(1). In Memoriam. (2). The Silence of Nam June Paik. (New Ending).

                      1.

              
            In Memoriam.

                        *

Tying up my shoes, I remember when
    You first taught me to lace them,
          A red rose in your hair.


                       *

             The party over?
      The guests are leaving?
     Must I turn out the lights?


                      *

That shoe floating in the pond -
Is it not one of the special pair
I bought for you last summer?


                    *

Do not remind me of that Judas kiss
   Among bare willows in the park:
     High up the swallows flying.



                    *

  Poems locked for seven years
   Inside a Highgate sepulchre
        Rebuke forgetfulness.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 6th. 2014. - December 30th. 2015.

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

                      2.

The Silence of Nam June Paik. (New Version).


Broken records

Shredded spools of tape

Voices of an era
Lying smashed
Upon the floor

Now everything you said to me
Is dust for the hoover

Little scraps of black
The last of your love letters
Hammered into splinters

Words of false regret

Drifting dust of lies

Outside my shuttered window
A dog barking
At imagined whispers

Echoes of your footsteps
Not dinting the snow


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
December 6th. - 7th. 2014. - December 30th. 2015.
August 7th. - December 27th. 2016,

Original version of this poem was posted in January 2015. This new version is the finished poem.

The Daily Grind.

                 

      The Daily Grind.


My washing machine is growing long in the tooth.
It seems to have innards made from defunct dentures
That grind together awkwardly
Crunching on seeds and bones.

Whenever I turn it on
The noise is frightful,
Louder than heavy metal,
An ersatz military band,
Leather boots scraping on sand,
Metal studs grinding glass,

Ball bearings rusting together
In winter and foul weather.

But nothing ever gets crushed,
Mangled, chewed into lumps of cud,
Nipped in the bud.
Everything comes out clean,
White as the pre-dawn snow,
Spotless, just as it should be,
Exactly as mama had ordered,
Not a tooth mark to be seen.

Ah
My washing machine is so very nearly half dead.
Oh give it a crutch. Perhaps it will sit up and beg.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
29th. December 2015.

(1) The Face of The Virgin, (The Feast of the Holy Innocents).. (2) December Daffodils / Winter Tulips. (3) The longest Night. (4) The Wind.

                 1.


The Face of the Virgin.      (The Feast of the Holy Innocents).


In the back streets of Bethlehem some women are screaming -
The soldiers exultant - a kid dead at their feet -
"Crack shots enforce order", the gunman said.

                            *

Her face - pale in the church window -
Pensive among gold angel wings
Spread to shield the derelict stable
From the stiletto thrust of desert winds
Cutting through the cold back streets
Of war torn Bethlehem.

Her face - neither Arab nor Israeli -
But North Italian - if my guide book is right -
Portrays to perfection the love of Mother Mary
For her boy child - born one violent night -
The shrieks of racists echoing through the city -
The flames of rockets arcing through the sky.

Her face - pale with love that defeats ideology
As she breast feeds the child cocooned in her arms -
Illuminates the altar with a frail clear light.-
At noon her features glimmer with a cool sensitivity -
At night the stone pallor of the distant moon
Spot lights her faintly in the walled off quire.

                             *

In the back streets of Bethlehem some women are screaming -
The soldiers exultant - a kid dead at their feet -
"Genocide creates order", King Herod said.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 6th. 2014. - December 23rd. - 25th. - 26th. - 28th.2015.
-------------------------------------------------------

                   3.

     December Daffodils.


Daffodils in December?
I wish they would go back to sleep,
We can wait a little longer for spring.

                   *

        Winter Tulips?


My tulips are much more sensible;
Their cups stay buried deep in the earth
While my daffodils show off their audacity
And toast the winter solstice.

December is Janus faced,
Never sure in which direction to look.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 23rd. 2015.
-----------------------------------------------

                     4.

      The Longest Night.


Finally we have made the bridge:
Last night was the longest night;
The sun now blinks one eye
With the speed of an atomic clock
Re adjusting worldwide time
To another new beginning. I turn
Over in bed, my back turned to the
                          curtained window.
One minute more of sunlight means
                one minute less to sleep.
Winter is the season for dreaming,
Not for the licking of old time wounds.
"Make it new", the dissident poet said,
Make it new now the daylight is lengthening.
I look back to the bridge just crossed,
It has melted away in the shadows.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 22nd. - 23rd. 2015.
----------------------------------------

                  4.

          The Wind.


The wind hustling through the willows
Is making a great deal of noise;
Or perhaps I am hearing the willows
Teaching the wind their speech.
Weird to think that nature is packed with
                  a library of ancient languages
That have never required the muscle of a
                                             human brain
to power them into shape.
Languages that do not require human ears,
Delicate human eyes, hands as soft as silk
To pick up the gist of a meaning. -
Last night when I was trying to awaken the
                                               animal in you
When all you offered to do was turn over and
sleep,
I was far too aware of the bustling gusts of the wind
Rearranging the landscape outside, to feel the quick
feral thump of my heart
As it tried to switch gear to the rhythm of your pulse,
The calm ebb and flow of your breathing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 20th. - 23rd. - 24th. 2015.

(1) British Museum. (2) Impressions on a Winters Night.(Original Version). (3) Grief.

               1

 British Museum.


Photography is so un zen.
This girl has been gone 50 years;
The leaves did not stop falling.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 28th. - December 4th. 2015.
-----------------------------------------------

                2.

Impressions on a Winters Night. (Revised).


Sat and watched The Silence
As though it were truly silent;
Not a word heard.
Lips moving on paper faces,
Masks etched on shadows.
This is how I`ve pictured wartime.
Grey vistas. Life a struggle.
Hands held over faces.

The limping man,
Whey faced, always speechless,
Hobbling slowly home from work;
Khaki coat, unbuttoned, soiled;
A fag held in yellow fingers;
Army boots, jet black mirrors.

At night the curtains were pulled tight
To cover taped up bedroom windows,
Blotting out pin pricks of light.

The house was silent.
Two sisters slept in single beds.
A child slept in a cot between them.

An old man stared up at the clock,
He could not read it in the dark.
"70 years gone like a dream", he said.

The limping man passed by the door,
Army boots, jet black mirrors,
Polished until they cracked like ice,

Boots of ice reflecting nothing.

"That`s old Jack Frost hobbling by"
My sleepy aunt sadly whispered.

I nearly did believe her.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 16th. - 17th. - 19th. 2015.

Footnote to this poem.

Impressions on a Winters Night was written after I watched Ingmar Bergman`s film The Silence with the sound turned off, and realized how closely the surreal mood resembled my recollections of living as a small child in wartime London. A new version that I much prefer was posted on 27th. December 2016.

