden
Reeked beauty from her touch
Her fingernails were golden
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 21st. - 22nd. - 23rd. 2013.
From an idea first dreamt up in May 1964.
Thursday, 16 May 2013
Provencal Magic 1957, A Meditation in Six Poems. New Complete Version.
Poem No.1. In the Clarity of Daylight.
"The boy has an eye"
Picasso said,
Standing in the doorway
The prodigy at his elbow.
They stepped from the silent studio
Into the packed out house,
The kitchen exotically informal
Ecstatic with a kaleidoscope of languages.
"The boy has an eye"
He repeated,
First in French then in Catalan,
His leathery face snipped open
By the shard of a smile.
"But also an ear"
He might have added with style
Provoking the usual surprise.
But then Picasso could be sharp as a needle
Extracting an unexpected melody
From a pristine groove,
A direct cut Master copy;
Mood music expressed in pure colour,
Pure line.
----------------------------------------
Poem No.2.The Mythologies of Night.
In the shuffled card pack of daily life
Picasso knew his place
And rather liked the kudos.
An exuberant master of theatre
He devised a ballet of shadows
On the wall of his dining room.
With a flick of a wrist he turned on a single spotlight,
The entertainment was ace.
Antique mythology underpinned the daring plot line,
A satellite spinning somewhere deep in space
Top lit the Minotaur`s doom.
The spotlight clicked off,
The audience sat still in the gloom.
A shuffle of paper puppets, Theseus being packed off to his bed
in an old brown box by the lampstand,
A sarcophagus for the mysterious dead.
Out in the distant woods the awakening Cicadas caroused
The ascent of the solitary moon.
------------------------------------------------------
Poem No.3. Colour & Music, A Dance to the Vollard Suite.
When I caress your body
Before we are truly awake
I can hear a concord of symphonies that affirm you
Sung in perfect unison.
Choristers unencumbered by any language
Greeting the clarity of morning sunlight
In water colour rainbows of music.
A visceral first light elemental chorus
In symbiotic balance with our morning love making.
The wild world flaunting its mayhem
Deep burrowed, haunting our feral dreaming.
The Minotaur, half awake in the undergrowth,
Counts out pale morning stars
Like funny money.
Small change that can never, in measured time, be brokered
Slowly melting like ghost pence, fading to nothing
In the Balearic dawn light.
Orpheus and Eurydice
Sing out their feral love songs
without restraint
Beneath the May Day blossom,
The delicately swaying boughs.
They barely notice the dark waves
Slowly eroding the shoreline
Of the bow shaped southern coast.
Death has yet to overcast their black Provencal eyes,
Or set the wild beasts yowling.
But when I settle down to sketch your portrait,
You sprawled across the bed, pale Aphrodite,
The shell shocked goddess of the wine dark sea;
The Minotaur, blear eyed, cartwheels like a drunkard,
Or the Sun crashed Icarus gripped in tourniquet wings;
Cartwheels roaring into my private apartments;
This half mad doppleganger with a grip of steel.
.
He grabs the palette and knife straight out of my fingers
And rushes headlong at the unfinished canvas
To complete my work, reveal himself the true Artist.
He cuts loose a primeval shriek of animal passion,
My raw imagination exposed in his muscular brush strokes
Dashed blindly against the weave:
I cannot resist the energy of his flaying.
He fights to delineate your features, my Aphrodite
Your inner song, on fire within the pigments,
Deep burning into a timeless, a visceral sound scape
A portrait in colour, extemporized like folk music
Compelled by an intractable rhythm,
The wild fire of our seeing,
The mad pain of our loving,
The staccato beat of our lives.
---------------------------------------------------
Poem No.4. The Artist and The Schoolboy.
The artist stared straight into my eyes
As I sat still in his studio
Vainly trying to magic up a safe disguise,
A hat to hide under.
"The truth shall set you free , my boy",
he said
With a twinkle in his animal eyes
That sliced far down through me
Like diamonds cruel as ice.
Or perhaps, after a glass or two of the best
Shared with lovers, disciples, critics, friends
On a quiet, platinum beach
Reflecting the sun
Down by the vodka white sea,
Truth would be put to the test
And on occasion found to be wanting.
_______________________________
Poem No. 5. Feral Art.
How to be an enigma
Is all that I have ever learned
from you
Picasso.
Perhaps
An artist must always be set back
From the daily treadmill
That ensnares both poor and rich
In their efforts to remain alive,
Barely, but simply, alive.
Yet the artist has no other choice
But to stand alone, far back,
Tied down in the brittle scar tissue
Of the ins and outs of a life.
How else can we clearly observe
The variegated ways of the world
With a knife edged, untarnished eye,
Like a sleek cat hunting at night
Enigmatic,
A cat stone still on the roof
Intent on assassination
Before she slinks home, like a ghost,
To drop her small gift by the gate,
Her comment on everyday life,
A remark to be noted, proscribed?
___________________________
Poem No.6. The Epilogue?
