Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Winter Wedding.(New Version). (2) Impressions ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Winter Wedding.(New Version). (2) Impressions ...:                     1 .         Winter Wedding.  Stretching out towards the sun four snow capped miniature roses. An old lady offeri...

Impressions on a Winters Night. (Completed Poem).

Christmas there is time for Classic films - 

Conjuring the past - reading Fairy Tales.

Sat and watched The Silence 

As though it were truly silent; 

Not a word heard, 

Lips moving on a ventriloquist`s face,
Masks etched deeply into shadow.
This is how I picture wartime Europe.
Grey vistas. Life a struggle.
Hands held over tear filled eyes.

The limping man,
Whey faced, always speechless,
Hobbling slowly home from factory work;
Khaki coat, unbuttoned, soiled:
An unlit fag 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.
I huddled in a cot between them,
A child cocooned in fear and night.

Old grandma stared up at the clock;
She could not read it in the dark.
"60 years gone up in smoke" she said.

The limping man passed by our 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 bomb crazed aunt sadly whispered.

When half asleep I did believe her,
But feared much more the silent house
That hid the creaking of the floor,
The scuttling of a mouse.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
December 16th. - 17th. - 19th. 2015.
December 26th. - 27th. 2016 Rewritten, December 30th.2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) The Face of The Virgin, (The Feast of the Holl...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) The Face of The Virgin, (The Feast of the Holl...:                   1 . The Face of the Virgin.       (The Feast of the Holly Innocents). In the back streets of Bethlehem some women ar...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Winter Dreaming.(Complete Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Winter Dreaming.(Complete Poem).: Listening for the Firebird on the shortest day of the year, hoping that summer will come quickly. This was the first ballet that I danc...

Winter Dreaming.(Revised).

Listening for the Firebird
on the shortest day of the year,
hoping that summer will come quickly.

This was the first ballet that I danced in,
a small boy holding a sceptre made from balsa;
but now the taste of greasepaint and cold sweat
is a distant memory,
discarded cotton swabs at the back of the tongue.

Fog diminishing the view from my kitchen window.
Fog making the world seem grey and small.
I am sick to death with this tawdry English winter,
so outclassed by the average Russian chill.
No magical creatures to lighten the long dark hours.
No fiery legends. No oriental magic shows.

November was a drizzly pain in the butt.
December days are short, and wrecked by a lack of
                                                                       money,
therefore I am more than pleased to discover your
                                                                good news,
girl with the face and elegance of Karsavina,
girl with hair as red as autumnal leaves.

You tell me your suitcase is packed, your toothbrush
                                                                     selected;
your makeup in place, your hat fixed on with a pin;
I shall endeavour to meet you the moment that you
                                                                have landed,
two tickets for the Colosseum tucked inside my wallet,

                                                   a birdcage in my hand.

Last night I watched a film about the life of Pavlova.
I weep for those times that I was not born to live through.
Times rich in hope, abundant creativity.
Now all I can do is sit and recall the stories my aunt Tamara told me,
and dream of Diaghilev, Nijinski, dear Anna Akhmatova.

Girl with the face and elegance of Karsavina,
you are the solstice gift that I now crave for,
the dart of fire to pierce old Kashchei`s soul.

I check the clock. It is time to go to the airport.
I just hope your flight has not been delayed by the weather.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 19th. - 20th. - 21st. 2016. - December 26th. 2918.

Note. In truth I carried a box on a cushion, not a sceptre.
I see the early 1900`s as a time of hope and creativity. very much the opposite to the narrow minded nationalism and self centredness that has darkened and shrunk the horizons of hope and aspiration in this petty minded era. Open your hearts this Christmas, get rid of all pettiness. Let love reign.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Pas de Deux. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Pas de Deux. (Revised).: Gentle - soft - voice. Swans on the wing under the moon. I put down the receiver, turn off the light, set the alarm for 7am. Waitin...

Pas de Deux. (Revised).

Gentle - soft - voice.

Swans on the wing under the moon.

I put down the receiver,
turn off the light,
set the alarm for 7am.

Waiting for you is like watching the snow
fall - then melt - then fall again;
a curtain of mysteries,
negative dreaming.

I wonder if you are already sleeping
in your Vardo packed with cushions and pillows,
duvet bunched awkwardly over white shoulders,
boots stuffed under the bed.

Echoes of wing beats over the rooftops.

A tear shaped moon caught in skeletal trees.

When I bussed out to the Borough Market this morning,
I didn`t even notice which coat I was wearing.
I was thinking of you,
nothing else seemed to matter.
Thinking of you hunting rabbits for supper.

I closed my eyes to the local street scene.
Mothers outflanked by fractious children,
fathers humping home parcels and pies.
I walked alone through the crowds and the taxis,
a blind man lost in the midst of the party.

"I will be waiting tomorrow - the path by the lake".

I remember your voice on the telephone,
A year ago, in a far milder winter.
Pale honey daylight and no snow falling.

"I will be waiting tomorrow - the spell can be broken".

I turn over in bed, hugging pillows and shadows,
embracing the silence in the depths of the room.
Christmas next week and I am still alone.
No fire in the grate. No logs by the chimney.

Afraid to discard the thin shell of reason
I turn to the wall the sketch of your face,
then try to imagine it has never been there.-
I have already unplugged the bedside receiver,
too many lies are whispered at night.

Buckled like wings weighed down by dying
outside my window the bare branches droop.

Under the spell of the mist veiled moon
the mute swans gather, heads tucked out of sight.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 9th. - 14th. - 17th. 2016.
January 7th. 2017.
February 20th. 2017

Advent.

Early December.
The sun a polished mirror.
The sky pastel blue.

I skid on bone china.

The ice bound streets break hearts,
shins, skulls.
Dogs limp on frozen paws.

All forms of life seem fragile,
rice paper blown upon the wind;
the lace leaves spiral.

I stare into the sun.
I want to buy this moment,
preserve it in my locker;

trap it like a dream
on pre war celluloid.

Today is so unreal,
a store of muted colours,
all objects made to melt.

I stare into the sun.
Shards of frozen glass
pierce my dazzled eyes,

piece my pounding heart
with a dread of dissolution.

Late blooming roses
poised on leafless stems
hint of somewhere different.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 4th. - 6th. - 8th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) The Parting.(Revised) (2).Commonplace Tranqui...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) The Parting.(Revised) (2).Commonplace Tranqui...:                       1 .            The Parting. You departed at lunch time, Hat not at the usual angle, Shoulder bag swinging like ...

The Veteran.

Sombre end of Autumn music
smoking through the misty twilight,
an accompaniment to the falling of the leaves.

I turn off the radio.

The phone rings.
The news is unexpected.
I write the details down upon a pad.

The old man, unconscious in intensive care,
was joking with me, only last weekend
as I sat at ease in his musty kitchen.
He talked about his manic years at war,
straight out of grammar school into the army,
a useful bod because he spoke good French.
He waved his fork about whilst talking Hitler,
sliced cheese stuck to his outstretched thumb.

"Bach at lunchtime? - Or would you rather hear Tchaikovsky?"

"Neither" I said. "I just like to hear you talk".

Now he lies wired up on the metal bed,
His voice a prisoner in his failing body;
his memories trapped inside his restless head
rocking silent on the single pillow.

Music, his quixotic Guardian Angel,
has always kept him sane at times of stress,
especially when shot up at Monte Casino,
but now, as the leaves fall like tarnished wings,
blotching the hospital grounds in reds and yellows,
he listens, listens, deeper than his heart thrums,

listens for an ambivalent call to arms.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 24th. - 25th. - December 4th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. (1) A Miracle on the Northern Line.(New...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. (1) A Miracle on the Northern Line.(New...: A Miracle on the Northern Line. The woman with the red hair Laughing on the tube train, I do not know her story, I only know her laugh...