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

                   3.

               Grief.


Now that you are dead
Paper flowers in the vase
Have turned as grey as ash,
Grey as your brittle bones
Hidden in the earth.

And yet our yesterday
Is as clear and bright as spring
In the confines of my mind.

But only in my mind.-

I wander streets we used to walk together
To find that park where once or twice we played
Football in the rain.
You girls always bested me at sport.

I find a patch of grass that seems familiar,
The gates locked for the night,
The swings replaced by slides;
Not the sort of place where we could conjure dreams
Out of urban squalor,
Although, My Christ, we tried!

Just a gap between the houses,
A blank space marred by shadows,
Somewhere to avoid.

I do not long for death,
But without you life seems empty,
A blind that`s pulled down hard
To hide the waning sun -
The frail November light.

I do not long for death,
But I need a private sanctuary
Where I can put to rest
This dark remorseless pain.

My love for you has almost wrecked my heart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Poem sketched August 30th. - 31st. - September 8th. 2015.
Rethought and completely rewritten December 18th. 2015.

(1) Dark Transfiguration. (Revised.) (2) Fish Bowl / Fish Pond.

                1.

Dark Transfiguration.    ( A dream recalled.)



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

Nails break upon hard wood
A taper gutters
A baby cries

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

The silence shimmers
Black ice on old tarmac
Smog cutting my lungs

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

The baby cries
I caress your beauty
Hands golden with worship

The baby cries
You turn from my loving
To comfort the child

Your curved white back
Weighed down with compassion
Curved as when grieving

I offer to help you
Arms weak as water
The weight of salvation
Only strengthens your giving

I offer to help you
Sleep slaps me down
A cold hard door
Has shut in the darkness

Nails break upon hard wood
A taper gutters
I am lost - I am lost without you

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
First Version. August 17th. - October 12th. 2012.
December 14th. 2015. - New Version January 23rd. 2017.

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

                    2.

           Fish Bowl.


No, I do not write haiku:
Ask my cat. She`s not bothered,
Watching the fish swim in circles.

                   *

           Fish Pond.


Leaves floating in the pond;
The fish disturb them with bubbles
That burst on reaching the surface.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 11th. 2015.         

(1) Three December Poems. (2) Advent - tide 2015. (3) In the Art Class.

                1.

   December Midnight.


Paper lanterns on a hill;
The houses look so small tonight:
Somewhere snow is falling.

                  *

   December Pruning.


Christmas is almost upon us:
I cut the rose bush down
To the size of a crown of thorns.

                   *

            The Fall.


Blood red roses on the path,
The final debris of last summer
Spilt upon brown leaves.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 3rd. - 11th. 2015.

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

                   2.

        Advent - 2015.


             How mild the night is!
Although it is now
             raw hearted December
the wind is soft upon my cheek.

                   *

Blue flowers are breaking
        through the stone path,
Widening cracks between
        the broad flags,
Creating a surface that is so
               uneven,
It has become dangerous to
            walk upon.

                    *

The path was laid in early September.
The path was laid with consummate
                                                     care.

This strangely gentle Advent weather
        Perhaps warns of a darker story
        Than that revealed in Bethlehem.
The shepherds kneeling like true saints:
        The wise men bearing sacred gifts.
        The baby sleeping in a manger.

In that year the winter was bleak and chill.

                     *

        How mild the night is.
        How mild and still.
        How mild for mid December.
Perhaps,
when the sickle of the waning moon
Slits the birth cord of the new born year
These southern hills will be flecked with
                                                         snow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
12th. - 14th. December 2015.

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

                     3.

        In the Art Class.


Sitting still, watching aircraft
Losing height over London.
Sounds of charcoal scratching paper.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
4th. December 2015.
 

(1) Walking on Water. (2) After the Storm.

                 1.

  Walking on Water.

I stand in the shadow of the Cathedral.
                                                                     Buddha walked on the waters.
                                                                     Jesus walked on the waters.
The Cathedral floats on an oak raft
Crafted by Saxon monks
Eight hundred years after the birth of Jesus,
Fifteen hundred after the birth of Buddha.
The monks were building a vessel, a stone crib,
A ship of faith to float the Word of God
Far above the rugged fields,
The farms, the woods, the quarries,
The smokey quagmire of the local town.
                             But the monks were out of touch with the local people,
                             They did not beg for alms at the Market Cross.
Jesus sat in the barrooms, spoke to strangers,
Mixed with outcasts,
Just as the Buddha had done
Squatting with quiet demeanor, with begging bowl and staff
Among the swarming flies,        the prostitutes,       the market porters,
The roaming cattle, the cut and thrust of the vendors.
                                                               The monks had missed the point,
                                               Miracles don`t really matter,
                                               But the poor are always with us,
Hustling for drinks and spare money,
                                                            A bit of sex on the quiet,
The price of a seat on the bus.
                                                                 And for them a cold stone crib
Is a darker,         sadder place.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 8th. - 9th. 2015. - January 13th. 2016.
Thinking of the history of Winchester Cathedral, among other things.
The Spacing on this copy is tighter than it should be, the spaces should be much wifer to get the proper perspective that I was trying to create.

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

                 2.

    After the Storm.


Low sun over winter rooftops
Soaked by last nights rain.
Somewhere a stray dog barking.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
December 8th. 2015.

(1). December 1st. (2). Kyoto. (3). November Morning.

                1.

      December 1st.


Now it is December,
The last of the roses
Crumple in pairs

So like the old folk
Sat on the beach,
Mourning the sun.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 1st. 2015.

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

               2.

           Kyoto.


Last night I dreamt of Kyoto;
Za Zen every morning:
A lunchtime walk in the hills.

                  *

The sky pale as a faded print;
Your hand resting on my shoulder:
A tear fell. I thought of London.

                   *

You handed me an autumn rose.
Burnt love letters falling apart.
Hot ash whirling in cold wind.

                   *

The last kiss you ever gave me
Cold as winter in Kyoto.
Look up, the geese are flying.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 1st. 2015.

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

                   3

  November Morning.


Damp grey sky;
Poplars, thin brushes
Stored for a rich palette.

                   *

The colours return.
The sun glints off the ice pool
Arrows of longing.

                   *

Blank the winter canvas.
The artist lifts his sable brush,
Spring returns.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 21st. - 23rd. 2015.
.

(1) Chinese Porcelain. (New Version). (2) On The Dance Floor.

                 1.

    Chinese Porcelain.



Reflected in the mirror behind us
As we set up another selfie,
The collection of earthenware pots
Displayed on the highest shelf
Above the worktop in my kitchen,
Delicate Chinese porcelain
Placed next to Irish stoneware
Rough as the hills of Antrim.

