Dark January Morning. (Newly Completed Poem).

Filigree skeins of music drift through air
Floating gently from the hi-fi speakers
Of my kitchen radio.
I sit in the narrow corner of my loneliness
Waiting for you to call.

On the days you do not speak to me,
On the days when we stay out of touch,
There is an arid space deep in my mind,
An empty room without a lamp or table;
No rugs, no chairs, no unlatched window,
No open doors.
On the days you do not pick up the receiver
My sense of loss is absolute.

But the moment that you speak to me,
(By email, or by text, if not the phone),
I find the empty room has filled with light,
The walls transformed into an open terrace
That looks upon a garden framed with sycamores,
A hedge of briar roses.
Although you are a hundred miles from here
I sense your warm breath soft upon my shoulders.

The Mother Goose Suite fades from off the airways
As though dissolving into distant landscapes
Where legends are more real than you or I.-
Suddenly in the hallway rings the phone!
But no - it was the sharp metallic flutes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
8th. - 10th. - 14th. - 22nd. - 24th. - 29th. January 2020.
29th. June 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Villa Sazai. (New Ending). Illustration for th...

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Villa Sazai. (New Ending). Illustration for th...: Why are they looking at the mountain, These shapely girls who do not show their faces? Nothing unusual appears to be happening on the dis...

Pseudo Blue Monday.

After a night of frost and jazz and arguing
The January sun dazzles my glass splintered eyes
As I squint into the preternatural azure
Of an ice bright morning sky.
So welcome to blue Monday, the saddest day of the season
According to a Silicon Valley fable
Concocted for our category mad society,
Our sort it, box it, tick it, mad society
That loathes convention but loves the glib and new.
It seems that every moment of our lives
Must have a label, a file, a definition,
To spoof our minds to thinking we are clever,
So absolutely, brighter than Buddha clever,
When we are simply aping the gobbledegook of fashion.

Yes January is the saddest month of all,
That is why I was out late last night in the pub,
Embroiled in jazz, in arguments and drinking,
Occasionally staring blankly at the ceiling,
Occasionally telling a brexiteer where to go.
I cursed the neon lit road as I stumbled home.
I cursed the wind that woke me at half past 7.
I cursed the sun for being too bright this morning,
But daffodil shafts are already fiercely shooting
Slim green arrow tips up through the sticky earth,
And the miniature rose bush is flecked with delicate flowers
As though mid winter is nothing to bother about.
The trouble with being human is the constant heartache
Of trying to live in a world we don`t understand.

I pour a cup of tea and look out at the garden
Through windows laced with frost and broken dreams,
The frail lattice work of all our yesterdays.
In my mind I can see the horses I rode when a child,
Trekking peaceful fields now covered in houses;
And blue Monday suddenly morphs into purple and black.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter, 
January 20th. - 21st. - 24th. 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Fernweh. (New Revision).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Fernweh. (New Revision).: I have never yet found my true home, I have always only been                                        "on Location", A displaced...

The Runaway Lovers. (From the Chinese).

You are the perfect mirror
Reflecting the cool blue skies of morning,
The clouds a distant memory.

Your smile is happiness without a flaw,
The simple gift that you give to me,
The perfect gift that you give to me,
And you have asked for little in return,

Only that I am patient with you always,
And never give in to bouts of anger,
Only that I am beside you when you awake,
Only that I am close beside you always.

In the cool blue light of early morning,
Reflecting my face reflecting yours,
You are the perfect mirror.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
16th. - 17th. January 2020.
For Ivy who will understand perfectly.

Although influenced by the translations of the poems of Li Ching - chao by Kenneth Rexroth,this poem is completely mine except for the imagery of the mirror reflecting the sky, which refers to a description of Lo Kuang by General Wei Kuang, but I have used the imagery completely in my own way, and moreover, I am referring to a young woman deeply in love. The couple in the poem were inspired by the lovers in the story created from the imagery depicted on the classic Willow Pattern plates.

England in Extremis.

I have no true home now,
My country has become a laughing stock in Europe,
So I hide my head in shame,
Not wishing to be seen as part of the farce performed
By clownish politicians
In my name.

I do not applaud the antics of red nosed old Etonians
Who would pay half a million
To hear a clock go BONG,
While thousands die unnoticed of malnutrition
And integrity is sold down the river
For a song.

Leaving Europe is not Dunkirk, it is the retreat from Kabul
When there was only one survivor, a starving man astride a mule.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 15th. - 16th. 2019.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems (1) West Country Woman. A Song. (2) The ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Two Poems (1) West Country Woman. A Song. (2) The ...:                 1 West Country Woman. West Country Woman, Hair wilder than moorland bracken, Face redder than solstice fire; I will ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Chinese New Year. (Revised Longer Version). (2...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Chinese New Year. (Revised Longer Version). (2...:                Chinese New Year. Plum blossom fragrant with hope. A Swift darts upward into the silk grey sky, A flurry of movements f...

(1) Chinese New Year. (Completed Poem). (2) The Hoarder.

               Chinese New Year.


Plum blossom fragrant with hope.
A Swift darts upward into the silk grey sky,

A flurry of movements frozen in time
No quicker than the skipping of one heart beat.

The skill of the artist has tricked my eyes
To perceive in stillness the essence of speed,

And beyond this moment nothing more is visible,
I assume that tomorrow is not just a dream.


How strange that an artist can create such stillness
With the dancing movements of pencil or brush,

A stillness so vibrant with living vitality
That the painting has become the event it depicts.

The family photos packed into my album
Are smoked glass shadows compared to this.


Trevor  John Karsavin Potter.
January 1st. - 4th. - 9th. 2020.
Derived From the illustration for January on my Chinese Wall Calendar.


                  The Hoarder.


I bought this incense forty years ago;
When I light the sticks they are gone in
                                      five minutes
Leaving a pile of ash.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 1st. 2019.