Two Poems. (1) A Miracle on the Northern Line. (2) Water Lily. (Poem One).

A Miracle on the Northern Line.


The woman with the red hair
Laughing on the tube train,
I do not know her story,
I only know her laugh.

However,

The walking stick held tightly
By the old man sat next to me
Burst into May blossom
When her fingers touched it,

Yet

The old man, being blind,
Could only smell the perfume
Of the yellow May blossom,
That faded when he cried,

So

I tried to save the blossom,
Could only feel the cold air
Sifting gently through my fingers
As I stretched out my hand.

The hot brakes slammed.

Bank for Monument Station.

Familiar faces vanish
In the crowd.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 26th. - 28th. - 29th. 2016.

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

              Water Lily.


Girl, hair kept long,
Flowing like a river
Over the landscape of her body
Down to the narrow ankles
Tensed, just like a dancer`s
Pirouetting en pointe.

Eyes, equatorial blue with longing,
Peering sadly at the grey shore
Of our northern island.
Eyes, sad oceans, deep with thwarted love.

I watch her sleeping in her narrow bed.
Perhaps she sails that ship she often talks of
To a dark, uncharted land of broken vows,
Far darker than the loneliness that breaks me.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 29th. 2016.
February 25th. - March 3rd. 2017.

Time Capsule.

The last present you gave me was a cactus.

Well, that is what it was all about then,
not the long drawn out kisses on Hampstead Heath,
the rain falling.

          On the other hand, the forty something years
between the first kiss and the last
have been full of incident,
strange events not looked for in the Almanac
that only listed births and marriages.
Death is something missing from published horoscopes.

My home was like the Zoo, you often said;
in fact you took a shine to my one eyed woolen bunny
and my pre war tin giraffe.
Four generations of independent cats
lodged at 115,
furring up the kitchen,
lugging dead birds home to lay upon the door mat,
pummelling flies.
They have shuffled off their coils since our first night enchantment,
our first stroll in the park,
our first snog in the dark,
when we believed that we would live forever,
and a single kiss could speed us to the moon.

Well we were children then - well - more or less,
too young to vote, yet old enough to marry,
your first born nipper soon to kick your belly;
not our love`s child, but a gift from St. Tropez
one drug skewed summers day
in the arms of a counterfeit Count, or some other Hippy lover.
Our dreams became burnt cinders after that,
but I still kept your slipper safe at home
to place upon your foot if you should come to stay.

And call you did, two weeks before you died,
to present me with this cactus I now care for
upon the doorstep    where the cats had slept
before they soft shoed out on one last sad foray.

But I have not quite finished setting the world to rights,
this cactus was not the only gift you proffered,
there were also those two pots of Dorset honey
and that long sad wistful         unexpected kiss.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 21st. - 22nd. - 25th. - November 16th. - 24th. 2016. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: Stillness Perfected. (Four poems sketched in the B...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Stillness Perfected. (Four poems sketched in the B...:     Jin Ding Ware. Black dish with copper rim. The beauty of darkness set against the white of the adjacent vase. Simplicity more lu...

Stillness Perfected. (Four poems sketched in the British Museum).

    Jin Ding Ware.


Black dish with copper rim.
The beauty of darkness
set against the white
of the adjacent vase.
Simplicity more luminous
than porcelain dragons.

                *


              Stone Buddha.


          The Amitabha Buddha.
             At peace in Nirvana
          but forever earth bound,
       standing on the marble lotus.

  I wish I could find your stolen hands.
Then you could clap them hard and sing.

                *


        November Rose Buds.


The black bowl compliments the ewer.
The refinements of a perfect marriage
adding grace to the breakfast table.
Those rescued stems I placed in the vase.
I hope their buds will soon unfurl.

                *


Ming Dynasty Porcelain Bottle.


Two Blue Birds.
A pure white sky.
Summer and winter fused together.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 19th. 2016.

Written in the Chinese Ceramics Gallery of the British Museum.

The Miraculous Draft of Fishes.

The kettle had steamed up the kitchen windows
and I was reminded of the London Fogs
of long since departed damp Novembers
when the autumn reds and yellows softly faded
into greyness, just like my grandmother`s Victorian
prints of Raphael`s tapestries.

The whole of my childhood in one sepia moment
flickered deep in my mind, then retreated back
into the labyrinthine libraries
where chains attach my oldest memories in leather covers
to shelves of dusty books that are rarely touched
except, perhaps, when an unexpected event fidgets the keys.

Thus it was when the steam fogged up the kitchen windows
taking my thoughts back to those simpler days
when Raphael`s picture of The Miraculous Draft of Fishes
seemed to hint at an innocence that I cannot now retrieve.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 15th. - 16th. - 17th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: December Daffodils. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: December Daffodils. (Revised).: Daffodils in December? I wish they would fold back into sleep, we can wait a little longer for the spring. Your face on the pillow; th...

December Daffodils. (Newly Revised Version).

Daffodils in December?
I wish that they would fold back underground,
we can wait a little longer for the spring.

Your face on the pillow;
the pale features of a Tang princess
perceived beneath still waters.

Your features, awash with dreams
that cleanse the lines and blemishes
from beneath your long eyelashes.

The moonlight on your still face
turns your skin to silver,
silk soft when I touch you.

Solstice pale, I watch you
sift through your secret images
that are locked in coral palaces.

But wherever your dreams now take you
you remain as calm and quiet
as a Buddha on a lotus.

Yet for you sublime satori
is found when you kiss your lover,
not alone in caves of silence.

Winter is the shortest season,
we could just as well sleep through it,
fierce storms a distant murmur.

Daffodils in December?
I wish that they would fold back underground,
we can wait a little longer for the spring.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 23rd. 2015. - November 11th. - 12th. 2016.
December 18th. 2019.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Soulmates. (First Version.)

Trevor J Potter's Art: Soulmates. (Revised): By the lakes edge the flash of electricity in the air cracking the night sky apart, breaking my window. Your face, caught in the mirro...

Soulmates. (First Version)

By the lakes edge
the flash of electricity in the air
cracking the night sky apart,
breaking my window.

Your face, caught in the mirror
just before our first kiss
as we crashed out of our loneliness, landing softly together,
free falling through a hail storm of dazzling reflections
that perhaps, were our previous lives.
Your face, caught in the mirror;
pale moon between dark clouds.

I had known you for ten years before we first met,
of this I am almost certain.
Your voice a soft whisper on the edge of my dreams.
Your heartbeats
a distant thunder.

Now we curl close like children come in from the rain,
safe home at the end of a journey.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 4th. - 5th. - 7th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Halloween London 1969 - 2016. (Revised)

Trevor J Potter's Art: Halloween London 1969 - 2016. (Revised): Sitting in the window seat Reading Anne Sexton London far below me Pre on line hegemony Frost bright and bustling Whole neighbourhood...

Halloween London 1969 - 2016. (Revised)

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

Pre on line hegemony
Frost bright and bustling
Whole neighbourhoods one family

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

This culture now dismantled
Out maneuvered by the wealthy
Fabricating Paradiso

Where we once sat by gas fires
In shabby one room rentals
Scoffing beans and bangers

Black sabbath on the radio
Ginsburg in our pockets
Sugar in our tea

This town where folk once chattered
On buses                  On the railways
Now pimped in paint for tourists
Or buried deep as Pompeii

Or dwarfed by plate glass canyons
Built of broken promises
Devised to harvest money
trick or treat writ large

I sit here by the window
And dream of my lost city
That housed both poor and wealthy
In one extended family

The town where folk said "pardon me"
When hustling through the markets
On a rainy Sunday
Before silicone technology
Made us blind to the street scene
And scuppered our humanity

Sitting in the window seat
Reading Anne Sexton
Exile on my mind


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
First Version: October 31st. - November 1st. 2015.
This New Version: November 1st. - 4th. 2016.

