Colour Box Blues.

The world that I live in seems unreal right now,
Unsubstantial,
Impermanent, quickly changing.

The colour of my skin changes with the quality of light.
English summer light,
Venetian light,
The whirling lights in a third class dance hall,
The orange glow of city street lamps.
You cannot catalogue who I am
By just looking at my skin.
Tomorrow you may not quite recognise me, brother,
If we meet in a different place.

The painting that I completed after midnight
Looks different now the sun is up
And silvering the curtains.
I open the curtains, the colours come to life,
The images that I drew under lamplight
Now shimmer with a new quixotic brilliance,
But if I close the curtains
The colours will dull down again
Like embers becoming ashes.

In the meantime I embrace the beauty of the first light,
Revelling in the unreality of each moment
Because this unreality is crammed with beauty,
The sunlight making patterns on the ceiling,
Patterns that change even while I look.

The shadow of my hand darkens the bedroom mirror.
Each morning my face is new to me in the glass.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 21st. - 24th. - 27th. 2018.

Schumann`s Last Piano Pieces. (Revised).

The angels that Schumann heard
Singing in the night
Were real to him,
And are all too real to us
As we sit side by side at the keyboard,
Two pianists with awkward fingers
Trying to make sense of the score.

These angel voices were perhaps the tongues
Of madness
Breaking through the stillness of the night
As he snuggled down to sleep beside his wife,
Or perhaps they were as real as he believed,
Real as his wife, his seven restless children
Curled in their cots,
The night lights flickering palely.

They were not the songs of ghosts,
But more like the ringing of Easter bells
Out over suburban gardens,
Bleak patios purple with hyacinth,
For yes, these chords are truly loud and clamorous,
They ring and shout and thunder
Beneath our struggling fingers
Like sonorous church chorales
Greeting the resurrection.

No, Schumann was not mad when he wrote this music.
It was the silence that followed, the loneliness of the asylum,
Where, cut off from his family, the laughter of his children,
He was forced to renounce the validity of his dreams.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 6th. - July 24th. 2018.

The Sound of English Spoken. (Revised).

The sound of English spoken
A mouthful of herring bones
Salt to the tongue and brittle
Raw noise in the ear
Terse - but precise


My native language is a border guard
When love is deep and powerful


Sometimes the Latins are lyrical
Melding syntax to human heartbeats
Youthful hearts beating in unison
Touching the sunlight with music
A tender kiss


Love
When I think of you I am singing
Singing intimate songs without lyrics
My native language kept in quarantine
When it cannot dance lightly


Dance lightly from partner to partner
True stories that need no telling


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 11th. - July 19th. 2018.

The Grave of Anne Bronte, Scarborough. (New Poem).

They have given Anne a new memorial,
Those good folk who know the worth of books.
The lines I could decipher fifty years ago
Have crumbled into little heaps of sand
And gritty knots of lead. The few kind words
Broken down by decades of cold rain
Beating hard against the steep limestone escarpment
In salty gusts of wind.

The new memorial is a plain and simple plaque
That names her father but not the books she wrote,
And will perhaps survive this present century.
I sit beside the grave and try to come to terms
With how everything that makes a life worth living
Will eventually break apart and lose all meaning. -
A group of listless tourists, tied to an agenda,
Tick their check lists as they dawdle by.

Anne was the Bronte we often underrate,
Although she was the fiercest of her clan,
Speaking straight and strong with words that really troubled
Folk who hate it when the truth is spoken.
Her honesty has brought me to this hilltop graveyard
To sit and mourn her youth, but also to imagine
That I can be as honest as she was,
And not to hold my tongue when times get tough.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 26th. - 28th. 2017. - July 11th. - 12th. 2018.
The first poem was written when I was very tired, now I think I have got closer to what I was trying to say.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Mexico Remembered. (New Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Mexico Remembered. (New Version).: Hyper beautiful were my Mexican friends - Living life to the limits - Loving death - a pale dreamland - Drinking new wine from shimmerin...

Mexico Remembered. (Revised).

Hyper beautiful were my Mexican friends -
Living life to the limits -
Loving death - a pale dreamland -
Drinking new wine from shimmering clouds at sunset -
Tequila from the mists of dawn -
Water from the cool stone fountains -

We danced beneath blossom as large as sombreros -
We danced through the gardens - the dusty white courtyard -
Sieved sand through quivering interlocked fingers
As we danced and sang beneath the yellowing moon -
The goddess of rebirth - of unhinged loving.

We danced to remember the revolution -
Blood on the frets of a thousand guitars.
We danced to honour the ghosts of midsummer -
To summon the harvest -
To empower desire -
We danced to honour the souls of forefathers
Present in masks -
In the painted faces
Of the crowds processing through holiday streets.
Fierce death understood as the true beginning -
Ripe seeds that must fall to make the new life
That glows in the fetus -
The burgeoning sunflower -
The snake in the shadows dodging our footsteps -
The urchins grasping at thorns in the dirt.

At ease I was with my Mexican friends -
Honest in all things - the kiss and the curse -
The brevity of life perceived as a blessing -
The raw edge that scars the pulse of the dance -
When the car took me back to the streets of LA
I wept deep in the shadows of vanquished angels.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
 July 8th. - 9th. - 13th. 2018.
I love LA, the City of the Angels, but I love Mexico so much more.

Mirror Images. (Revised).

The portrait of Lucrezia Borgia
Is you to a tee -
The same thoughtful eyes -
The same exposed breast -
The same haughty profile
Disguising a profound unease -
A distrust of the venal wisdom -
The empty pursuit of power
At the core of a treacherous world.
All that the young aristocrat wanted
Was safety - love - a good life -
Raising her musician daughter
Among artists - poets - saints -
Not the attentions of an incestuous father -
Or a brother who butchered her friends.

Your family certainly lacks the glamour
Of those tarnished Vatican angels -
And poverty - not Papal wealth -
Was the hallmark of your upbringing -
A beleaguered gypsy woman
With a sad alcoholic mother -
And a father who could never be traced.
But when you stood - ill at ease - by my bedside -
Transfigured by love and by longing -
I noticed - how strangely alike
You are to the young Lucrezia -
Only your hair is a little darker -
And your eyes are black - not hazel.
But just like you - she was quietly vulnerable -
Her bravado was simply for show.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 14th. - July 3rd. - 8th. 2018.
Lucrezia Borgia is one of the most maligned figures in history. The rumours about her simply do not fit the verifiable facts. Like all aristocratic women of her time she was a pawn in the hands of the men in her family, some one to marry off for political or financial reasons. The historical Lucrezia loved the arts, and her daughter became a nun and a notable composer. Lucrezia died in childbirth at the age of 39.