And I wonder, as we peer at the photographs
Flashed up on the miniature screen
Held tentatively in your fingers,
That such a roughcast face as mine
Thumbed out of the clays of London
Does not seem an incongruous partner
To the gracefully sculpted contours
Of your refined Parisian beauty.

I turn and look up at the porcelain
That once seemed so perfect to me,
And note how the finest of glazes
Can be flecked with miniscule flaws,
And that an often praised figurine,
May in a moment seem awkward and ugly.

You stroke my face with deft fingers,
Elegant as a ballerinas.
Perhaps I should replace my collection
With artifacts of your choosing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 19th. - 21st. - November 30th. 2015.
---------------------------------------------------------

                    2.

    On The Dance Floor.


Dressed to kill,
Stuck in a hive of strangers,
Waiting.

Legs
White as china clay
Shown to advantage.

Dress,
Black as a priests habit
Hiding nothing,

Only the top of a stocking,

Only the sting.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
19th. November 2015.

(1) Red Hawk. (2) The Casual Desecration of Quietness. (3). November 26th. 2015. (Revised)

               1.

       Red Hawk.


Red Hawk circling overhead
Watching the stillness move:
Winter can be beautiful.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 23rd. 2015.
------------------------------------

                2.

The Casual Desecration of Quietness.


This field is just too beautiful to be here;
Concrete houses must be built right now
To box newcomers in,
Row on endless row,

So bring on the diesel diggers,
Uproot the grass, the trees, the meadow flowers;
Smash the flagstones,
The path on which we took our tranquil walk

Last Sunday morning early
To watch the lapwings wheel
Above our heads
In ever decreasing circles.

This scene is forfeit now, a memoir to be confided
To a closed book; a plain truth left unsaid.

Reality is a manmade concept,
The lapwings simply are.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 19th. - 20th. - 25th. 2015. 
------------------------------------------------

                3.

  November 26th. 2015. (Revised)

            Morning.


Outside my bedroom window
The streets are bright as summer;
The trees wear withered shrouds.

             
             Evening.


You gently place your hand
upon my shoulder.
Grey moon sheaved in mist.
Still the bare trees.


               Night.


My room a magic box of quietness.
Your soft breath strokes my cheek.
The telephone rings in a far off land.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 26th. 2015.

The Red Hawk is dedicated to Malcolm Evison.

(1) Young Lovers.(2) Park Street 1 a m. (3) Breaking Through.

                 1.

 The Young Lovers.


The beautiful people in this photograph
Would now be more than one hundred years old;
Shadows printed on paper
Looking at me, seeing nothing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 19th. 2015.
---------------------------------------------------
                   2.

     Park Street 1 a m.


Face in the dark,
Chalk white on black
Slightly smudged.

We move closer;
A porcelain mask
Defined by moonlight
Slowly emerges.

Can this be
The woman I met
This morning
In the park?

You walk on by,
A stately presence
In no way artificial.

I call out your name.
You smile.
The mask shatters.
White shards streaked with black.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 16th. 2015.
-----------------------------------------

                    3.

     Breaking Through.


Between bare trees
The lights of houses;
A chessboard of lanterns
On a cold, raw night.

                *

I knock, then enter your room;
Gone again the cold nights,
Gone again the sorrow.

                  *

Face turned away;
A single tear
Under her eyelash.

                   *

Her hand in her sleeve,
A single leaf
Spared the rough wind.

                   *

Patterns of moonlight
Across her face;
Torn, the silken drapes.

                    *

You came to me in the hot night
Dressed in a kaftan of patterned lace,
A glass of water in your hand.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 11th. - 14th. 2015.
July 4th. - November 12th. 2015,

Paris 13/11/2015.

  Paris 13/11/2015.


Paris, City of light,
City of Love,
City of Elegance,
Soaked in the blood of the innocent
By the soldiers of unreason
Plying their trade in the night.

The destroyers of true beauty,
The haters of human liberty,
The purveyors of vicious tyranny,
The shock troops of the dark.
Fighting against enlightenment
On behalf of a cruel mythology
Not found in any ancient book.

I am not angry with the murderers,
I pity them, but loathe their deeds.
I weep for their mothers and fathers
Searching the mortuaries of Paris
For the remnants of their sons,
Searching for the heaps of torn flesh
Among the bodies of the murdered,
The innocents that they killed.

Paris, my second home,
Once more the shadows are spreading
Through your elegant streets,
Your tree lined boulevards.
Turn on the spotlights with full power
So that we do not lose our way,
Do not succumb to the dark.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
14th. November 2015.
For all my French friends, especially Grace, Sylvie and Siegfried.

Armistice Sunday Pilgrimage, 2015.

The trees are dropping old disguises
Exposing naked veins and taut arteries
That climb November air to scratch the clouds
With delicate dancing,
Deft etching of ephemeral patterns
In the foggy atmosphere.

The blackened roots absorbing brackish water
Snake deeply into earth gnarled tentacles
That burrow deeper than blind moles,
Or fierce artillery shells.
The discarded fancy dress of summer leaves
Lie in heaps upon the path
Awaiting the broom, the black sack and the fire.

We do not honour winter, nor do we desire
Frost scintillated nights with smoke stung air
Scouring cold lungs, scourging red raw eyes.
This sombre month of mourning has its place
Among the fallen poppies; the broken dreams
Of all our yester-years.

This is the month for planning, for planting deep
The scraggy saplings, the spiky climbing roses
That could one day shape arches over the path
To shade the wicket gate.
Under this shade I might pause to hear the song
Of a single nightingale,

                                       A lone bird winging
High above where howitzers once roared
And set tall woods ablaze.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 8th. - 9th. - 10th. 2015.

Three Poems. (1) Dangerous knowledge. (2) Zen Love. (3) Grace Notes.

                 1.

Dangerous Knowledge.



My friend has posted me a virus.

It is very dangerous
and could perhaps kill.

It is a poem.
Short and vibrant.
Just a line or two.

Maybe it will infect the whole echo system,
Bouncing off ideas along the way
As it infests ancient mindsets,
Destroys cultures,
Evolving infestations in every nook and cranny.

This poem is a love poem.
It is about boy meeting girl.

No guns are mentioned.
Bombs.
No hate filled propaganda.
It is about one small event one quiet Friday
Behind the locked doors of a burnt out library.

This poem must be cut down in its tracks.
Shot like a rabid dog.
Shunted to the morgue.
We just cant have a poet who spins a story
About the real life making of a baby
Cavorting his cantos all over the internet.
Such candour just wont do.

Thus another virus flops.
One more germ is pasteurized.
The latest plague put to flight

Before it shuts down all the valid systems,
Crosses all the wires

Leaving just one amber light.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 5th. - 6th. - 8th. 2015.