This poem should be read out loud.

Trevor J Potter's Art: A lyrical Poem for Lily. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: A lyrical Poem for Lily. (Revised).: The night is so warm that I almost believe that I am standing on the rocky shore of Lake Como on midsummer`s morning, not strolling thro...

Trevor J Potter's Art: A lyrical Poem for Lily. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: A lyrical Poem for Lily. (Revised).: The night is so warm that I almost believe that I am standing on the rocky shore of Lake Como on midsummer`s morning, not strolling thro...

A lyrical Poem for Lily. (Revised).

The night is so warm that I almost believe
that I am standing on the rocky shore
of Lake Como on midsummer`s morning,
not strolling through London on All Souls Eve.

I am thinking - thinking - thinking of you,
snug as a chrysalis in your bed,
observing star clusters divide the night
between the emptiness and the light.

I walk in a daze through the silent streets,
and remember your voice down the telephone
as we conversed together for the very first time,
the sun rise out shone by the verve of your speech.

And although I have been told that love is purblind
the sound of your voice filled my mind with pictures
of a wild child dancing as she laughed down the phone
in a room I have never seen.

October retreats from dazzle to darkness,
but today we back tracked to the end of the Spring
when the world is ablaze with sudden beginnings
and even old biddies trip fleetly and sing.

And you are as young as this morning is new,
but the world that you love I was not born know.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 29th. - 30th. 2016.
February 21st. 2017.

Autumn Travails. (Revised).

Perhaps we are already in mourning.

The passengers all appear to be wearing black,
summer a diminished memory.

We huddle inside the commuter train,
jostled continuously from side to side
like parcels packed in speeding vans.

As has often been the case in my life
I appear to be the odd man out,
the pesky chap asking awkward questions,
burying the nail deep with one hammer strike.
Today I am dressed in yellow and green.
Black is far too formal for me.

October will begin tomorrow,
the golden month with serrated edges.
A knife in the belly of the gnarled year.
The snarl on the face of the future.
Even now the sun grows mellow, an overripe peach,
soon it will melt into the horizon,
dissolve beneath a bruise of clouds.

I stare sadly out of the window,
the city drenched in sudden rain.
Wild trees lean like dying widows
against decaying wooden fences.

The passengers all appear to be wearing black;
I find it painful to look at them.
I think they must all be undertakers
en route to a colleagues wake.

I touch your photograph in my pocket.
The cold white paper, cold as your kisses
that time you finally said "Goodnight".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 28th. - 29th. 2013. - June 13th. - 14th. 2014.
July 22nd. 2015. - October 23rd. 2016.- May 9th. 2017.

This poem has evolved out of Autumn Travails / Winter Blues, a sketch of a poem written on a train in 2013. Everyone in the carriage appeared to be wearing black, apart from myself. I felt like a stranger in their midst, a foriegn visitor who was not quite accepted.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Autumnal Mood Poem, Bankside London; Lovers Stroll...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Autumnal Mood Poem, Bankside London; Lovers Stroll...:                        1. November sun A marigold shrouded in white mist Trying desperately to bloom. We walk hand in hand By the bla...

Breaking the Code. (Revised Version).

She sat next to me
like a cat
on a cushion purring,
her shoulder, touching mine,
slightly stooped
as she looked away,
far, far away,
into imagined distance,
the secret utopian hills
of her imagination.

I could not talk to her,
she loved too much the silence,
the silence,
strong and eloquent,
of that true companionship,
that only loyal children
and long term lovers know.
And the scent of her warm breath
filled the narrow bedroom
like the scent of autumn roses.

"I must leave now, it is nearly half past seven.
I will telephone you once I get to France,
I am staying overnight in Central Paris.
Oh, & please do not watch me as I leave the house,
saying goodbye is just a bourgeois convention".

She picked up her suitcase and strode to the door
seeming so confident as she went,
but her face was as pale as frosted glass.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 20th. - 21st. - 23rd. 2016.
December 17th. - 18th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Internal Travelogue. (New Ending).

Trevor J Potter's Art: 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 y...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Anna.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Anna.: Kreuzburg liebeskind, russet hair (reminiscent of autumn leaves pictured on my calendar, the one purchased in Vermont in 1964). Feet ...

The Play. (New Version).

One moment a Queen,
then a prancing pony.
A vigilant hound
unleashed by a prince
forcing a deer from the bosky wood.
And then Revenge,
trailing Rapine and Murder
on a leash the colour of arterial blood.
Finally Lavinia
hobbling ghost like through the forest
unable to tell her horrible story,
her tongue tied loosely to her hip,
her fingers swivelling around her neck.

The actors in this play have peeled back the skin
that grows like a virus over our eyes
poisoning our views of reality.

The actors in this play have let in the light
with a quick fix dash of sulphuric acid
thrown with precision into our faces.

But when we all bundle into the pub,
stars and audience in one great huddle
fighting our way up to the bar,
the actors in this play seem a tad more ordinary
than the tattooed miss pulling heritage pints,
and the man with the metal guitar.

Perhaps we all need to be strafed by the spotlight,
to shatter the spell that keeps us in order
and hides us from ourselves.

So ring out the bells for the next performance,
these dark age princesses with wolfhounds and gauntlets
are more real than our everyday lives.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
30th. July - 17th. October 2016.
14th. July 2017.

Titus Andronicus at the Rose Playhouse, 2016.

Autumnal Fade.

An early evening in October.
Not hot.                  Not cold.
My body aches for another Spring.


Trees, dappled like dried seaweed,
stretch gnarled branches against the
                                                   sky
to fend off the shades of approaching
                                               winter.


I stand on the platform watching the
                                              crowds
huddled in blacks and greys against
                                             the chill
that they imagine the promise of
                                             showers
will whet the wind on the cutler`s stone.

These crowds, tight lipped as they wait
                                           for trains,
last month were dressed in brighter colours.


And that woman, who is the centre of my life,
her absence cuts deep             as I stand alone,
ticket in hand, watching the signs
of the slow defeat of the life we have known.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 12th. - 14th. - 16th. 2016.         

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Door Stop. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Door Stop. (Revised).: I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon when my name should have been high in lights burning holes in the Broadway sky through...

The Door Stop. (New Version).

I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon
when my name should have been up high in lights
burning holes in the Broadway sky
through which the glitter falls.

I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon,
wallpapering theatres when the crowds don`t come,
an odd job man with a broom in hand
to sweep star dust beneath the door.

I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon,
stretching the carpet for others to walk on
outside the Flick House in the rain.
What I can`t get is some starlet`s gain.

I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon,
But write down this dear punters, write down this,
Being in sight of heaven is a kind of bliss,
and the moon is a spotlight, not a fake balloon.

I have spent my life on the dark side of the moon
quietly observing dreams that are not mine,
the usual predilection of a fan.
One day I might discover who I am.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 12th. - 13th. 2016.
March 5th. 2017.

A Love Not Spoken.

I only hear bad talk about her.
Posters flaking off a billboard
becoming less coherent by the day;
but that is only half the story:



she phones me with her
                         thoughts,
   but never says a word.


Her thoughts echo through
                                      me
although no words are
                               spoken.


Pictures flicker on a screen
like
        distorted film clips.


Her smile in a darkened room
reveals our mutual sadness,


the hopes kept strictly under wraps
because they are too private.


My mind a dazzled retina
on which her thoughts are grafted.


All our mutual dreams and fear
in one        small             glance.



I have only heard bad talk about her,
but only I can read her news.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 11th. - October 8th. - 10th. 2016.
March 6th. 2017.

I was thinking of both telepathy and on line communications when writing this poem.

Black Moon. - Full Moon.

      Black Moon.   (For two voices)


The nights are drawing in.

The heating turned up high in the hallway.
The blinds pulled firmly down.

