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.

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.

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. 

(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.

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.