Written in response to Facebook not allowing me to read my friends innocent poems.
------------------------------------------------------------

                 2.

           Zen Love.


Before the pen touches the paper
The poem is written.

Before the clock strikes the hour
The hour has passed.

Before I met you for the first time
We had loved.

Before the moment you were born
We knew each other.

Your face observed behind smoked glass.

Your voice a distant murmur.

Before you kissed me in the park
Your shadow veiled the sunlit path.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 2nd. - 4th. 2015.
-----------------------------------------------

                    
                      3.

             Grace Notes.        (A Meditation).


I was not aware that night how you dance,
sway like a reed restless in the wind,
sway to the rhythm of my heart.



Perhaps my heart skipped the occasional beat.

Perhaps my heart was not as steadfast as yours.

Perhaps my heart resonates to the thrum of the wind.



I was not aware that night how you dance
although we stepped lightly from sunset to dawn,

I was only aware of your face pressed to mine,

the pulse of your breath on my cheek.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 4th. - 5th. 2015.
December 12th. 2015.

Halloween London 1969 - 2015. (New Vesion).

Sitting in the window seat
Reading Anne Sexton
London far below me

Pre online hegemony
Frost bright and bustling
Whole neighbourhoods one family

Kids itching to throw bangers
Dogs barking in a doorway
Trick or Treat unheard of.

This culture now dismantled,
Outmaneuvered by the wealthy
Fabricating Paradiso.

This town where folk once chattered
On buses,                   On the subway,
          (Not blindly into smart phones,
           Their toddler sized computers,
           But blithely face to face),
Now pimped in paint for tourists,
          (Who never speak to strangers),
Now buried deep as Pompeii

Or dwarfed by plate glass canyons,
The pomp of sky blue citadels
Devised to harvest money.
Trick or Treat writ large.

I sit here in the window seat
And dream of my lost city
That housed both rich and poor.
A town where folk said "pardon me"
When hustling through the markets
Pre keep in touch technology,

Not "OUT MY WAY"            Not "Sorry"


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 31st. - November 1st. 2015.

A Song for Winter.

Sleep garden sleep
Under your duvet of leaves,
Winter is a short season,
Wink twice and it is done.

In February the snowdrops
Welcome the frost white sun.

Sleep garden sleep
Under your duvet of leaves,
Dreams only last a short while,
They drift like smoke on the wind.

February is the lunar month,
No sooner born than gone.

Sleep garden sleep
Under your duvet of leaves.
The shortest day flicks by in a trice,
A glimmer of light through a blind.

December and old January
Plod by in one single night.

Winter dreams are flickering shadows
That deliquesce in February light.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 29th. 2015.

Parliament Hill Fields Revisited. (New Ending).

Those kids you wrote about had hardly noticed you.
You were just a woman standing on a hill
Notebook in hand,
Perhaps a shopping list or the day to day accounts.

You seemed so much like any other adult,
Peering deep into your thoughts, your face a blank,
And distinctly unconnected with the moment
They completely occupied.

This stillness did not stop them in their tracks,
In fact it made no mark at all, no simple glyph;
You were just part of the landscape that they owned,
An object to ignore, to quickly shuffle passed
Or brusquely nudge aside.

Your history was far from simple, far from dull.
A mother snatching an hour of peace and quiet
To observe the post war city, the battered human hive
Of bombed out streets and terraces, of skeletal building sites,
Spread wide in skeins of mist below the park.

But it was not the view that occupied your thoughts,
The embryo of a poem, conceived from signs and soundbites,
Was forming street wise stories in your head;
Stories that spoke of children, alive and dead.

Those school girls in the park have grown quite old now,
And your poem has been fifty years in print.
I suspect that few recall that classroom outing,
It was just another field trip after all;
A lesson out of doors.

And you, my friend, a silent windblown presence
Mourning a stillborn child you seldom name,
Watched, through glacial grief, these restless infants
Swarming down Kite Hill, under the eye of teacher,
Her tongue a clamour of stings.

Soon they were out of sight, their voices lost
Deep in the thrum of traffic, the clatter of trains.
Losing the light, you check your notes, add changes,
Scribble remarks. The poem will be simpler now,
Those fractious children have redeemed the height
On which you stand and grieve.
Thinking on this, you start the short walk home.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
12th. - 20th. May. - 26th. 27th. October 2015.
Final part rewritten, January 26th. - 27th. 2018. 
This poem is about the ordinary and the extraordinary relating on a day to day level. 

(1). Pomegranate. (2) A Couple of Dark Quips..

                 1.


       Pomegranate.



I split the pomegranate in two,
and then the blood of the angels touched my lips
with a taste both sweet and bitter,
so like your greeting kiss
when we meet.

Never for more than an hour or two
can you settle
in the old rocking chair in my kitchen
by the door with a view of the yard.

Eschewing the king sized bed, the plush armchair, the old sofa,
you honour this homemade item because it is rough and well loved.
Here you can sit while we argue
by the pine wood kitchen table
like cats on the garage roof,
and sometimes even make love.

This is your way with the world,
the quirky route you have always traveled
since you clung to the skirts of your mother
with an innocents` desperate fingers
while she struggled from barroom to blackout.

She taught you to keep moving on
to any number of roadside locations
A van ride up the A One,
and then, without phoning, returning
when the loneliness gets far too much
or the pickings begin to grow scarce.

Loneliness is a dark raw wound,
a hurt very few can live with.
So perhaps at the hour you come knocking
child in tow, baggage piled by the gatepost,
to announce you are now here to stay
for a lifetime, not just part of one day,

I will not lock you out;
and if this blood red fruit is in season,
this bitter sweet gift from the angels,
I will carefully cut one into segments
and proffer the choicest slice.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 23rd. - 24th. 2015.

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

                 2

A Couple of Dark Quips. 

                 a

Just Once in a Lifetime



My wedding day?

A tear on the edge of my memory.

                 ---


                   b

    Blessing the Globe.



A spade of horse shit and a corn dolly?

This combination should really bring on the clowns.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 25th. 20115.

Chinese Porcelain.

Reflected in the mirror behind us
As we set up another selfie,
The collection of earthenware pots
Displayed on the highest shelf
Above the worktop in my kitchen,
Delicate Chinese porcelain
Placed next to Irish stoneware
Rough as the Antrim hills.

And I wonder, as we peer at the photographs
Flashed up on the miniature screen
Held tentatively in your fingers,
That such a roughcast face as mine
Thumbed out of the clays of London
Does not seem an incongruous partner
To the gracefully sculpted contours
Of your refined Parisian beauty.