No people talking outside in the street
until the light returns.
All hint of summer gone.

I feel empty.
A shell without a kernel.
A room without a door.

Tonight a black moon hides among the stars;
a bruise punched deep into the Autumn sky
by some malevolent god.

When I leave the house at eight
I am a stranger among many,
a shadow lost amongst pale shadows
drifting slowly through the town.

I try to talk to no one,
although the streets are crowded.
Every face I see is blank and weary.

The black moon seems to make the sky more dark.
The stars are hollow eyes that do not sleep.
They glint with silent tears.

My lover phoned to say she had miscarried,
the third time in just so many years.

Hope is a child weeping below stairs
unable to reach up to find the light.


                      *

              Full Moon.  (For one voice).


Well yes, she really does exist,
the White Goddess, dressed in vapour trails
that drift like veils across her stony face.
She makes us quarrel,
fight all through the night,
conceive disruptive children full of chatter,
weird ideas that challenge adult thought.
She is divinity gone mad and feral,
fierce as a teenage army on the march,
beating up the town.
And yet she is the true goddess of love,
pouring balm upon our splintered hearts
as we sit alone all night on vacant beds
waiting for a calm voice down the phone.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 3rd. - 4th. 2016.

The Holy Feast. (Lancelot Andrewes). First rough draft of this poem..

The saint`s tomb is buried in Autumn flowers,
cut down at dawn, the dew still on them,
but soon to lose all colour, all fragile scent,
under the Caen stone arches, the delicate rib vaulting
raised in record time by pilgrim monks,
who had tramped the rain sodden tracks
and braved wild seas to London,
in a world where the horse was worth more than a wife,
a bull more than a serf;-
and the sailing ships were equipped with narrow oars -
their single masts and dragon prows
made nervous folk recount old battles fought with Vikings.

These flowers are little martyrs picked to sanctify
those honoured words, first spoken by the saint
at Christmastide
to jostling festal crowds
when vicar of St. Giles in Cripplegate.
These flowers represent an ancient pagan custom
revived to add some grace to modern times,
their heads lopped neatly off, just like a recusant priest`s
                                                               at Tyburn Corner,
although our saint died snugly tucked in bed.

But it is that girl, standing silent in the crowd,
her appearance innocent as a Van Eyck angel,
who captivates my gaze,
disrupts my quest for peace.
A lonely figure, the only person standing,
she holds a taper tight in trembling fingers
as she looks straight at the altar, the gilded reredos,
her blue eyes bright with tears.
She reminds me of my friend who played St. Joan
so truthfully she could have been a sister
acting out the family tragedy:
and for a moment I feared that girl, so pale and silent,
intense and statue still amongst the throng,
could face a judge, a shrewd inquisitor,
with all the power of truth that steeled St. Joan,
and become a modern martyr.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 26th. - 29th. 2016. - See February 2017 for completed version.

Note. The congregation sits to pray where monks once knelt or stood. 

I live in Many Minds. (Newly Revised).

Late summer stillness.
I drag a stick across the pond
and watch the mud come to the surface.-
At dawn moisture danced upon the cobwebs.
Can this be an early hint of winter?
I shiver at the thought
although the day is bright and warm.

I retreat into the house,
my hermit`s sanctuary,
and lift a favourite book from off the shelf;
Omar Khayyam, the melancholy physicist
who just happened to write perfect poetry.

There always is a shadow at midday
that moves solemnly across the garden,
relentless, like the hour hand of a clock;
but I`d rather sit and sip my wine in peace
than dwell too much on a sense of loss.

Like most bookworms I live in many minds
so I doubt a single thought can be my own,
and too often I look back to comments I have read
in tattered volumes tucked inside my library.

I suppose the stick and pond
are simply scraps of ancient Buddhist imagery
that I do not have a clue how to let go;
but if I threw a hefty stone and watched the ripples spread
then I would surely know my thoughts are not my own.

Well, it seems I am an acolyte, not a natural leader,
and therefore, my friend, to whom I write this letter,
If you are so inclined to visit me at home,
please bring with you a batch of new ideas
that we can study over beer or coffee,
pernaps, in time, I`ll claim them as my own.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
23rd. - 24th. August. - 18th. - 24th. - 30th. September 2016.

12th. May 2022. 

End of Season Love.

I cannot tap tap deaf and dumb language,
My hands are wrecked,
bare bashed up quires where no birds sing,
cracked columns leaning hard against the sun
begging only questions.
So if you wish to talk to me with signs,
please semaphore your meaning with your eyes,
or come out front and act a scene or two.
Do this and I shall know just how to answer,
with a wink, a nod, a seismic loving stare,
                          a quirky stage side laugh
as I nudge and elbow obstacles aside
and try to keep the sight lines unencumbered.

Truth is a shadow danced across your lips
as you try to shape the words you cannot sound,
words I can only answer with a glance.
It seems we must now make up our own language.

My hands are snarled in knots,
                          bashed up and nearly useless
curled in upon themselves like mollusc shells,
the life and love lines scrunched up tangled threads
                                             delineating lies.
I can no longer hold a book, a pen or pencil,
throw a ball, wear a pair of gloves,
but these bandaged paws can still stretch wide and clap,
set free the moment you command the stage.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 18th. - 19th. 2016.

Written after attending a performance of Imogen at The Globe, and shortly after attending a season of readings of wonderful Restoration period plays written by neglected female writers given at The Rose Playhouse, Bankside. The writing in all these plays was truthful and to the point, no fudging and blurring of the edges. My poems are nowadays conceived as mini performance pieces, and I am trying to make them as truthful as possible, even if the results sometimes go against the grain, the fault lines of contemporary wisdom.

September 1666. (Revised).

The flames touched the books,
gently at first,
lingering over the leather covers
with a rough curiosity,
that awkward disdain for knowledge
often displayed by the willingly ignorant
when faced with something they do
                                 not understand.-
The covers darkened, curled up their
                           thick parched skins
allowing the flames to break through
tough layers of protective membrane
deep into the pristine pages,
the pale faced children of the holy word
here gathered together,
compliant students marshalled at prep school
to receive a more salutary benediction,
the gentle blessings of a careful reader.

Soon all the books in the crypt were ablaze,
caught in the wrath of that Armageddon
that straight laced puritans had long since prayed for.-
The vault of the crypt burst wide open,
shattering the heart of the ancient cathedral
that had seemed to beat in the depths of the
                                                    maelstrom
a quiet prayer of hope,
not a scream of fury, not a cry of desolation.-
But when we stood among friends on the banks of the river
to watch London burn, we wept not only for people,
but for all the razed churches, for all the burnt books.

When London ceased burning,
and before our mallets beat down St. Paul`s,
the blood red walls left standing,
we found only one relic completely intact,
the marble statue of old John Donne,
enshrined, cocooned, in his funeral shroud,
swaddled up tight like a new born baby.
Perhaps he thought of prayers unsaid
          as he lay, rehearsing the perfect death
his insurance against the divine inferno.
Or perhaps he gained comfort recalling his sermons
preached out of doors at St. Paul`s Cross,
                             or a stanza or two from his poems.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 16th. - 17th. - 30th. 2016.
Revised February 18th. 2017.

Metamorphoses. (Completed Poem)

              
Cracks breaking through a black square.
White light of a winter dawn
crazing the glass of consciousness.

I wake up with a start.

Your face sleeping on the pillow beside me
is like a shadow in the dark,
a memory of what I thought I knew
before you turned your back and left me,
heaping curses on my name.

I reach out my hand to try and touch you,
making a memory whole again,
solid as marble,
warm as breath.
Invincible life renewed by an artist
shaping beauty from raw Carrara,
a young woman without a heart.

My fingers press the cracks in the glass.

Specks of blood spotting my pillow,
staining the cloth where you once slept,
your head pressed firmly against mine.
Two separate minds.
Two different realities.