Perfection demands an enigma
A never to be answered question
The unlikely absence of flaws
The stillness of meditation
Transposed by a living hand
Into porcelain
Wood or stone
The sounds of Bach on the radio
Your portrait displayed by the door
Picasso up on the shelf
Perfection demands an enigma
The grace of the Venus de Milo
The eradication of Self
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 6th. - 17th. - 20th. - 21st. 2013. - August 8th. - 9th. 2013.
Provencal Magic 1957, is a single work comprising of six interconnected poems.
"The boy has an eye"
Picasso said,
Standing in the doorway
The prodigy at his elbow.
They stepped from the silent studio
Into the packed out house,
The kitchen exotically informal
Ecstatic with a kaleidoscope of languages.
"The boy has an eye"
He repeated,
First in French then in Catalan,
His leathery face snipped open
By the shard of a smile.
"But also an ear"
He might have added with style
Provoking the usual surprise.
But then Picasso could be sharp as a needle
Extracting an unexpected melody
From a pristine groove,
A direct cut Master copy;
Mood music expressed in pure colour,
Pure line.
----------------------------------------
Poem No.2.The Mythologies of Night.
In the shuffled card pack of daily life
Picasso knew his place
And rather liked the kudos.
An exuberant master of theatre
He devised a ballet of shadows
On the wall of his dining room.
With a flick of a wrist he turned on a single spotlight,
The entertainment was ace.
Antique mythology underpinned the daring plot line,
A satellite spinning somewhere deep in space
Top lit the Minotaur`s doom.
The spotlight clicked off,
The audience sat still in the gloom.
A shuffle of paper puppets, Theseus being packed off to his bed
in an old brown box by the lampstand,
A sarcophagus for the mysterious dead.
Out in the distant woods the awakening Cicadas caroused
The ascent of the solitary moon.
------------------------------------------------------
Poem No.3. Colour & Music, A Dance to the Vollard Suite.
When I caress your body
Before we are truly awake
I can hear a concord of symphonies that affirm you
Sung in perfect unison.
Choristers unencumbered by any language
Greeting the clarity of morning sunlight
In water colour rainbows of music.
A visceral first light elemental chorus
In symbiotic balance with our morning love making.
The wild world flaunting its mayhem
Deep burrowed, haunting our feral dreaming.
The Minotaur, half awake in the undergrowth,
Counts out pale morning stars
Like funny money.
Small change that can never, in measured time, be brokered
Slowly melting like ghost pence, fading to nothing
In the Balearic dawn light.
Orpheus and Eurydice
Sing out their feral love songs
without restraint
Beneath the May Day blossom,
The delicately swaying boughs.
They barely notice the dark waves
Slowly eroding the shoreline
Of the bow shaped southern coast.
Death has yet to overcast their black Provencal eyes,
Or set the wild beasts yowling.
But when I settle down to sketch your portrait,
You sprawled across the bed, pale Aphrodite,
The shell shocked goddess of the wine dark sea;
The Minotaur, blear eyed, cartwheels like a drunkard,
Or the Sun crashed Icarus gripped in tourniquet wings;
Cartwheels roaring into my private apartments;
This half mad doppleganger with a grip of steel.
.
He grabs the palette and knife straight out of my fingers
And rushes headlong at the unfinished canvas
To complete my work, reveal himself the true Artist.
He cuts loose a primeval shriek of animal passion,
My raw imagination exposed in his muscular brush strokes
Dashed blindly against the weave:
I cannot resist the energy of his flaying.
He fights to delineate your features, my Aphrodite
Your inner song, on fire within the pigments,
Deep burning into a timeless, a visceral sound scape
A portrait in colour, extemporized like folk music
Compelled by an intractable rhythm,
The wild fire of our seeing,
The mad pain of our loving,
The staccato beat of our lives.
---------------------------------------------------
Poem No.4. The Artist and The Schoolboy.
The artist stared straight into my eyes
As I sat still in his studio
Vainly trying to magic up a safe disguise,
A hat to hide under.
"The truth shall set you free , my boy",
he said
With a twinkle in his animal eyes
That sliced far down through me
Like diamonds cruel as ice.
Or perhaps, after a glass or two of the best
Shared with lovers, disciples, critics, friends
On a quiet, platinum beach
Reflecting the sun
Down by the vodka white sea,
Truth would be put to the test
And on occasion found to be wanting.
_______________________________
Poem No. 5. Feral Art.
How to be an enigma
Is all that I have ever learned
from you
Picasso.
Perhaps
An artist must always be set back
From the daily treadmill
That ensnares both poor and rich
In their efforts to remain alive,
Barely, but simply, alive.
Yet the artist has no other choice
But to stand alone, far back,
Tied down in the brittle scar tissue
Of the ins and outs of a life.
How else can we clearly observe
The variegated ways of the world
With a knife edged, untarnished eye,
Like a sleek cat hunting at night
Enigmatic,
A cat stone still on the roof
Intent on assassination
Before she slinks home, like a ghost,
To drop her small gift by the gate,
Her comment on everyday life,
A remark to be noted, proscribed?
___________________________
Poem No.6. The Epilogue?
