Soul Poem, Love Has No Perfect Language.

Soul Poem, Love Has No Perfect Language.

In the secret darks of your soul -
Cold desert space - a forest stirs -

Probing with myriad roots
The tangled depths
Of dappled time -
Deep inner emptiness -

Seeking a source to tap -
A fault to crack open -
Cram with new life -
A blank to score with raw power - eradicate.-

The forest is full of noises -
A filigree network of sounds
Warping vacancy into self awareness
With the weft and weave of language.

You touch my hand -
Having newly accepted my presence. -
I struggle to find a pattern of words
To adequately express this moment.

Not speaking we accept the primacy of love -
We seek empathy in the pain of silence
As we stand face to face - apart -& yet together.

Love has no perfect language. -
We stand face to face - enthralled by the knock of our heartbeats
But blind to the world - brimming with life around us. -

Heedless on proud wings fly the feral swans.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 18th. 1969. - January 30th. - 31st. 2014.
February 3rd. - 10th. 2014. 

After the Swim, An Aegean Nocturne.

That evening
I found you lost and alone
A mile or two from your companions.

A Greek Goddess out of tune with nature
Standing under the fragile blossom
That shuddered pink snow in a sudden shower.

I walked, head bowed, slowly towards you,
An acolyte in awe of your lissom radiance,
Your eyes the colour of nutmeg.

Only the white towel wrapped around your head
Conveyed a sense of the ordinary.

Your pet dog chaffed against his muzzle.
Perhaps he would have torn me into pieces
If given half a chance.

You grabbed me fiercely, compressing my knuckles;
I stood stone still, stunned by your presence.

Your pet dog growled and leaped in frenzy
Chasing mad circles around our ankles.

Somehow we side stepped his brutal Volta.
Deftly giving him the slip
We ran swiftly out of the garden.

That night the birds sang outside your window,
Singing all night as though trained to please us;
And twin stars danced brightly above Mount Olympus.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

June 22nd. 2013. - January 22nd. - 23rd. - 31st. 2014.

Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, I meet you in the pub,
The brothel, the goal.
You are one of our number,
A rogue and a vagabond, a whore monger,
Dirt under your finger nails, spittle in your beard,
Cocking a snoop at turkey fat puritans
As you write your plays to the thrum of the clock
In a smoke black alehouse.

Friend, you do not belong on the West End stage.
Rapier sharp with sexual fury
Your words daub the tenements with a visceral anger
More relevant than untutored graffiti
Telling us exactly how the world wags;
Even squeaky clean school books cannot sanitize you.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 14th. - 22nd. - 23rd. 2014. 
Revised January 7th. 2015.

(1). A Russian Christmas Eve. (2). Bonne Nuit Gymnopedie.

                     1.

 A Russian Christmas Eve. Revised Version.

How strange the time feels
Those days when my home town
Seems to emulate the beauty
Of a half remembered foreign city
That a lifetime ago I visited.
But the drab cold rains quickly swab away
All vestiges of vibrant colour.

Tonight is the Russian Christmas Eve,
But already shoots are breaking open
The lid of ash grey London earth
Compacted down by boot and shovel
Over the bulbs buried in my garden.

Tonight I kneel before an icon;
The Virgin Mother holding the Saviour
In hands that are delicate, yet strong:
Her eyes, blank with pain, are weary;
Her face wan as a child`s in Auschwitz.-
The guttering candles sting my eyes
As I kiss the ancient gilded image
With the compassion of a lonely stranger;
An Outsider unnoticed in a crowded church.

How strange the time feels.
I have long been an exile from my Russian past;
The emigre dancers, musicians and dreamers
Who nurtured my intellect when a child.
A world of ballet, of poets, of painters;
Of Stravinsky and the Orthodox chants:
The surreal counterpoint of Pushkin`s chained cat
With Stalin`s Gulag, where a relative died.
Yet London has always been my home city;
The golden domes were a distant dreamscape
Sheaved in the mists of my imagination.

The bulbs that I planted in late September
May perhaps create an oasis of colour
Between the stone paths of my garden

And lend me a sense of belonging.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
6th. - 7th.- 10th. - 14th. January 2014.
July 18th. 2020.

Originally titled January 6th. 2014. 

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                          2.

          Bonne Nuit Gymnopedie.


Satie flicked the nail across the head
Whereas Richard Strauss grandly missed the point.

Proust picked the petals from dead flowers.
Ravel flecked the keyboard with snipped lace.

Boredom could ensue, but, let me see?
Yes. - Pass a menu. Pass a serviette.

Lean back on this umbrella, it is the only one I have.
Dismiss that cup of coffee:. - Devour a cigarette.

Life is a roulette wheel of lonely nights and days,
Quickly pass the whiskey mate - and then decide who pays.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
7th. - 30th. January 2014.
18th. July 2020.