My smile looks discrete, self effacing,
While yours bursts out of the picture
Like the image of the golden star
Emblazoned on the sacred Oriflamme.
I turn and look up at the porcelain
That once seemed so perfect to me,
And note how the finest of glazes
Can be flecked with miniscule flaws.

Perhaps I should now replace them
With artifacts of your choosing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 19th. - 21st. 2015. 

September 7th. 2014. (Revised).

The hushed day slumbers.

Sunlight ricochets off white walls
and stings my tired eyes without mercy.
Almost out of sight my neighbour`s cat
mimics sleep in a clump of grass.

The first Sunday of September,
a day set apart for an archaic ritual,
the baptism of a firebrand baby.

Inside the church the drifting incense
made my skin feel dry and dirty. -
Outside the heat sizzles off wide pavements
scorched into glass by the slanting sun.

I lean against the old lychgate
sipping a cup of ice cold coffee.
I note how empty the street has become
now the congregation has prayed and gone.

Deep in the thicket that shades the churchyard
a squabble of birds ricochet through branches
watched by the cat with steel blue eyes.
A few red leaves fall like confetti.


Deep in my bag the Blackberry rings,
it is time to go home and cook the dinner,
but a love of the past keeps me captive here
mesmerised, as though in a West End Theatre,
by a world to which I do not belong.

A strict timetable rules my life,
and I try to think why we cling to rituals
when the natural world is packed with wonders;
then I notice the cat bustling through the thicket,
her small mouth grips a ball of feathers.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. 2014.
September 20th. - 30th. - October 11th. - 12th. 2015.
August 20th. - September 6th.2016.

This is a poem about the moods generated by a stifling hot day in late summer, not about ideas. Thoughts just drift through the mind as though the writer is not fully awake.

Early October 2015. (Revised).

It`s that time of year again.

Slugs in the pantry.
Snails underfoot.
The cracking of shells on moist evenings.
Dogs staring at an enlarged moon.

From time to time
a spider`s web will catch us off guard,
snagging a fine tangle of old lace
over scared faces
as though we were giant flies,
fit food for arachnids.

The nights are cold underworlds
unlit by frail stars
smudged by passing clouds.
We walk home slowly,
heads bowed into the drab dark
of deserted streets
razored by black rain.
This darkness overwhelms us,
cuts us to the quick.
It is more intense than the bleakest night
of the recent drowned out summer.

You name this season autumn,
the sad weeks haunted by Hades,
the days of the blood red leaf.

But I name this time the new spring,
the season of quiet beginnings
evolving deep in the earth,

the new year lurching towards birth
under our mud clogged footsteps

as we struggle back home in the dark.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 8th. - 9th. 2015.

Leila (Revised Version).

1969.

Chorus:

Even we peaceniks adored her.
Even we pacifists loved her pure zeal.

So beautiful
She paid a surgeon to carve her face
Into a mask more commonplace
So that she could not be recognised,

So that she would not be known
For the icon she once was,
The flight 840 hijacker.

Hair wrapped in a keffiyeh
And holding a kalashnikov rifle
In her delicate feminine hands -
(An AK she never fired in anger),
Our fierce Palestinian Angel,
The girl snuggled up to her gun
In that refined, but frightening photo.

An image of cultural resilience.

A girl forced to battle unreason,
A girl forced to make a stand
When zealots stormed over her country
And stole her ancestral land.

A dream of the outcast made free.

Chorus

Even her detractors absolved her
From the anger they forced her to feel.
Even we pacifists loved her.
The Press made her into a star.


2015.            Coda.

Chorus.

That was a long time ago.
Since then there has been too much fighting.
Since then far too many deaths.
Too many men who would kill for an acre,
For a misinterpretation of The Bible,
"Love thy neighbour" put on the back burner.
The women left at home to cook supper.
The children shot down in the street.

But once a dream has been crafted
It cannot be unmade
But must remain intact
Within our memories,

The light of inspiration
Burning deep within ourselves
To guide our hope filled lives,
To sanction aspiration

Although the template is lost,
Although the image lies broken,
A relic of former times

Dropped in the desert sand

Strafed in the ruins of Gaza.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 27th. - 28th. - 29th. - October 2nd. 2015.

This poem is partly influenced by my reading of The Oresteia, as well as the famous photograph of the young Leila Khaled, taken before she underwent surgery, a deed of great unselfishness.

Eclipse of the Harvest Moon. Version Two.

Equinox moon
dragging her swollen body
through the harvest skies.

A blood red goddess
heavy with ancient children
that can never be born,

never be given life
in the cold heavens
above the fertile earth,

the fecund biosphere, so
vivid with pain and beauty
and rich beyond measure.



And we, true acolytes
in awe of this blood red moon,
walk in our mutual loneliness
under the autumn stars.

Under a rare conjunction
of moon and distant sun:
the crimson face of the goddess
cut through by a black edged knife.



As we walk we speak of the time
when you lay in the hospital bed
with our dead child placed beside you,

an infant perfectly formed
but cold and white as marble,
her heart too tiny to beat.

A victim of our imperfections.

A cruel and needless sacrifice
to the insanity of self love.



Thus we talk to assuage our grief
as we walk across mown fields
to observe the great eclipse,

a singular natural event
made holy by ancient magic,
the primitive dream of redemption.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
28th. September. 2015.
14th. October 2015

Two Poems. (a) Harvest. (b) The Widowers Complaint. (Revised versions).

           (a)

       Harvest.

              1

Alone
Stooping in the garden
Like a gnarled tree
Waiting for the axeman
to call


And you
Already lopped
Not a leaf
To remind me

             2

White flesh of wood
Spread
Over the russet pathway
Where once we ran
Larking
Looking for
                          (a place to lay your cloak)
A willow hung
Hide away


And the grandchildren laughing
their newness
through the old grove
unaware how autumn
brings such sudden changes

the pruning hooks

the Harvesters

the rasp of spinning saws

              3.

High overhead
a single swallow

Brief shadow on the sun


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
September 8th. - 10th. 2015.

-----------------------------------------
                (b)


The Widowers Complaint.


For the sake of propriety
Your son forbade us to meet -
although we were obviously
far gone in love
and had been so
for more than fifty years -
the chance to put an old wrong right
now made nigh on impossible

This is how the loyal offspring
(so caring and so loving)
like to manipulate their elders
once retirement age has passed -
Second childhood is perceived
to be hovering in the wings -
and happiness with a long term lover
ruled distinctly out of court

Dresden porcelain ornaments
displayed inside a cabinet
provoke a similar strict behaviour
from those rich enough to own them

Not to be tarnished

Not to be moved

Not to be placed beside
an inappropriate partner

Not to be exposed
in an unbecoming light

All signs of extra - mural frolics
kept under lock and key

But we who are old were young once
and have not yet lost the strength
to challenge those who would keep us
from our less than perfect selves

We can still kick up a rumpus
and foment the odd surprise


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 24th. - 25th. 2015.