Perfection demands an enigma
A never to be answered question
The unlikely absence of flaws
The stillness of meditation
Transposed by a living hand
Into porcelain
Wood or stone
The sounds of Bach on the radio
Your portrait displayed by the door
Picasso up on the shelf
Perfection demands an enigma
The grace of the Venus de Milo
The eradication of Self
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 6th. - 17th. - 20th. - 21st. 2013. - August 8th. - 9th. 2013.
Provencal Magic 1957, is a single work comprising of six interconnected poems.
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
(1) In Memoriam, Jane Avril. - (2) Oh Moira. .
1.
In Memoriam Jane Avril.
She died the year that I was born,
La Melinite.
Her last words, "I hate Hitler"
Scrawled on a scrap of paper
Thrown at the dark
as that hungry war time winter,
Cruel as a feral cat,
Ensnared her in its jet black paws.
Sweet Avril, imprisoned by loneliness,
Your Fin de Siecle mind slammed shut
On a room cold with strangers.
All that you had honoured, cherished, admired,
Those remnants of a culture rich in love,
The sparky joie de vivre of Parisian nights,
Hammered under the thud of fascist boots.
She had been the free fall spirit of the dance
Opened herself in fits to the magical fire of the gods
As she deftly glided, wildly kicked and whirled
On slim feet.
An insubstantial wraith that whirling spun
Quixotic tapestries of joy, of grief, of hope,
A chaos of desire,
despair,
defeat,
Dancing alone, and with eloquent finger tips
Etching filigree ghosts in the musty gas lit air.
And what of her friend,
That self mocking, eloquent aristocrat, with the insights of a surgeon
a stick full of booze
and a broken walk?
Yes, what of him, her long dead lover,
That laser eyed artist of the night
Who portrayed her in taut and candid close up
Raw with truth?
Where do his visions fit in this brutal world, this death camp Reich,
Her brave Henri,
Her co-conspirator,
The partner to her soul?
Where are his insights now? Where the caustic laughter?
Condemned as degenerate art By the purveyors of murderous lies.
Sweet Avril,
(Hitler soon died, despised.
His projects, utterly ruined.
His enemies honoured).
Oh how I wish you had leaped high and free,
Way beyond those years of cruel entrapment
To dance just one time more, one joyous night of wild excess, of proud rebellion
In the liberated City of Lights.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 4th. - 6th. 2012. - May 4th. 9th. 2013. June 8th. 2013.
For Jane Avril, Dancer, Actress, Artists Model, Singer, 1868 - 1943.
We still do not look Lautrec straight in the face.
-----------------------------------------------------------
2.
Oh Moira. (A Soft Rock Number).
Oh Moira, watch me dream of you,
I want to scheme to lean on you,
But how can I reach through to you?
You hide behind the old and new.
Oh Moira, I believe in you.
Oh Moira.
But how can I reach through to you
When the blinds are down, and so are you?
When your eyes are black, and your mind is blue,
How can I touch the light in you?
Oh Moira, let me turn to you.
Oh Moira.
Now every night I dream of you,
And eat and sleep and love with you,
And touch and type and talk with you,
And write eccentric songs with you
That annotate the old and new,
But yet I cant reach through to you,
Your eyes are black, your mind is blue,
How can I touch the light in you?
Oh Moira, watch me dream of you.
Oh Moira, I believe in you.
Oh Moira.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1981. - May 21st. 1984.
In Memoriam Jane Avril.
She died the year that I was born,
La Melinite.
Her last words, "I hate Hitler"
Scrawled on a scrap of paper
Thrown at the dark
as that hungry war time winter,
Cruel as a feral cat,
Ensnared her in its jet black paws.
Sweet Avril, imprisoned by loneliness,
Your Fin de Siecle mind slammed shut
On a room cold with strangers.
All that you had honoured, cherished, admired,
Those remnants of a culture rich in love,
The sparky joie de vivre of Parisian nights,
Hammered under the thud of fascist boots.
She had been the free fall spirit of the dance
Opened herself in fits to the magical fire of the gods
As she deftly glided, wildly kicked and whirled
On slim feet.
An insubstantial wraith that whirling spun
Quixotic tapestries of joy, of grief, of hope,
A chaos of desire,
despair,
defeat,
Dancing alone, and with eloquent finger tips
Etching filigree ghosts in the musty gas lit air.
And what of her friend,
That self mocking, eloquent aristocrat, with the insights of a surgeon
a stick full of booze
and a broken walk?
Yes, what of him, her long dead lover,
That laser eyed artist of the night
Who portrayed her in taut and candid close up
Raw with truth?
Where do his visions fit in this brutal world, this death camp Reich,
Her brave Henri,
Her co-conspirator,
The partner to her soul?
Where are his insights now? Where the caustic laughter?
Condemned as degenerate art By the purveyors of murderous lies.
Sweet Avril,
(Hitler soon died, despised.
His projects, utterly ruined.
His enemies honoured).
Oh how I wish you had leaped high and free,
Way beyond those years of cruel entrapment
To dance just one time more, one joyous night of wild excess, of proud rebellion
In the liberated City of Lights.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 4th. - 6th. 2012. - May 4th. 9th. 2013. June 8th. 2013.