White light streaming through the window
lasers me into wakefulness,
with a sudden violent jolt.
Was I awake or was I dreaming
as I lay wishing your return?

The window pane is firm, unbroken.

The pillow case clean and warm.

Is it your artifice I long for,

your painted face in the mirror,

and not the woman behind the gloss ?
Perhaps it was the art I loved,

and not the life in you.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 13th. 2016. - May 30th. 2022.

In Concert.

Late summer heat.
I rest in your arms
listening to the silence fall
like veils of mist across the moon,
the leaves not yet crimson.

It is 48 years since we sang Hey Jude
in the swaying crowd in the TV studio,
The Band euphoric,
the spotlights searing,

but to me you are still the pale faced girl
with the ash blonde hair and the quirky smile,
scorned by the press,
loved by the cameras.

After the Show,
the lights turned out,
the audience heave-hoed,
we sang and we danced all the way home,
the sleeping streets our rain dashed stage,
the cloud haired man in the distant moon
winking.

With the crowds departed we felt so lonely,
cold strangers in the midnight town,
out of place and      out of time,
our shadows walking before us.

Late summer heat.
I rest in your arms
and watch you fall asleep beside me,
your grey hair trailing across my shoulder,
your eyelids flickering when you dream.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - 8th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: September 7th. 2014. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: 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 ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Sabatha of the Twenty Eight Stars. (2) Love St...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Sabatha of the Twenty Eight Stars. (2) Love St...:                   1 . Sabatha of the Twenty Eight Stars. Lifting the veil that only I can lift I meet your eyes, blue and piercing, ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. (1) At the Entrance to the Cave. (2) Or...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems. (1) At the Entrance to the Cave. (2) Or...:                    1 . At the Entrance to the Cave.  Eurydice was not Lazarus. She did not reach the light. One death was enough for ...

Two Poems. (1) At the Entrance to the Cave. (2) Orpheus.(Revised)

                  1.

At the Entrance to the Cave. 


Eurydice was not Lazarus.
She did not reach the light.
One death was enough for her.

For her love was a silent prayer
prayed in an empty church
to the flickering impermanence of a candle.

She turned back at the sound of music.
Retreated into the depths of her tomb,
far from the howling of disconsolate wolves.

Above her tomb her unhappy husband
sang to the dawn his irretrievable loss
while the wolves gathered to tear him to pieces.

For the wolves the perfection of his art
was a beauty that they could not endure,
a sound icon to be smashed and silenced.

Eurydice sat alone in the darkness,
her mementoes of her husband`s voice
falling to pieces in her fingers.

For her there could be no new beginning,
her life was perfected in twenty years,
that is why the snake bit deep into her ankle.

Resurrection is only for the unfulfilled,
for those whose tasks remain uncompleted,
for those that have not touched the hem of perfection.

Orpheus invented song and verse,
for him there was no turning back
to know a fate more ordinary.

For Eurydice the simplicity of a well lived life
was all that was needed to complete her journey
into eternal solitude.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 2nd. 2016.
-------------------------------------------------------------

                  2.

           Orpheus.


Holding hands, lost in the dark,
your face a distant memory.

This torch intensifies the night,
I dare not turn in case I see you.

Next time I stray into your kingdom
your veil may be a different colour.

The photographs I took last summer
have faded leaving not a trace.

This morning when I swept the leaves,
an adder stirred beneath my foot.

Perhaps there is no after life,
and yet your touch is warm and tender,

so like the breath of a baby`s kiss,
or a delicate pulse deep in the womb.

But the shadows of ten thousand dreams
now haunt the rocks on which we stand.

I hear your voice.      I turn to answer.
Your hands no more will rest in mine.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 26th. - 31st. 2016.
September 4th. 2016.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) January 31st. (New Version). (2) Harrow Weald...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) January 31st. (New Version). (2) Harrow Weald...:                       1 .                          January 31st. Already it is the last day of the month, the New Year stacked with sc...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Dream poems. (1) Random Thoughts in the Herb G...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Dream poems. (1) Random Thoughts in the Herb G...:                           1 . Random Thoughts in the Herb Garden, Southwark Cathedral. I went and dreamed in my memory of the chapel, ...

Two Dream poems. (1) Random Thoughts in the Herb Garden, Southwark Cathedral. (2) Rogue Doorbell. (Revised)

                          1.

Random Thoughts in the Herb Garden, Southwark Cathedral.


I went and dreamed in my memory of the chapel,
sat and studied the herbs that now grow there
to create a metaphor of the resurrection,
vivid new growth amongst the broken stones.

"My head is like a sieve", the old woman cried;
"pour words into my ears they fall straight off my lips
then evaporate into the empty air".

"But nothing is really lost", I thought as I sat there
amongst the herbs and heaps of broken stones;
"I can see the shape of the chapel outlined in the raw earth
just like the carcase of a stranded ship.

I would like to haul that Drifter out of the sand,
restore the splintered mast, precarious against the sky
but daring me to climb".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 28th. 2016.
--------------------------------------------------------------
                            2.

               Rogue Doorbell. (Revised)


Ringing, without being touched
by the wind or an outstretched finger,
my doorbell, apparently with a mind
of it`s own, shocks me out of my nap,
my body curled tight in the Windsor chair,
my head pressed down on the table.

Perhaps my dream was a dynamo,
powering thought with invisible muscle
to ring the bell and wake me up
before my neck became permanently cricked,
and my face was rubbed raw on the wood;
or perhaps there had been a minor earthquake

that displaced the delicate plastic buzzer
and shook the hallway with carillons.
I will simply remark, that when I lifted the curtain
there was no one in sight on the moonlit pathway,
the gate remained locked, the way I had left it,
with the latch pressed firmly down.

I settled back in my chair to think things over.
It seems -  when the bell rang -  I had been dreaming of Leila,
a lost companion I have tried to put out of my mind.
I can feel my heart pounding - right now - as I type her name.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 18th. - 19th. - 22nd. - August 29th. 2016. 
June 23rd. 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems about Time. (1) Butterfly. (2) Through t...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems about Time. (1) Butterfly. (2) Through t...:                            1.                                         Butterfly . Fifty years ago you gave me a butterfly             ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: War Zone. (New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: War Zone. (New Version).: The river of love bore you laughing to an early death. May Lazarus lift you up out of the fire of unknowing into the morning light. ...

Butterfly.

                           1.
                 
                     Butterfly.


Fifty years ago you gave me a butterfly
                                 newly hatched from the chrysalis
you had stored discretely in an old shoe box
locked away in the cupboard on the third floor landing
out of sight of your father,
a retired army officer who thought that teen aged girls
should not indulge their time in scientific experiments
but should learn to cook and sew.

                                 The butterfly still lives,
a strange fluttering enigma that awakes me late at night
when she takes a break from her hide away
                        close by the iron fireplace in my bedroom,
the same room where we slept together when we got the
                                                                               chance.

I sometimes think this butterfly is just a figment
                                                    of my wild imagination,
my dream afflicted mind,
seventy years and more but still determinedly adolescent
and unable to understand
                that the Past has packed up every bag and gone.

But your gift is still here with me, undeniably alive,
a little out of sorts now, but truer than that savage "goodbye"
                                                                                      letter
your father made you write
            when he found out that we planned to start a family
without a "by your leave",
and that we thought his take on life was very out of date,
                                    and not worthy of real consideration.

from time to time we managed to meet up,
                       from time to time we hogged the telephone,
but years ago I misplaced your address,
                    and I cannot store phone numbers in my head.
Then last night, as I lay awake, I had a most vivid premonition,
that you will soon come brusquely knocking on my door,
                 your face and shoulders tanned from foreign travel,
your coal black hair white as Alpine snow;
     and that you will lift up your butterfly in long and delicate
                                                                                        fingers
to carry her out into my sunlit garden
                     where she can shimmy and glide among the roses
as to the manner born.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 22nd. - 23rd.-25th. 2016.