Anna.

Kreuzburg liebeskind,
russet hair
(reminiscent of autumn leaves
pictured on my calendar,
the one purchased in Vermont
in 1964).
Feet of a dancer,
splayed but delicate.
Hazel eyes - smoky with sadness -
the smudge of tears -
searching deep deep - par blind into mine,
(a life raft of desperate questions
on her mind),
not fathoming an answer
but noting my ordinary fear,
my fear of being found out,
of being acutely known.

The morning you set out for home
the stone steps to the river
were awash with freezing rain;
the pathway through the park
concealed by fallen branches.

This scene was an epitaph,
an epitaph to our nascent love
born without a spoken language.
Our shared addiction to music
and the empathy of the dance,
had kept us on our toes.

But once the show was over,
(you speaking little English,
my Deutsch somewhat under par),
we relied too much on telepathy
and the simple slang of pop songs
to re - ignite the failing spark:

a touch of fingers in the dark,

a hug - a kiss - a laugh - a smile -
a sudden        doleful       glance.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 13th. - 18th. 2015. 

Internal Travelogue. (New Ending).

The planned engineering work on my mouth
will enable me to eat
grilled cheese sandwiches,
and perhaps
give me the confidence to kiss
your downcast eyes,
your black nailed fingers,
the red warning tapes
that are your lips.

Meantime the Circle Line rattles through the depths
that sinew London
with the taut griefs of anxious travellers
commuting to and fro.
I dream of Hades,
the darkness of Roman catacombs,
barricaded North Sea coal mines
poisoned by gas.
These visions flare on and off in my mind
like emergency lights passed speedily in the tunnel,
or grainy clips from half remembered films.

I fidget my analog wrist watch aimlessly,
and resist real contact with my fellow passengers
while staccato warning bells
start to clamour in my brain.
TOWER HILL NEXT STOP
repeated by an unseen actress
makes me think of Traitors Gate,
the photo of a stabbed child that made me vomit,
Sir Walter Raleigh waiting for the chop.
The hound now squatting by the sliding doors
exhales a smelly yawn,
then fixes me with a dope fiend`s look.

THE TRAIN TERMINATES HERE -
STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS.
The journey to see you is always a squalid chore,
an apparent loop line slowly going nowhere
as though I had travelled in and out of a madhouse
made from buckled glass.
Meanwhile that girl with an acrobat`s muscular thighs
has completely burnt out my eyes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. - 14th. 2012. - September 11th. - 12th. - 16th. - 17th. 2015.
October 18th. 2016. 

This is my vision of the Inferno. City life is Hell, but too interesting to let go of.

Autumn Pruning.

Sorry Mister Spider
I have to encourage the new growth
and you made your home in the old wood
that I must now cut down.

Next year I require fat loganberries
to cover with sugar and cream,
and I am less occupied with house flies
than you appear to be.

So forgive the use of these secateurs
that I brandish with such ease,
I am planning a cascade of white flowers
to entice my co workers, the bees.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 10th. 2015. 

(1) September Dusk. (2) Cabbage Fly. revised. (3) Love. (4) The Lion.

               1.

  September Dusk.


September evening

The sky like
a Chinese painting

black boughs
dropping
paper leaves



The copper sun
washed out
turning ochre

a bruised apple
burst
on the hard earth

tainted

breaking down



I walk alone              in the cold air

trying to get used              to my loneliness



It is now six weeks
since you died

Passed
like a withered flower
out of my life

yet tonight
I am sensing
the pressure of your soft breath
nudging my cheek

Your hand         clutching mine

warm as a midsummer morning


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - 14th. 2015.

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

                2

       Cabbage Fly. (Revised).


White as my notepad
I am tempted to write on your wings
A miniature monograph
On the history of flight.

But the moment I enter the Hot House
You seem to get wind of my meaning
And flit right up to the ceiling
Where you sit tight until I leave.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 3rd. - 4th. - September. 10th. 2015.

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

               3.

            Love.


Birthday gift
Secret
No more

Ribbons undone
Spread over the floor

A glass of wine
Spilt on the table

A torn cushion

A slammed door


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 5th. - 17th. 2015.

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

                4

         The Lion.



"It was a legal hunt"
The white man said.

The lion did not think so.

The lion is now dead.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. 2015.

Aylan. The tragedy that Changed Everything. (New Poem).

One image can change the world.

One image can punch harder
than any word
in any book
ever written.

One image can show the truth
the whole truth and nothing but the truth
without any trace of redacting.

One image can remake a religion.

One image can shake the most hard hearted
man
to the lonely core
of his being.

(I once saw an SS veteran weep
at the sight of cygnets hatching)

One image can force us to witness
our shared humanity
in the eyes of a child who is dying.

One image can make us see
the anguish of a displaced people
Who speak in a foreign language.

One image can speak out louder than any words.

One image can teach us to know
that nothing human is ever foreign;
not the outcast, the tortured, the refugee.

One image can show us that war
is a savage human sickness
that somehow must be cured.

One image can force a politician
to serve the population
that one time he thought he ruled.

One image can remake a civilisation.

One image can teach us to understand
The vulnerability of all that is good.
The vulnerability of human love.

One image can activate a reformation.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 5th. - 6th. 2015.

The Migrant. (A Lost Soul in Modern Britain).

I am a migrant.
I come from a foreign place,
A maligned country
Once renowned for fairness and equality,
For intellectual tolerance
And racial harmony,
But now torn apart by factions,
By greedy warlords,
By smart suit racists,
By ignorant fundamentalists,
By rich fools bating the poor.
These are the individuals I now write to.

I am a migrant,
An unwilling frightened traveller
Forever on the move
With nothing in my back pack,
Pockets torn and empty,
Fighting to cross frontiers,
The fiercely guarded barriers
Of self interest and inhumanity,
Of terror and self doubt.

I am a migrant,
But I do not come from Syria,
From Afghanistan,
From Africa,
The once civilised Palmyra.
I have not changed my dwelling
For more that forty years,
I have not been kicked into the highway
Covered in blood and tears.

You cannot handcuff me and fly me home,
Efficiently deport me,
Shove me on a wagon and transport me,
Lock me in a Death Camp,
Cut me down at dawn.
I am a refugee from the time when I was born,
April 27th. 1943,
My place of birth, London,
Then at war with tyranny.

But it seems that you can casually ignore me,
Deride my "Love thy neighbour" eccentricity,
Cut access to free knowledge,
Deny my right to speak.
You can, it seems, defile my old ideals;
Smash up my hope, the humane Welfare State,
Maroon me on the narrow beach of history,
And leave me there to drown.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 3rd. - 4th. 2015.