For Jane Avril, Dancer, Actress, Artists Model, Singer, 1868 - 1943.
We still do not look Lautrec straight in the face.
-----------------------------------------------------------
2.
Oh Moira. (A Soft Rock Number).
Oh Moira, watch me dream of you,
I want to scheme to lean on you,
But how can I reach through to you?
You hide behind the old and new.
Oh Moira, I believe in you.
Oh Moira.
But how can I reach through to you
When the blinds are down, and so are you?
When your eyes are black, and your mind is blue,
How can I touch the light in you?
Oh Moira, let me turn to you.
Oh Moira.
Now every night I dream of you,
And eat and sleep and love with you,
And touch and type and talk with you,
And write eccentric songs with you
That annotate the old and new,
But yet I cant reach through to you,
Your eyes are black, your mind is blue,
How can I touch the light in you?
Oh Moira, watch me dream of you.
Oh Moira, I believe in you.
Oh Moira.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1981. - May 21st. 1984.
Thursday, 2 May 2013
Two Poems (1) The Streams of Lough Melvin.(2) Bad Weather Friends.
1.
The Streams of Lough Melvin.
The river contorts over stones
Reminding me, for no clear reason, of a knuckle thrust into my face
By a fretful infant
Urgently demanding my time, my total attention.
Being no geologist, here, at the rapids brink, this fraught re-enactment of Dis,
I stare, with an untutored interest,
Down into translucent layers of ancient time
To explore a ferocity of movement, a convulsion of currents, side swiped deflections
reflecting my fears, my suicidal deletes.
I stare, like a wild man, deep into the troubled waters,
The voice of some river god permeating my addled brain
With unclear warnings, garbled chants, an oblique reference to Charon.
The god of this untamed river let loose by the rain? Perhaps?
More likely a substrata reminder of my fragile mortality.
Thrashing flash floods envelope flat granite blocks
That, long before Noah took ship, were sheaved in thick skins of old limestone
That then seemed forever
But have long since been pounded to sludge.
My Grandchildren laugh at my stillness,
Contemplation is not to their liking,
It is monkish, old fashioned, outmoded,
It is not on their template of skills.
They pummel me out of the way of the restless water
Onto the new gravel causeway
That climbs to the town on the hill.
But the rapids still roaring behind me are pulling me back and back and back
To plummet an implacable darkness.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
29th. - 30th. April. May 1st. 2nd. 2013.
Dedicated to the Late Peter Odell, died 27/04/2013 aged 56 years.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
2.
Bad Weather Friends.
I am your threadbare overcoat
That you throw on over your shoulders
To keep yourself warm
On chilled out winter nights.
But I also feel the cold
When you hang me up in the wardrobe
And leave me there in the dark,
For week after unlived week,
Absorbing the odour of moth balls.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 4th. 2013.
The Streams of Lough Melvin.
The river contorts over stones
Reminding me, for no clear reason, of a knuckle thrust into my face
By a fretful infant
Urgently demanding my time, my total attention.
Being no geologist, here, at the rapids brink, this fraught re-enactment of Dis,
I stare, with an untutored interest,
Down into translucent layers of ancient time
To explore a ferocity of movement, a convulsion of currents, side swiped deflections
reflecting my fears, my suicidal deletes.
I stare, like a wild man, deep into the troubled waters,
The voice of some river god permeating my addled brain
With unclear warnings, garbled chants, an oblique reference to Charon.
The god of this untamed river let loose by the rain? Perhaps?
More likely a substrata reminder of my fragile mortality.
Thrashing flash floods envelope flat granite blocks
That, long before Noah took ship, were sheaved in thick skins of old limestone
That then seemed forever
But have long since been pounded to sludge.
My Grandchildren laugh at my stillness,
Contemplation is not to their liking,
It is monkish, old fashioned, outmoded,
It is not on their template of skills.
They pummel me out of the way of the restless water
Onto the new gravel causeway
That climbs to the town on the hill.
But the rapids still roaring behind me are pulling me back and back and back
To plummet an implacable darkness.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
29th. - 30th. April. May 1st. 2nd. 2013.
Dedicated to the Late Peter Odell, died 27/04/2013 aged 56 years.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
2.
Bad Weather Friends.
I am your threadbare overcoat
That you throw on over your shoulders
To keep yourself warm
On chilled out winter nights.
But I also feel the cold
When you hang me up in the wardrobe
And leave me there in the dark,
For week after unlived week,
Absorbing the odour of moth balls.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 4th. 2013.
Thursday, 18 April 2013
(1) Bright Dandelions. (2) Dandelion Removal.(3) Nuits Saint Georges and Josephine.
1.
Bright Dandelions.
The beauty of these dandelions reminding me of you,
My wild flower,
My rider of the untamed ponies
Trekking summer fields
Fording rock strewn rivers.
Wide teenage eyes laughing,
Pantheistic, fierce in the pre dawn half light,
Pristine mirrors of the god.
Small hands grasping thrusting shoulders.
Yellow hair streaming.
Distorted by technology,
The lens coarse ground, unfocused,
You on your wild pony, white shirt torn open;
This Kodak printed image
Fades, nicotine stained by sunlight.