Silver Sun.

Reflecting off my watch
I took a silver sun
for a walk around my room
until it touched your picture,
and for that precious moment
I remembered you
just the way you were
before seven lonely years
dropped like a velvet curtain
between our separate lives.

But last night I dreamt that you
sat alone by a window
somewhere in New York,
and that the declining August sun
touched the wall above your head
with a brilliant silver halo.

And a warm tear on your cheek
glinted like a pool of glass.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 17th. 2016.

War Zone. (New Version).

The river of love bore you
laughing
to an early death.

May Lazarus lift you up
out of the fire of unknowing
into the morning light.

Your bones knit back together;
the new made flesh a hospice
for the soul we thought was lost.

But your poor wounded skull is howling,
your hat of soiled bandages
trailing deep in mud.

The face of the girl you deserted
reflected in the blankness
of your grey, unseeing eyes,

and the bullet hole deep in your temple
drilled like a cave in the hillside
where the newly dead are buried.-



Imitating birds, plumed with white feathers,
children gather up the scattered bandages
to make a bridal gown.

A gown for the holy image,
the bride without a future
in the sanctuary named for you.

But you are no longer there,
you went back to the Somme and your comrades,
far from the girl who cried.

And when for a second time
you were dragged from the burning trenches
to rest in the arms of Lazarus,
she had returned to breath on your bones
to give you back your life.

But you were now too lost to believe her,
too lost to be saved by her love.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 24th. - 31st. 2014. - July 20th. - August 15th. - 25th. 2016.

(1) Bird. (2) Swan Song.

            1.

         Bird.


Running scared
like a small child
or a black swan
with clipped wings
cornered
by the restless crowd
in the concrete cavern
water dappled.

The crowd murmured
as they watched the water
shimmer and sparkle
beneath the cold eye
of a single light
high up in the steel grey
concave ceiling.

They were shocked
into stillness
by your sudden dash
from one dark corner
into another
head down
shielded from glances,
you floundered like Icarus
in a snow storm of feathers.

I apologise
for invading your sanctuary
as one of the crowd
this Sunday evening,
but it seems that our paths
must now and then cross,
our interests similar,
our tastes much the same;
and I must admit
that the power of your presence
remains uniquely compelling;

and that quick glance you gave me
as you ran swiftly by
from darkness to darkness,
head tilted down
like a swan landing,
seemed to hint at the ghost
of a greeting.-

But that girl at the door
in the flimsy white Ball Gown,
is that your twin sister?
And why is she weeping?
Hands clamped over her eyes
to shut in her sorrow?
Perhaps even you
cannot give me an answer.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 25th. - 26th. - August 5th. - 10th. - 19th. 2016.
--------------------------------------------------------

                     2.

             Swan Song.


There is only one swan on my lake
Sometimes white
Sometimes black
Depending on my mood
Or the weather


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 10th. 2016.

Southwark Cathedral Compline, June 26th. 2016.

The organist played the Ode to Joy
as the priest raised the sacred bread
to the delicate chiming of bells
and the awed silence of the congregation
praying for hope in the bleak twilight
of another dishonourable bitter day
devoid of love, self sacrifice, the simple
                                                  kindness
of trust that unites neighbour to next door
                                                neighbour
whether they be local born or hale from
                                            foreign climes.
Even the members of this congregation
seem lost in their private worlds of prayer
not linked to adoration of the Eucharist
but to some other, secret, fraught unhallowed
                                                          pain
of sacrifice and grief, of human separation,
the breaking of too many loving hearts.
No one has looked their neighbour in the
                                                            eye
since that turbulent rain soaked hate fuelled
                                                  Thursday
when bitter xenophobia fouled the byways
of colour blind, dear multi cultured England
where once we walked at ease and spoke a
                                                         plethora
of diverse, unusual dialects and languages
and dared to love our neighbour as ourselves.
Now I also am a lost, lonely outsider, bereft of
                                             name or country,
of hearth, of culture, a tangible identity
that I can shout out loud and call my own.
I no longer like this tawdry little island, it is too
                                                small and dark,
too full of hate and self infatuation;
and I pray "Thank You Christ for my Gypsy Lover",
she is so fierce, so honest, so despised by my former
                                           friend, that racist voter
who screams mad threats down my telephone
because I wear a badge brilliant with golden stars
and once dreamt that the whole world is my home.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 26th. - August 1st. - 4th. - 5th. 2016.

Sabatha of the Twenty Eight Stars.

Lifting the veil that only I can lift
I meet your eyes, blue and piercing,
seeing me as I truly am.

Debussy on the radio
reminds me that your home in France
may soon become a distant dream,

and my beloved view of the Seine
an umbered text book photograph
pressed between two dusty covers.

Everything we both hold dear
taken from us for no reason
except we speak a foreign tongue,

our faces    pale    as a Yorkshire rose,
our talk discrete    between ourselves.

And religion also plays a part,
you wear a veil, I wear a cross,
two symbols that are mocked and hated.

But hope burns deeper than despair,
Because hope is a child of love,
Not of deceit and phoney war.

So when I dreamt of you last night,
your sad face lifted up to mine,
I knew that we are safe and well

and strongly bound together.
Love cannot be destroyed by loss,
or faith by separation.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 29th. 2016. - September 5th. 2016.
April 20th. 2020

The Free Wheeling Poetry of God. (New)

Jesus is a poet,
Rumi is a poet,
Perhaps God is a poet,
Perhaps?
             

                Well,
never mind the answer to this question,
that is
           if a true answer can possibly exist;-
Butterflies are resting on my rose bushes,
and the scent of thyme scintillates the garden
like a memory of times past
when monks brewed remedies for common
                                                         ailments
from their stock of herbs,
and the inquisition searched for dark skinned
                                                            heretics
observing outlawed rituals   behind locked doors.


Perhaps they would have burned me as a witch,
or used hot irons to force me to recant,
or thrown a bomb straight through my bedroom
                                                                window
at sunset as I settled down to pray.
Well,
          never mind,
those times I think are past,
and the night is very sultry,
                             very still,
and the trees outside my house are rocking gently
to the songs of nightingales.


I shall now go pack my pens into their drawer,
then dance an hour or two in my back garden,
under a roseate moon,
a barren goddess reflecting far off light,
(I always believe in magic late at night).-
My dance shall be a poem without words,
a glimpse into a mirror, veiled and dark,
that words can only desecrate with noise.

Yes, perhaps God is a poet after all,
A poet banished from all holy books.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 17th. - 25th. - 26th. - September 3rd. 2016.

This poem is all about the free association of ideas and images, and peering below the surfaces of life to glimpse hints of the truth. Nowadays we are too much enamoured of the surfaces of things and are led badly astray by this infatuation. I strongly believe that God cannot be described in words, however profound and hallowed by long use. This maybe is one of the reasons why atheism can seem to be the easy option to take up when doubt comes calling, as doubt invariably does. God is often only truly experienced outside the covers of books, outside the straight jackets of traditions. I love all holy scriptures, but take them to be guide books, however beautiful. When I walk through bustling streets or in the quiet midnight fields of rural Ireland. A such times I feel so much closer to all that is holy than when I study sentences confined between hard covers.  

(1) Escape from the Willow Garden. (2) Willow Pattern. (3) Clueless.

                 1.

Escape from the Willow Garden.


Do you remember the moment we were transformed into birds
To escape our enemies on the narrow bridge?
It did not hurt us, the sudden growing of wings,
Our fingers narrowing down into sharpened claws,
But I must admit those feathers itched a little,
Especially when we soared close to the sun,
Our Lark voices shrieking panic calls.