Grief.

Now that you are dead
The dawn is a blank curtain
Pulled across the sun
To hide the light.

Your voice on the chrome cassette,
A mono echo of time past
Relayed through a single speaker
In the corner of my room.

My hand that held your hand
Now only grasps the air
That once you breathed:
The air you filled with song
When I first spoke your name.

Paper flowers in the vase
Have turned as grey as ash,
Grey as your brittle bones
Now buried in the earth.

And yet our yesterday
Is as clear and bright as spring
In the confines of my mind,
The jewel box of my memory.

But the contents are just a mirage
Flashed on a silver screen;
They remain as insubstantial
As your sweet recorded voice.

I do not long for death,
But without you life seems empty,
A shadow of the clear bright days
That once we knew.

I do not long for death,
But I need a private sanctuary
Where I can learn to make my peace
With this dark remorseless pain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 30th. - 31st. 2015.
September 8th. 2015.

(1) A Tragic Event, Belsize Park 1985. (2) Four Short Poems. (3). September Poem. (Revised Version).

                 1.

       A Tragic Event.



On the ground - the boots.
Next to them - the body.
My first ever real life corpse
Lying there
In the dusk,
Still as a stone.

Something to note in the diary.
Something to snap on the phone.
A notable event,
A once in a lifetime story
To startle jaundiced eyes.
An accident,
A suicide,
A murder.
A dark chapter suddenly opened.
A nasty surprise.

The man had fallen
From the adjacent building
Without due notice,
Without due warning,
That sultry evening.
With luck the neighbours were all inside
Bewitched by the spell of the 6 o`clock News;
History should happen elsewhere,
Not by the communal stair.

The building was now strangely silent
An hour or so after the event,
The corpse left alone,
Covered by a scarlet blanket,
To keep it private, unscary
while awaiting the Constabulary. -
Absent the crying children,
Absent the squabbling parents,
Absent the loud radios
That have revved up my tinnitus
Each time that I walked this way.
Today - just this unearthly stillness
As if the whole world had paused -
Had stopped breathing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 23rd. - 24th. - 26th. 2015.  

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

                     2.

       Four Short Poems.


            The Hermit.


Born Underground.
Bombs falling.
Death will be no stranger.
           

            Love Poem.


You came to me in the hot night
Dressed in a kaftan of purest silk,
A glass of water in your hand.


              Postscript.


White paper,
Black lines criss crossing,
Leading nowhere.


             Celebration.


The fireworks were surely for us,
The Last Night Party irrelevant;
Your smile broke all the windows.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 4th. - August 3rd. 2015.

The little poem Celebration is dedicated to my dear friend Cilla who died on August 1st. We had known each other since our early teens. She is so much missed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

              3.

 September Poem.


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

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


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

And then you smiled                More loving than at night
And spilled a sudden clarity       Into the cold dawn light


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1965.
Final two lines, September 23rd. 1983.
Revised October 12th. 2012. - August 29th. - September 9th. 2015.

The Funeral, 20th. August 2015.

It was the smallness of the coffin that shocked me.
Could a whole life be locked away in that tight box
As if it had never happened?
The laughter - the wit - the frankness - the comments that could shatter glass? -
The sweetness - the kindness - the big fierce voice?
This was a whole world, a mini solar system, a multiplex of universes,
It was not something miniscule, irrelevant,
It was truly culture shifting.
Could all this be lost in an instant,
Dropped into the silent darkness,
Switched off ?
(The memories that should last
Confined to the fading minds
Of old and vulnerable people?)

What can I now say in public
About the girl I first met in the market,
That cold wet Liverpool morning?
(You managed to haggle the last half pence
Out of my schoolboy pocket).
And years later, in sunless Goodge Street,
Laughing like raucous street kids
We swingled a paint box of rainbows,
The punters too drunk to join in.
Then glitzed up at The Savoy,
(Just a trillion miles out of the Cavern),
You singing your Scouser heart out,
Me somewhere at the edge of the audience,
But not quite lost in the crowd.

Well yes, I suppose that is how it was all meant to be
Once the long old road had been travelled,
(The last interview tape unravelled,
The final song packed in the can).
But somehow it just seems so unfair
That your life could be crushed in an instant
In the glare of a Spanish heatwave,
The sunlight so bright on your face.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 20th. - 22nd. - 23rd. 2015.

For Cilla.

(1) Afterwards. (Revised).

After our tender love making - only the memory - the stark emptiness.

You light a cigarette.
The Lighter flames an arc that for a moment seems to link us,
Pull us back together.
This is an illusion,
A deep loneliness remains.

Our hands reach out to heal the broken closeness,
To kill this intimate pain,
The ice blade to the heart;
To regain, through touch, the depths our minds cannot reach.-
We seem to abandon coherent language,
The basic tool kit of community
That had kept us close
so far.
Kept us thinking we were truly friends,
and that we understood each other.

The grey smoke drifts and curls between us,
A shadow shifting in and out of focus.
Your eyes interrogate the sullen distance.

Perhaps you were looking passed me all along;
Sex can create a distance between lovers,
Especially when love is new,
Not tried - not proven - not fully understood.-
You fetch my case, my coat, my shoes;
Our first full night spent at ease together
Cut short by bitterness,

Talking - and yet - not talking -
We kiss goodnight, unnerved, just like two strangers,
Then part to consummate our private griefs.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 19th. - 20th. 2015. 
December 4th. 2015.

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

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

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

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

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


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
14th. August 2015.   

The Selkie. (Revised & corrected Version).

You did not rescue me.
You stole my life.
You stole my mind.
You stole my skin.
You stripped me to the bone,
The veins and sinews,
The small scraped skull.
You tried to break me,
Tried to remake me
Into a gilded image,
Into your private icon,
A reflection of your self.

But this evening while you slept,
And our children lay a dreaming
In the quietness of your chamber,
In the darkness of your house,
I found my skin,
I found my stolen self,
I found my long lost life,
Tied up in a battered bundle,
Tied with a yard of string.

And secretly I wore my skin again,
Disfigured as it was,
So torn and broken,
So scratched and red with sores,
So dry and rotten,
Corrupt with scabs and spores.
I wore my proper skin for just one hour,
But found that it still fitted,
Clung tight to flesh and bone,
To nerve and muscle,
My ain true self,
My home.

And tomorrow I shall wear my life once more,
And hearkening to the thunder of the waves,
Their chill and salty cleanness,
Run to the seal grey shore,
The tumult of the ocean.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 10th. 2015.