These days I now prefer to trust
The embroideries of my memory
However worn and ancient;
The finest patterns crafted with the threads of Sichuan silk
Lofted high on Pennine wind.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
16th. - 18th.- 22nd. April 2013.
----------------------------------------------------.
2.
Dandelion Removal.
I drag the Dandelion out of the narrow border
With trowel and fingers:
Tearing apart my chosen victim, my class A prisoner,
Into several ragged pieces.
Shreds of life that did not seem to matter
Thrown to the April wind.
With one quick move I serenely sacrifice
The unwanted ugly baby.
I become in my garden a sort of amateur Nazi
Trying to enforce strict order
With spade and sharp edged hoe.
Thrusting the heal of my green boot into the raw earth
I arrange the perfected, the vacuum packed species
Into long well mannered rows.
This is my chance to indulge in a little fanaticism,
To drill a small notch in the world.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
15th. April 2013. - 12th. September 2014.
-------------------------------------------------------
3.
Nuits Saint Georges and Josephine.
I taste you in this wine,
The sweet and bitter fruits
Dissolving over my tongue
And slithering into my belly
To make me very drunk,
Like Nelson stuck in the Brandy.
The intoxication explains to me
With simple, Pub Time stories,
Why I have never felt properly sane
When left alone in your company
My Showgirl of the windswept horses.
I am completely enthralled by your face,
My python slung Eurydice,
My Gypsy with the raven black hair
And Big Top bare back grace,
Your unprincipled savoir - faire
That your friends think fine and funny,
Has led us to the brink of disgrace.
I fear you will saunter away
Like a Pop Stars doting baby
Caught up in the underworld heat
That snakes through the depths of our city.
I can see you in Wardour Street
Bereft of your favourite pony,
Earning your living in Bars
With the voice of a victimized angel,
And your delicate dancing feet.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
13th. April 2013. - 27th. June - 15th. August 2013.
.
Bright Dandelions.
The beauty of these dandelions reminding me of you,
My wild flower,
My rider of the untamed ponies
Trekking summer fields
Fording rock strewn rivers.
Wide teenage eyes laughing,
Pantheistic, fierce in the pre dawn half light,
Pristine mirrors of the god.
Small hands grasping thrusting shoulders.
Yellow hair streaming.
Distorted by technology,
The lens coarse ground, unfocused,
You on your wild pony, white shirt torn open;
This Kodak printed image
Fades, nicotine stained by sunlight.
These days I now prefer to trust
The embroideries of my memory
However worn and ancient;
The finest patterns crafted with the threads of Sichuan silk
Lofted high on Pennine wind.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
16th. - 18th.- 22nd. April 2013.
----------------------------------------------------.
2.
Dandelion Removal.
I drag the Dandelion out of the narrow border
With trowel and fingers:
Tearing apart my chosen victim, my class A prisoner,
Into several ragged pieces.
Shreds of life that did not seem to matter
Thrown to the April wind.
With one quick move I serenely sacrifice
The unwanted ugly baby.
I become in my garden a sort of amateur Nazi
Trying to enforce strict order
With spade and sharp edged hoe.
Thrusting the heal of my green boot into the raw earth
I arrange the perfected, the vacuum packed species
Into long well mannered rows.
This is my chance to indulge in a little fanaticism,
To drill a small notch in the world.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
15th. April 2013. - 12th. September 2014.
-------------------------------------------------------
3.
Nuits Saint Georges and Josephine.
I taste you in this wine,
The sweet and bitter fruits
Dissolving over my tongue
And slithering into my belly
To make me very drunk,
Like Nelson stuck in the Brandy.
The intoxication explains to me
With simple, Pub Time stories,
Why I have never felt properly sane
When left alone in your company
My Showgirl of the windswept horses.
I am completely enthralled by your face,
My python slung Eurydice,
My Gypsy with the raven black hair
And Big Top bare back grace,
Your unprincipled savoir - faire
That your friends think fine and funny,
Has led us to the brink of disgrace.
I fear you will saunter away
Like a Pop Stars doting baby
Caught up in the underworld heat
That snakes through the depths of our city.
I can see you in Wardour Street
Bereft of your favourite pony,
Earning your living in Bars
With the voice of a victimized angel,
And your delicate dancing feet.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
13th. April 2013. - 27th. June - 15th. August 2013.
.
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Two Love Poems.(1) Wild Ponies.(Revised Version). - (2) Tomorrow Could be Different.
1.
Wild Ponies. (Revised Version).
Riding unbridled ponies across cold fields,
The wind scything through our loose hair,
We outsmart our fears laughing.
And afterwards, you on the damp grass,
Dress hitched high up over your shoulders
Exposing slim thighs, belly, breasts, all
White as the winter snowdrifts,
Boots kicked deep into the undergrowth
As though they were of no importance,
Although, when you snatched them off the
shelf last week
They were your absolute pride and joy,
Your leap into sophistication,
Your commitment to a grander market;
But now, all caution shoved into the wind
like scraps of lies,
We vandalize the rough insanities of love
With Shakespearean audacity,
The beast with two backs tupping in the grass;
Mud larking miscreants roughing up propriety. -
"And O My God How I Love the shear abundance
of You!