But our wings were not made of wax and branches
And did not melt when we rose like jets
High into the stratosphere above the garden
Where our enemies cursed and swore beneath the willows,
Before they packed their hand guns under pillows
Where they kept them in case of gang land brawls.

That night, changed once more back to man and woman,
We slept together under cherry blossom
That fell like snow upon our tired heads,
But for an hour or two after our sneak arrival
We could not regain the powers of human speech
But sat quietly by the moon flecked river
And told fantastic stories with our eyes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 16th. 2016.
----------------------------------------------------------

                2.

   Willow Pattern.



I am this shadow

You cannot hold me

Only observe the outline


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

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

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


Holding hands in the dark

The certainty of our love feels stronger

Than the rocks that make up the mountains


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
19th. November 2012.
----------------------------------------------------- 

                    3.

              Clueless.
   

Blind to realities
The hunter spins a stone at the images
Reflected on the river,

Meanwhile the birds have flown.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 19th. 2016.

I have loved the Willow Pattern since childhood, but it was only recently that that I learned it is an English design. So here we have it, European style porcelain decorated with an English design made up of Chinese styled images. The various legends of the fleeing lovers transformed into birds were invented even later. At some point I dreamed that the lovers fled to Japan where they lived out their lives in relative safety, hence the cherry blossom mentioned in the first poem. So here we have it, a world famous English design that could not possibly exist without a positive interaction with other cultures. And where do I stand in respect to all this. I was born in England, have a Welsh first name, a surname that can be either English, Irish or Dutch, and I have Azerbaijani, Russian, Scottish, Romani, and possibly French ancestry. I should have had a different surname, but my mother was prevented from marrying her first love, partly for political reasons. I feel very much a citizen of Europe, and my personal culture is a result of countless transactions along the Silk Road over countless centuries. This island is only one part of that story.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.  19th. July 2016.      

(1) Our First Kiss.(Revised). (2) Ornamental Tree.

              1.

    Our First Kiss.


Under the big moon
I laid you down
On the soft cool ground
By the slow cold river,
And out of your mouth
Flew a thousand birds
Singing wild songs
To welcome the Spring.

Under the big moon
When I kissed your eyes
Golden wings
Grew out of our shoulders
To raise us rejoicing
High above clouds
Threatening to shadow
The new day in rain.

Under the big moon
We first became lovers,
The galaxies spinning
Like Sufi dancers
Floating their good souls
On the music of praise.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 13th. - 15th. 2016.
-----------------------------------

              2.

   Ornamental Tree.


Breaking through the grating
The tree, refusing to be tidy,
Refusing to obey the whims of
                                      fashion,
The latest fetish of the gardener:
Has become a focal point for local
                                      children,
A sort of Maypole, a totem, a marker,
An imagined Roman obelisk,
A living image of the resurrection,
A symbolic ornament to skip and
                                dance around
As they run amok through the tidy
                                        square,
Upsetting new arrivals, disoriented
                                       tourists,
Returning holidaymakers
with their luggage stacked on wheels.


Shoots breaking through the grating
This ornamental tree is breaking out
From the tight cocoon of stone the
                       planner sanctioned
To be it`s compact home,
It`s infant cradle and eventual tomb.
A granite cradle polished so it shines
Like black ice on a wintry afternoon,
Or like a crudely manufactured mirror
Reflecting all the rushing to and fro
In front of Kings Cross station.


But this tree is like the children who
                                         adore it,
Or like the person I would wish to be,
A splash of life inside a concrete city
Breaking through the grating and the
                                               walls,
Cracking up the tedious little rules.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 21st. - 22nd. - 23rd. May - July 15th. 2016.

When I heard that a new Open Space had been opened at Kings Cross by the then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, I decided that I would like to visit this new public facility. The mayor had praised the project to the moon, giving the impression that a new Trafalgar Square had been plonked in front of the austere 19th. century terminus. What I found did not match this fulsome praise, in fact it resembled nothing more than a windswept concrete desert with a tube station taking up one corner. There were however the trees, not planted in the ground, but in long stone containers that looked like coffins for long dead giants. All these trees were severely manicured, no bulging roots, no branches out of place. One tree however was not doing what was expected of it. Stray shoots and bits of root were breaking through the grating on top of the stone cradle, little flourishes of natural life. Instantly I loved that tree, a little bit of bold life in a concrete graveyard.

My Blonde Priestess. (New Version).

Perhaps, now that your annual fast is over,
You suddenly thought of me over breakfast
And wished that I was pouring out the coffee,
Passing the toast,
Dipping my spoon into your loganberry jam,
In fact, this pain that has been pounding through
                                                        my brain
Every evening, slightly after eleven,
Reminds me of the headaches that you plagued
                                                          me with
Purely with the power of a thought
Whenever I upset you in the past.

It is now eleven years since I last saw you
On a crowded street in August, just off the main
                                                   drag in Brighton,
The leaves already falling.
You were walking with our daughter up the hill,
Your face almost smothered in a scarf,
Your eyes cast down as you watched your shoes
Tapping out a death march on the pavement.

No, you were not angry as I stood and watched
                                                            you there,
Just aware of a jostling crowd of strangers
Rushing down the hill to find a bar:
And also, unbeknown to me just then,
You were lost in grief for your loved
                                                      grandmother
Who had passed away just the week before.
The grief that you were living through that day
Was far too deep for even me to share.

Yes, we two are very private individuals
Wrapped tightly up in our little worlds
As hermits hide their heads in swathes of cloth.
But at night I sometimes dream you have returned
And are fighting with me for some space in bed.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 12th. - 13th. 2016. 
                                               

(1) Anticipation.(2) Legend. (3) My Honest Roughcast Heroes. (New Version).

                 1.

        Anticipation.


Through the fence a flash of starlight,
The sun reflected off your watch
As you walk towards my house.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 5th. 2016.
-----------------------------------------------

                 2.


            Legend.


Mount Errigal, a hump backed whale
Beached upon a northern shore
Slowly        melting        into        sky.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 3rd. - July 5th. 2016.
---------------------------------------------------

                    3.

My Honest Roughcast Heroes.


I notice in these photographs a preponderance of shaggy beards,
Perhaps now obligatory for serious poets,
Those cantankerous prophets unsure of man or God
Who roar outrageous jibes at the deaf and dumb,
Or innocuous folk who warily walk on by.

They like to warn non stop, a la Wilfred Owen,
Bemoaning every catastrophe, small or large,
That goes skidding down the byways they drive on
At any given moment, noon or night,
And puts their guru noses out of joint.
But because their audience tends to be peripheral,
Computer jerks, professors, and the like,
They do not seem to haunt the dreams of many,
That is, until a bard is needed quickly
To churn out in the papers, on the telly,
Sentiments designed to edify the throng
In portentous verses, loud and long and empty.
But because their usefulness is superficial,
These Minotaurs of the verb, the studied phrase,
Soon saunter back to being unsung heroes,
The old time oracles of the hi tec world.

But I, not being of a rhetorical disposition,
Light candles for Robert Graves and Sylvia Plath,
Both vertigo sufferers on the crags of love,
And victims of a world spun into chaos.
They learned from diligent practice of their art
That personal poems would always hit the mark,
Expose the whole damn show with one one smart saying,
The raw tip of the poem, an arrow head,
Refined to slice untruth and waffle dead.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
 July 7th. - 9th. - 12th. - August 8th. 2016.
  

Freedom Riders.

Two young people riding piebald ponies
Bareback across the summer fields
Seeking the illusion of perfect freedom
As they guide the ponies into the wind.

The father of the young girl wears a knife
Discreetly tucked into his belt,
A knife to scratch the young lads throat
To force him to make the girl a bride.

But the young folk prefered the heft of the wind
Hard in their faces and threshing their hair
To a lifelong fidelity to a marriage bed
And ten fractious children bawling down stairs.