Based on the Orcadian legend of the fisherman and the Selkie wife.
He stole her seal skin so that she would remain on shore with him,
but she found it,and hating his dishonesty, which is a kind of cruelty,
put it back on and returned to the sea from which she had first come.

Four Paintings.

8 Paintings

Two More Paintings

Two Paintings

Words.

Words are the skin of silence;

    Cut them if you dare.

Watching you asleep beside me
I lost you the moment you ceased speaking,
The moment you closed your eyes.

You have turned into a distant stranger,
Cocooned in a caul of silence.
Lost in your secret dreams.

Perhaps when you wake up bright and early
You will have become a brand new person,
Not the lover I said good night to.

Turning your back when I hug you.
Speaking a private language.
Not wanting to be touched.

Those roses I gathered this evening
May find a new home in the trash can,
Along with the wedding snapshots.

Watching you asleep beside me
You seem more foreign than the psychic lady
Who begged to tell us our fortunes.

Words are the skin of silence;

    Cut them and they bleed.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 26th. - 28th. - August 3rd. - 5th. 2015.

Black Rain. (Revised)

Tonight the rain is constant,
The sky,
Black as a hangman`s mask,
Presses down hard
Upon our earth bound lives,
Compressing taut veins
Until they nearly burst
When Thor beats his chest overhead.

A rock across broad shoulders
The weight of darkness is,
Pressing down hard
So that we can hardly move.
Tonight I cannot look up
To where last night the stars
Stung wonder struck eyes
Searching for new born galaxies.

Searching for the final exit
From this X rated film script
Into a nicer story,
One with a rainbow ending.

Meanwhile I sit struck dumb
Anchored in the back row
Waiting for the credits to roll,
The lights to switch back on.
I dream somewhere the sun
Is burning up a beach
That is yet to harbour a dark cloud,
Parasols bent back by rain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 25th. - 28th. 2015.

Written during an exceptionally stormy night.
I was thinking about cinema history and Bunyan`s Pilgrims Progress.

Four Poems for JP. Revised. (1). Easter 1966. (2) The Biography of a Real Love. (3) Sunflowers. (4). A Love Remembered.

                       1.

               Easter 1966.


Girl
I remember the warmth of your love in a cold house;
The April wind rattling the sash windows;
The street dogs yelping.

We seldom linked our fingers, cuddled or kissed;
For hours we lay side by side co-writing ballads,
Their words long since forgotten.

One night we wove two wedding rings from strands of cotton;
But the plaintive wail of the passing trains
Told of unplanned journeys.

Twice we consulted the cards, measured our lifelines,
Your fate seemed tied to the north,
Mine to the south, in Southwark, by the somnambulant flow of the river.


Girl
This poem is an intimate letter
Encrypted into the night
On the keyboard of my computer.

The clock that you bought me is ticking
Like the fault in the groove of a record
Played hour after hour without stopping.

I have not, for one moment, ceased pining,
And time does not value compassion.
Please send a few words tomorrow.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 11th. 12th. - October 7th. - 8th. 2014.
April 6th. - 7th. - July 22nd.- 24th. - August 10th. - December 20th. 2015.
April 2nd. 2016.

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

                         2.

The Biography of a Real Love.


We needed help that night,
The two old ladies taught you not to be afraid,
Not to turn tail and run;
Guiding you gently from the edge of panic
Into a quiet acceptance,
A peacefulness no child could ever know.

And eventually you proved to be the brave one,
Taking charge of the awkward situation,
In fact, being quite bossy as you held me to account,
Forcing me to accept the validity of our love.

Of course you were the more vulnerable of us two,
The more likely to suffer hurt, to be left holding the baby.
It is always hard to be a forthright girl
In love with a guy who is rarely in town when wanted.

You have been remarkably loyal over the decades,
Although we have never lived under the same roof
For more than a day or two;
You working all hours at the theatre, me simply filling in time.

Perhaps, now that we are much older
We should stop being quite so foolish;

We could stack all our goods in one pile
And settle back down together.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 11th. - July 15th. 2015.

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

                          3.

                  Sunflowers.


After we had made love for the first time
The old gypsy women wrapped you in a thick blanquet
To keep you warm, there being no fire in the room
And heat thought of as necessary
To guarantee conception.

I was barred from hugging you close until the morning
And lay quite still at the edge of the bed sobbing
While you slept soundly, snug in your nest of wool,
A safe calm world
Sacred to you alone.

For the rest of that year we scarcely saw each other,
And then one morning came a call from the hospital
That sent me dashing out into the rain.
Your smile was radiant as a garden packed with sunflowers
When you spied me nervously enter the ward.

Holding our new born child while a nurse taught you to breast feed,
Arms made strong by love, eyes half blind with tears,
Helped me to blank from my mind those long cold weeks
When I wandered, always alone, through late night streets,
Calling out your name.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 29th. - 30th. - 31st. 2014.
Revised, July 20th. December 20th. 2015.

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

                           4. 

A Love Remembered, Forty Years On.


Girl
Slim as a Weeping Willow;
Hair unkempt, an ebony river
Flowing over frost white shoulders;
Eyes intense with sorrow.

The years stacked up, one on another,
Collated memoirs neatly catalogued
But rarely read, their contents censored,
The illustrations half rubbed out.

Shortly after our child was born
You shipped back home to misty Ulster,
Retreating from your life in London.

You mentioned only a short vacation,
But the evening that you boarded ship
A door slammed shut against the future
That we had quietly planned together,
Slammed shut with cruel finality.

I now know that our parents thought us
Too young to wed, to raise a family;
Too young to cut loose from the high life:
And so they packed you back home quickly,
A convict strictly monitored.

                              One weekday, while your parents were out working.
                              You stayed at home and tried to cut your wrists,
                              The baby fast asleep inside the cot.
                              With luck,your mother came home one hour early,
                              And she somehow found a way to save you
                              With cubes of ice and a tourniquet.
                              All this I learned some forty years too late,
                              A cryptic message from a perfect stranger.

Girl
These days I often visit Belfast City,
A restless town packed with fears and dreams;
The ghost filled shipyards; crudely stencilled Peace Lines;
The cloud smudged vistas of the sombre Lough.
At dawn I have too often been awoken
By a violent squall of mad sectarian seagulls
Swarming over oil encrusted shallows
their grey infighting flock;
                                   The shriek of sirens;
The departure of the ferries from the dock.

None of these scenes are foreign to me now,
But sometimes when I wander out alone
Through the glass and concrete city centre
I think that I can hear your light heeled footsteps
Tapping close behind me in the crowd;
The sharp edged music of your northern laughter
Skirling a ragged echo on the wind.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 6th. - 10th. 2014.
July 30th. - 31st. 2015. 
August 18th. - December 20th.  2015.