Your hot salt flesh fierce against my mouth,
Feet kicking against my legs,
Young breasts already sour with drops of milk."
Flat on our backs we stare out at the stars
Shimmering in the frost haze, almost beyond sight,
Far above the filigree mask of trees.-
Snuggled up naked, warm in this wintry night,
Our shared thoughts soaring way beyond ourselves
Like apprentice astronauts, angels honed to flight,
Arcing across our universe in sheaves of fire
To force the heavens open with brand new light,
The force field of redemption.-
"Angels are jet propelled", you once proclaimed
Staring me straight in the eye, "Like Christ in the firmament".
We make our peace with the world, and also with
each other,-
"Those two are wild as the ponies that they ride",
Our next door neighbours whisper."But fiercer than the ponies".
"They will both come to a bad end, you mark my words".
"Just like his Dad?" "Just like her bitch of a mother."
The night is as thin as rice paper, we can hear every sound, every word
Murmured near or far. Two miscreants curled together, squeezed in a pod,
Dreaming of those delicate ponies dancing through uncut grass.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 21st. -22nd. - 27th. - September 2nd. - 3rd. 2013.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.
Tomorrow Could be Different.
You sit on the edge of the bed
Like a street kid hogging the pavement
Legs wide apart.
Meantime, I carry on with my daily chores,
Typing poems, cooking dinner, washing floors,
Confronting the newspaper.
Some mornings I make attempts at prayer,
But when I knock and look in on the mirror
I wonder what on earth I see in there.
Perhaps our world is full of heavenly angels,
But it seems my Hen, you are not one of them,
And I am merely something the cat dragged in.
But then at least we do have one another,
So when you finally decide to come downstairs,
We might as well lie low and have a cuddle.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
11th. - 12th. March 2013.
Wild Ponies. (Revised Version).
Riding unbridled ponies across cold fields,
The wind scything through our loose hair,
We outsmart our fears laughing.
And afterwards, you on the damp grass,
Dress hitched high up over your shoulders
Exposing slim thighs, belly, breasts, all
White as the winter snowdrifts,
Boots kicked deep into the undergrowth
As though they were of no importance,
Although, when you snatched them off the
shelf last week
They were your absolute pride and joy,
Your leap into sophistication,
Your commitment to a grander market;
But now, all caution shoved into the wind
like scraps of lies,
We vandalize the rough insanities of love
With Shakespearean audacity,
The beast with two backs tupping in the grass;
Mud larking miscreants roughing up propriety. -
"And O My God How I Love the shear abundance
of You!
Your hot salt flesh fierce against my mouth,
Feet kicking against my legs,
Young breasts already sour with drops of milk."
Flat on our backs we stare out at the stars
Shimmering in the frost haze, almost beyond sight,
Far above the filigree mask of trees.-
Snuggled up naked, warm in this wintry night,
Our shared thoughts soaring way beyond ourselves
Like apprentice astronauts, angels honed to flight,
Arcing across our universe in sheaves of fire
To force the heavens open with brand new light,
The force field of redemption.-
"Angels are jet propelled", you once proclaimed
Staring me straight in the eye, "Like Christ in the firmament".
We make our peace with the world, and also with
each other,-
"Those two are wild as the ponies that they ride",
Our next door neighbours whisper."But fiercer than the ponies".
"They will both come to a bad end, you mark my words".
"Just like his Dad?" "Just like her bitch of a mother."
The night is as thin as rice paper, we can hear every sound, every word
Murmured near or far. Two miscreants curled together, squeezed in a pod,
Dreaming of those delicate ponies dancing through uncut grass.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 21st. -22nd. - 27th. - September 2nd. - 3rd. 2013.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2.
Tomorrow Could be Different.
You sit on the edge of the bed
Like a street kid hogging the pavement
Legs wide apart.
Meantime, I carry on with my daily chores,
Typing poems, cooking dinner, washing floors,
Confronting the newspaper.
Some mornings I make attempts at prayer,
But when I knock and look in on the mirror
I wonder what on earth I see in there.
Perhaps our world is full of heavenly angels,
But it seems my Hen, you are not one of them,
And I am merely something the cat dragged in.
But then at least we do have one another,
So when you finally decide to come downstairs,
We might as well lie low and have a cuddle.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
11th. - 12th. March 2013.
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Two Poems, (1) Barn Owls. (2) On the Cusp of Spring and Winter.
1.
Barn Owls.
The moment you left the house
I became like a stick thrown into the wind
With no place to fall.
A dead leaf dropped on the wet ground
Scuffed at by laughing children
Chasing after a ball.
A plastic cup dropped in the gutter
Slowly dismembered into shreds
Under which two waterlogged beetles
Skid and crawl.
But what of you, do we see you at all
Rushing back to your dying brother
Now collapsed in his freezing caravan
Like a foal curled up in a stall?
Do we see you crying at midnight
As he lies coughing under his window?
Now counting the pulse of his breath
While outside the Barn Owls call?
