Bolero.

Invoking the bull
The dancer becomes the bull as she dances
And yet remains entirely woman
Even though the bull
Has entered every nerve,
Entered every muscle
Of her rocking
           crouching
                         body
As she slowly gives new life, new life to the
                                                                 bull,
The raw dark spirit of her fearlessness,
The fearlessness of the maddened bull
Facing the cape and the sword.

The matador is not transformed by the dance,
He is merely swaying to the beat of the drum,
Empowered to kill     what he cannot become.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 25th. - 26th. 2018.

Written after watching a ballet danced to Ravel`s Bolero.

The Puppeteer.(Revised).

These puppets make me doubt my own true past.
They write the songs that I discreetly wrote.
They dance the dances I adroitly danced.
These puppets try to make me disappear,
Hide me behind thick sheets, or plywood walls.
They lie out loud about who pulls their strings,
Pretending they are not the puppets that they are,
Pretending that my words are truly theirs.
But at night when I shut out the wintry moon
With curtains that my mother brought from China,
I pack these puppets into cardboard boxes,
And fold their theatre underneath my bed.
I can now sleep like a child, safe in my certainties,
And not be fooled by what the world believes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
December 28th. 2018.

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

Trevor J Potter's Art: 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 danc...

A Ramble through My Sunday Morning Mind.

Waking at the snap crackle and pop of dawn
I listen to the broken consort of birds,
(The honk of geese imitating horns),
Interacting with a Jacobean love song
Broadcast over chimney pots and plane trees
By my neighbour`s FM radio.
Sunday morning in North West Four,
The wind westerly, the bright clouds scudding,
And purring cars replacing the click of heels
Rat-tat-tatting the weekday pavements
As the fallen scions of Eve totter off to work.

Late last night I heard the clack of boot steps,
A flock of students flouncing home from Camden
To reconvene their ceiling imploding party,
Or to flop down softly, a heap of disengaged puppets
Flung at an unmade bed.
If I were fourteen I would be right there with them
Making out to be a manly cocksure twenty,
My mouth a megaphone hoarse with madness,
My eyes glued to the girls.
Soon enough those kids will be as bald as I am,
Self mocking and unkempt, bemused at being old.

Tomorrow, it seems, is just another Monday,
The day of the week God never pronounced good,
His mind already fixed on twice blessed Tuesday,
Adam still dumb in the lifeless clay.
And so I can waste another hour or two in bed,
Another hour listening to my neighbour`s FM radio
Before I dawdle soulfully to 9.30 Mass
To sing out loud the words I sometimes believe in,
That is when my mind is awake,

Because only when singing am I truly alive and awake,
Awake like a dancer to subtle syncopations,
Awake as the birds when they signal the dawn.-
Oh well, time to get out of bed and make ready,
Two hours singing carols should perk up the day.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
8th.-10th.-22nd. December 2018.

Rocking Horse Blues. (Revised).

My rocking horse lived out in the garden.
He loved the summer months, the scented grasses,
The willow trees swaying gentle curtains,
The many coloured flowers, brilliant like small suns.
But when the winter came, he had no coat, no cover,
He stood out in the snow, his circus finery
Fading swiftly in the London gloom.
Soon he was just a pile of wood and plaster,
His crimson saddle a patch of tattered leather
Lost among the scattered leaves and branches
That fell to earth in the autumn squalls.
My jaunty rocking horse remained outside
Because there was no space in my bedroom,
And daddy did not want to waste tarpaulin
To save a toy he was too large to play on;
It was, after all, not his rocking horse.
Now sixty years have passed, and I am grey and grumpy,
But every now and then I dream my little horse
Longing for warm fires and hoof deep carpets
As he flaked to brittle dust beneath the stars.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 17th.- 19th.2018.

Tiger Lily.

I did not know you could be SO jealous,
SO out of your mind with angst and fury,
Spilling burnt food all over the cooker,
Breaking a vase.
All this because of a short conversation,
A few words spoken out of your hearing
Between your sister and your favourite man.

I did not know you could do SO MUCH damage,
Trashing your bedroom and spoiling the toilet,
A human Wrecking Ball in your own home,
A demolition expert on heat.
All this because of an imagined liaison
Between two people you admire and adore
When they were simply sheltering from precipitous
                                                                            rain.

Strangely it seems he approves of your actions,
The implacable fierceness of a Tigress
Protecting her kill and her feeding young
Is a scene that ricocheted through his mind
When he heard the report down the phone.
So you are the woman he could spend his life with,
You would keep the wide world away from the door,
And the kids would grow wise in your care.

Do not worry, your sister is not a rival,
She could not live with a man so like you.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 7th. 2018.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Nineteenth Century Views of Japan.(Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Nineteenth Century Views of Japan.(Revised).: I did not know Mount Fuji was so large. The boats - four or five deft pen strokes - Float in a pale blue bay. A purple scarf of cloud su...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Advent Eve.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Advent Eve.: Remembered fears become real once more. Bare trees stoop, Bleached skeletons flayed by Arctic wind, Starving paupers hunched in snow, S...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) A Dream of Deep Midwinter. (Revised) (2) Note...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) A Dream of Deep Midwinter. (Revised) (2) Note...: Butter coloured moon, Midnight December, A single light in the coldest of skies Shining above the Christmas rooftops, The bare boned tr...