Secretly at night they would snuggle together
Stunned by the stars glistening in their eyes,
 And they whispered "forever and forever,
We shall live how we love to, not how brute force decides".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 4th. 2016.

This poem developed out of the poem My Country that I wrote and blogged yesterday. This new poem refers to incidents that took place when I was 18, way back in the more innocent 1960`s. My Country is a direct response to the condition of the UK in the summer of 2016.

My Country.

I once lived in a real country,
A country that I traversed and loved.
But now my beautiful country
Has been changed, changed utterly,
Into a replica, a cut price imitation
Of something that my country never was.

A nowhere land, a Hollywood dream factory,
A Film Set mock up of my former home
That sags and falls to pieces in the rain,
Leaving only flotsam down the drain. -
A nightmare land, a cinematic fantasy
Where I am loathed because I love a gypsy.

And because my love is dark, I am told to pack off home,
But where is the open door to my reality?


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 3rd. - 4th. 2016.

(1) Superficial Love.(Revised Version). (2) Holy Matrimony.

                    1

         Superficial Love. 


You told me I was too parochial,
And too ugly to board with you,
So I cut off my nose to add interest
                                  to my face.

When gauze and lint were removed
You laughed at the predictable outcome,
And declared that a slight improvement
Just would not do,
And that a drastic improvisation
Was needed to shore up the ruin.
                   
We consulted the history books,
Concentrating on old Byzantium
Where party games were the politics
                                    of the day,
And finicky royal eunuchs
Ran pointless, elliptical races
All around the imperial clepsydra
To outpace any new fangled schemes.

We decided that a silver mask
Might add a touch of sparkle and glamour
To the inconvenient absence
So prominent between my eyes.

But love making proved out of the question,
After midnight the mask would start slipping
To reveal up close on the duvet
That fairy tales are a pack of old lies.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 30th. - July 1st. - 2nd. - 7th. 2016.

Note. A clepsydra is a water clock.
--------------------------------------------------------------

                        2.

         Holy Matrimony. (An improvised love poem).).


Girl - I did believe that I chose you
But -
          No No No No -
                                    God chose you
To break me apart - and then to make
                                            me whole.


When I stand alone in front of a mirror
I see a husk -
                      A shredded leaf in winter
Stranded upon the snow.


But when you stand - so proud - beside
                                                          me
I am an oak - broad and strong - at mid
                                                  summer -
Safe from the saw and the axe.


And when you kiss my face in the morning
My heart zings like a gilded aviary
                  adazzle with ten thousand birds.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 6th. - June 30th. - July 1st. 2016.

Two Poems. (1) June 25th. 2016. From the Roof of Tate Modern. (2) Dead Thorn.

                 1.

June 25th. 2016. From the Roof of Tate Modern.


A black spot on a sheet of paper.
An ink blot relentlessly spreading
Like mould on a kitchen curtain.
A tumult of sharks darkening the water
Until the whole surface is scuffed
And clarity becomes impossible.
A distant smudge of cloud spreading east
Until all blue is lost,
And just one splash of red disrupts the greyness,
A patch of blood seeping through a bandage.

We watch the wild storm gathering over London,
And when the thunder cracks above our heads
There is talk of a ghostly Blitz high in the Heavens,
And the Mead Halls of Valhalla imploding like dead stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 27th. 2016.

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

                  2.

         Dead Thorn.


That woman with a thorn lodged in her heart
Sat waiting for her husband to return,
Sat grieving quietly by the telephone.
"Only he can cure my pain", she softly whispered.
"Only he can dig this ancient thorn right out".

In due course she telephoned the local doctor,
A man who knew her case from A to Zee.
"But your husband died last December, don`t you remember?
I concluded that he died of no known cause.
But you seemed to think you killed him with a kiss".

"Oh no I did not", the grieving woman whispered.
"He died because we had lost the will to love".


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 22nd, - 23rd. 2016.
July 24th. 2020.

Ordinary Love. A Poem for Jo Cox. 1974 - 2016.

It was such an ordinary love,
A young mother`s love for her children,
For her husband,
For her colleagues and her friends,
For her tiny patch of England.

But this ordinary love had made her wise,
Had helped her understand that other folk
Knew joy and pain as she did,
And shared with her a raw humanity.

This wisdom made her travel far and wide
Into the bombed out cities, war wracked lands
Far from the quiet back streets of her childhood,
The safe town she was born in.

She travelled with love burning in her heart,
Burning with the pain that others felt
When they lost their homes, their children, husbands, wives,
To jihad and systemic civil war.

She helped raped women find a home, a refuge:
Syrians find a kinder, gentler land.
Their Human Rights she shouted to the wide world,
Shouted loud,
Her Yorkshire burr eloquent with compassion.

But some folk are deaf and blind and dumb to love,
They think of little, only their good selves:
"Me First" they shriek, at neighbours and the media:
"Me First, and then to Hell with all the rest".

This good woman, she went out to help her neighbours,
The dispossessed, the victims of injustice;
The refugees left helpless at closed borders;
The poor folk knocking on her surgery door.

But one sad man, who hated all she stood for,
Now waited for her with a knife and gun
To cut her down, on a street where she felt safe,
In the quiet Yorkshire town that was her home.

One sad lonely man, blind to the tears of children
Crying for their mother in the night.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,
June 22nd. - 23rd. 2016. 

This afternoon I joined the thousands in Trafalgar Square gathered to grieve and celebrate Jo Cox. I was moved to tears by the children singing "If I had a hammer", and the intense sad fellowship of the crowd. But I came away more hopeful than I had been when I set out; more hopeful that there are more good people in the world than I had feared. When I returned home I revised this hurriedly written poem, but I have kept the downbeat ending because the sadness has not yet left me. This afternoon I made this pledge with the tousands in the crowd, To Love Like Jo, and I ask all who read this little poem, do please do the same.

Owl and Hawk. A Quartet of Poems about Myth and Nature. (Revised)

I first sketched this quartet of poems during the 1970`s.Originally there were several more poems but I discarded certain deeply negative segments and collated two separate sections to create a single work. The time in which these poems were first sketched was a period of conflict and divisive politics. The Vietnam War had only recently fizzled out and the war in Ireland was growing more and more ferocious day by day. These poems reflect that time of uncertainties, uncertainties that I find are now reflected, as in a smokey mirror, by the raw divisive politics rocking both Britain and the United States of America this tragic month of June. These poems are very raw, and much of the writing is in a style that I now no longer wish to emulate, but I do think that they still posses a fierce validity of their own, so I took them out of my bottom drawer, added a line or two here, changed a word or two there, and have set them out in the order in which I think they should be read.          

        Owl and Hawk.

            First Poem.
The Mad Hermit and the Owl.


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

                   1.

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

                   2.

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

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

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

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

                    3.

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

                      *

            Second Poem.
           Owl in Winter.


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

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

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

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

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

                     *

            Third Poem.
               The Kill.


Deep in the moonlit valley
All life is hushed:
Nothing stirs, nothing wakens,
Nothing shakes the tufted grasses,
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 the midnight 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.

The shadow cuts across
The surgical light of the moon
Then drops far out of sight.
For a moment the danger is passed.

The panic quickly subsides,
Dies into a subdued whisper,

A whisper softer than the tread of a fox.

                    *

           Fourth Poem.
       Summer Solstice.


                    1.

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

                    2.

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

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

In the anguish of a resurrection,
Sought but not understood,
He darts into the sunlight
That dazzles, torments, then stuns him.

The ferocity of the bright sun
Shuts down his laser vision:
Retreating into his dark cave
He embraces the ashes of sleep.

                    3.

The pale morning light enthrals me.
Midsummer bonfires challenge the stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Quartet commenced December 18th. 1972.
Completed in this format, June 19th. - 20th - 21st. 2016.