No, we are too busy scratching at sores,
At our jealousy and other trite sorrows
As we stare bleakly into the mirror.
We do not notice your kindness at all.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 4th. 2013. .
-------------------------------------
2.
On the Cusp of Spring and Winter.
The dark forest cracks open its bare bones
To reveal the fledgling leaves.
The softened leaf mould breaks apart, bursts
And roughly heaves with fevered disruptions
Splitting open the secret heart of the forest.
Awakened saplings strive to muscle upwards
To greet a distant rumour of the sun.
The river stretches out a thickened fist,
A bruised fist towards the distant ocean.
Ice crashes down the mountainside in a torrent of rainbows
Dissolving ancient escarpments, water courses, unstable cliffs,
Mixed up with the wreck of woodlands, dead bracken, liquid
soil, the remnants of animals. Flesh wood and leaf mould
Thrown down to replenish the earth.
And we, the grieving citizens of the Earth,
Fierce children tamed by artificial means
Learned in the neon glamour of the streets,
The slick life of the city, the forum of plastic
dreams. We, the inheritors, cut off from ancient
hearths, our rural forbears, the comforts of
community. We, the suckling babes of Mother
Earth, Exiled in concrete citadels of light,
Gleaming charnel houses cloaked in steel and
glass / That vandalize the sky, block out the stars.
We too await the onslaught of the Spring
To galvanize with hope our lonely lives.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Sketched January 30th. 1991, Kehl am Rhein. -
Revised London December 5th. 2003. - April 4th.- 5th. 2013.
Barn Owls.
The moment you left the house
I became like a stick thrown into the wind
With no place to fall.
A dead leaf dropped on the wet ground
Scuffed at by laughing children
Chasing after a ball.
A plastic cup dropped in the gutter
Slowly dismembered into shreds
Under which two waterlogged beetles
Skid and crawl.
But what of you, do we see you at all
Rushing back to your dying brother
Now collapsed in his freezing caravan
Like a foal curled up in a stall?
Do we see you crying at midnight
As he lies coughing under his window?
Now counting the pulse of his breath
While outside the Barn Owls call?
No, we are too busy scratching at sores,
At our jealousy and other trite sorrows
As we stare bleakly into the mirror.
We do not notice your kindness at all.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 4th. 2013. .
-------------------------------------
2.
On the Cusp of Spring and Winter.
The dark forest cracks open its bare bones
To reveal the fledgling leaves.
The softened leaf mould breaks apart, bursts
And roughly heaves with fevered disruptions
Splitting open the secret heart of the forest.
Awakened saplings strive to muscle upwards
To greet a distant rumour of the sun.
The river stretches out a thickened fist,
A bruised fist towards the distant ocean.
Ice crashes down the mountainside in a torrent of rainbows
Dissolving ancient escarpments, water courses, unstable cliffs,
Mixed up with the wreck of woodlands, dead bracken, liquid
soil, the remnants of animals. Flesh wood and leaf mould
Thrown down to replenish the earth.
And we, the grieving citizens of the Earth,
Fierce children tamed by artificial means
Learned in the neon glamour of the streets,
The slick life of the city, the forum of plastic
dreams. We, the inheritors, cut off from ancient
hearths, our rural forbears, the comforts of
community. We, the suckling babes of Mother
Earth, Exiled in concrete citadels of light,
Gleaming charnel houses cloaked in steel and
glass / That vandalize the sky, block out the stars.
We too await the onslaught of the Spring
To galvanize with hope our lonely lives.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Sketched January 30th. 1991, Kehl am Rhein. -
Revised London December 5th. 2003. - April 4th.- 5th. 2013.
Thursday, 28 March 2013
Two Contrasting Poems, (1) Maundy Thursday Night. (2) The A Word.
1.
Maundy Thursday Night
Pitch black
The Hand of God resting over us
Shadowing the interior of the church
With an intensity of sorrow
That average grief cannot touch.
The candles flicker in the fierce gloom
Like sparks of winter starlight
Refracted through sheets of melting ice.
I shiver in the darkness
Feeling intensely lost, alone,
Although the silent church is crowded.
Scarcely breathing
The sombre congregation kneels in prayer
Before the stripped altar, the vacated Shrine,
I look to the bare wall where an icon
Is normally placed among fresh cut flowers,
And am struck by a searing pang of loss.
Today and yesterday and tomorrow
Come together in this single moment
That seems to exist outside linear time.
And for one short hour, opened wide to the eternal,
In another epoch in a much altered country, ,
Christ, who is for everyman, remains alone,
Trapped like a thief on the Mount of Olives
Under an implacable Pesach moon.
Traversing a distant rock filled valley
The traitor and guards are marching to claim him
For the whip, the Cross, the Crown of Thorns.
His ferocious cry of desolation,
Wild, like that of an injured animal,
Reverberates bleakly into our lives
Although we can barely imagine him.
A cry that could not anticipate
The enigma that is salvation.
Under the twisted olive boughs
Deaf to all prayer
His disciples remained locked in sleep
Like untroubled children.
We, in our blacked out London church
Commune with private thoughts and fears,
Feigning to believe that in our personal lives
We could be almost as brave as Christ,
A miracle that dare not happen.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 29th. 30th. 2013.
April 16th. 2014.,
-------------------------------------
2
The A Word
You were my first honest transgression,
My first encounter with the A word,
The noun that I was taught not to mention,
At home, and certainly not at school,
My first dive into the ancient Labyrinth,
(Buried deep under the prim Assembly Hall)
With its strange conundrums, spectres, animals
And a chance of being eaten by something
nasty,
Something that resembled a Human Bull,
A vast, mock tragic, monument to power
Inviting us to visit his Hall of Mirrors
Where nothing is certain, and legends overawe
Our grip on common things, on day to day reality.
I was nineteen, you were nearly thirty five,
A married woman, your family in the States,
Two young children awaiting your return,
An old house in the country to keep tidy,
A husband rather good with his old rifle
Not keen at all on a younger Cockney rival;
A herd of deer and a dozen hunting dogs;
A meadow land of butterflies and frogs.
You kissed my body as though it were an
icon
Something rare and precious, rich and rare,
A Chinese Vase perhaps? A pot of weekend
goodies
Far better than those skins flown back from
Africa,
Fresh hides of Antelope, of Lion, Cheetah,
Tiger
To keep alive your adventure under the sun
Inside the dark museum of your memory,
That Labyrinth of passion, madness, fun,
That held me in its thrall, we had a Ball,
But alas the tears were copious
When all had been said and done.
I had always considered myself to be less than ordinary,
You changed my mind about that, and now I am grateful.
You trained me for survival, made me sit down and write,
But alas you were not so lucky, you could find no way to
resist
The pull of your inner night, the call of your jet black star.
Hope extinguished
You rushed straight into the arms of the waiting Minotaur,
He tossed you into the air, you fell and broke.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
March 26th. - 28th. 2013.
Maundy Thursday Night
Pitch black
The Hand of God resting over us
Shadowing the interior of the church
With an intensity of sorrow
That average grief cannot touch.
The candles flicker in the fierce gloom
Like sparks of winter starlight
Refracted through sheets of melting ice.
I shiver in the darkness
Feeling intensely lost, alone,
Although the silent church is crowded.
Scarcely breathing
The sombre congregation kneels in prayer
Before the stripped altar, the vacated Shrine,
I look to the bare wall where an icon
Is normally placed among fresh cut flowers,
And am struck by a searing pang of loss.
Today and yesterday and tomorrow
Come together in this single moment
That seems to exist outside linear time.
And for one short hour, opened wide to the eternal,
In another epoch in a much altered country, ,
Christ, who is for everyman, remains alone,
Trapped like a thief on the Mount of Olives
Under an implacable Pesach moon.
Traversing a distant rock filled valley
The traitor and guards are marching to claim him
For the whip, the Cross, the Crown of Thorns.
His ferocious cry of desolation,
Wild, like that of an injured animal,
Reverberates bleakly into our lives
Although we can barely imagine him.
A cry that could not anticipate
The enigma that is salvation.
Under the twisted olive boughs
Deaf to all prayer
His disciples remained locked in sleep
Like untroubled children.
We, in our blacked out London church
Commune with private thoughts and fears,
Feigning to believe that in our personal lives
We could be almost as brave as Christ,
A miracle that dare not happen.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 29th. 30th. 2013.
April 16th. 2014.,
-------------------------------------
2
The A Word
You were my first honest transgression,
My first encounter with the A word,
The noun that I was taught not to mention,
At home, and certainly not at school,
My first dive into the ancient Labyrinth,
(Buried deep under the prim Assembly Hall)
With its strange conundrums, spectres, animals
And a chance of being eaten by something
nasty,
Something that resembled a Human Bull,
A vast, mock tragic, monument to power
Inviting us to visit his Hall of Mirrors
Where nothing is certain, and legends overawe
Our grip on common things, on day to day reality.
I was nineteen, you were nearly thirty five,
A married woman, your family in the States,
Two young children awaiting your return,
An old house in the country to keep tidy,
A husband rather good with his old rifle
Not keen at all on a younger Cockney rival;
A herd of deer and a dozen hunting dogs;
A meadow land of butterflies and frogs.
You kissed my body as though it were an
icon
Something rare and precious, rich and rare,
A Chinese Vase perhaps? A pot of weekend
goodies
Far better than those skins flown back from
Africa,
Fresh hides of Antelope, of Lion, Cheetah,
Tiger
To keep alive your adventure under the sun
Inside the dark museum of your memory,
That Labyrinth of passion, madness, fun,
That held me in its thrall, we had a Ball,
But alas the tears were copious
When all had been said and done.
I had always considered myself to be less than ordinary,
You changed my mind about that, and now I am grateful.
You trained me for survival, made me sit down and write,
But alas you were not so lucky, you could find no way to
resist
The pull of your inner night, the call of your jet black star.
Hope extinguished
You rushed straight into the arms of the waiting Minotaur,
He tossed you into the air, you fell and broke.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter
March 26th. - 28th. 2013.
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