The Raw Coffee Bean.(Revised Ending)

Last night I chewed on a coffee bean,
Crunching it between my front teeth
Until the flavours oozed out
                                   Dark and bitter
Blood of Brazilian berries.

A raw sub tropical coffee bean
                   Crushed into fine powder
Sharp as an uncooked lemon,
              A bee sting on my tongue tip
Hot with pain and pleasure.

The coffee bean was fragile,
                       But a bee is also fragile
When she fires her single sting
                      Into the eloquent tongue

Of her betrayer.
The sting cuts deep a sore that cannot heal.

And so again last night,
          The bitter tang that burnt my lips,
                                       my taste buds,
Scorched right through a scar that sealed
                                            a memory
From the caustic light.

And suddenly her face is not in shadow,
And suddenly
        That girl in the Mexican courtyard
Looks back at me from half my life ago.

An astonishing girl I betrayed because I

                                                feared her.

I did not believe her when she talked of
                                                 marriage.
I did not want her kiss upon my mouth.
She tasted of Russian cigarettes and coffee,
And secret Mayan dreams I could not fathom.

I did not believe her when she stroked my
                                                  forehead
With fingers long and supple, soft with
                                                          care;
And so I betrayed her curtly with a laugh,
                     A jaunty, off hand English laugh.
I cannot now recall her name.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 29th. - 30th.- August. 3rd. 2020. - August 28th. 2021.

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...

Fox Cut. (Revised).

A cat rubbing her back seductively
Against the pliant - plaintive music -
The slow - dead beat - tear choked - heart stopped -
love warped music
Of an old time saxophone played on a cold street corner
In an old time town by a lacrimose rain drenched loner
Wearing a blue - black raincoat and a grey fedora,
A cigarette butt in his ear.

This is the Fox Cut.

This is the moment of unseen truth
for the on screen lovers
in the back of a Buick
or way upstairs in a curtained bedroom
with the lights turned low
and the latch pressed down on the apartment door.

This is the moment I could kill that cat
And drown the saxophonist in an oil drum of whiskey
And trample his saxophone on the cinema floor
Before walking out in a hurry.

I don`t care if the film is eighty years old.
I don`t care if the film is a Hollywood classic.
I hate to be cheated of the moment of truth.
I want a lay - not a lie - for my money.

The cat rubs her back with seductive slyness
Against the waft and the weft of the wintry music;
A Freudian dream swap that blocks us from spying
The flagrant anarchy of new love.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 24th. - 25th. 2020.

Weeds and Butterflies.

My two small gardens are full of butterflies,
I have let the weeds grow
To give them a world to thrive in,
Two miniature jungles my neighbours nag me
                                                               to tidy,
Especially the postman who gets tangled in my
                                                          Hydrangea
Whenever he delivers parcels this time of year.
Sorry postman, my gardens are made for flowers,
For weeds and bees and butterflies,
Not for the likes and dislikes of busy humans
Keeping to man made schedules the natural world
                                                                   disdains.
Insects will probably out live the human species,
As will the plants most people find distasteful,
But I must admit, I have planted some ornamental
                                                                        roses,
To add a semblance of order
To my two wild jungles, my miniature nature reserves.
When I pack my bags and move to another country -
To Italy or Mexico or France -
I expect the new occupants of this corner house
Will pour grey concrete over both my gardens
To park their cars or build a glass extension,
But then most people are blind to small wild things;
What is fine in Nature books is not fine in their
                                                                 back yards.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 20th. 2020.
Typed while listening to the re-broadcast of the first performance of The Protecting Veil.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1). A Russian Christmas Eve. (2). Bonne Nuit Gymn...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1). A Russian Christmas Eve. (2). Bonne Nuit Gymn...:                       1 .  January 6th. 2014. Revised Version. How strange the time feels Those days when my home town Seems to emulat...

First Loss. (Newly Revised).

The poems that I dreamed about
Before my mother clutched cruel stars -
Before I kicked into the world
Beneath the surgeons scalpel,
Are the poems I want most to love -
If I could hear their music.

But my memory has been rifled,
And my dreams have lost the power
To break into the sacred Ark
Of my prenatal mind.
There the echo of my mother`s heart
Was the drum beat that I sang to;

Sang ancient words we all have loved,
But lose before we speak.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 27th. - July 15th. - 16th. 2020.

July Loganberries.

                             1

Now is the season of hidden fruit,
Berries that I thought would never ripen
I find rich scented, arterial dark,
Hanging in the shadows of the old stems
Earth heavy, shower shimmered,
Hanging down close to the rain drenched
                                                 leaf mould,
- Almost part of the rotting leaf mould -
Hanging ripe, impossible to harvest
Until I have tied back the wild new growth.

                            2.

I cut a path through the old dry wood
To find the metal poles I can fix wires to
With which to tie back the prized new growth
And expose the clustered fruits that grow
                                                         in shadow
Beneath the old dry leaves, almost autumnal
In their brittle dryness, their coarse purples and
                                                                 greens.
And I am happy to see the dark stains on my fingers
As I gather an unexpected supper of berries,
Blood dark berries rich in summer goodness.


And I am happy, yet nostalgic for the sweet / bitter
                                                                     fruit
As I taste the last mouthfuls of the season.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
12th. - 13th. July 2020.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Free Wheeling Poetry of God. (New)

Trevor J Potter's Art: 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 q...

A Miracle of Rainbows. (Completed)

A Miracle of Rainbows, Part 2 of Rainbows and a Nightingale.


That day I thought the sky was full of angels,
Two double rainbows high above the gardens
After a week of chill midsummer rain,
June 20th. 1967,
The sky a pale blue lake refracting light
                          As though it were a giant lens,
A vast clear canopy of polished crystal
Sprinkled with ten billion drops of rain.

Caught up, mind dazzled, in these transformations
I stood transfixed upon the garden pathway
Not daring to move, in case the magic should vanish
If I happened to spend a minute or two in the house.
Eventually dusk erased these rainbow arches,

With the encroaching shadows of a starless night.

Electric lights flicked on in dusty rooms
Crammed tight inside the grey Victorian terraces
That in a year or two would be knocked down
To make way for an M1 intersection.
I entered my intimate space of books and vinyl
And tried to make anew those faded rainbows
With oil pastel on a cardboard lid.
I soon gave up and tore the lid to shreds.
My rudimentary smudges made me cry.

Outside in the yard our spaniel chased his tail.

His take on life was always down and dirty.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
3rd. - 5th. - 7th. July - October 4th. 2020.
22nd February 2021

Rainbows and a Nightingale. (Completed).

      Rainbows and a Nightingale.  Part One. (Summer 1967 Recalled).

Although it is just passed midsummer,
Wednesday the 1st. of July 2020,
The evening sky is moist, pale, autumnal,
As though the sun has succumbed to Coronavirus,
Cloud swaddled, moon white, barely functioning,
The sick star of a temporary universe.

The rain grieved air now turns my garden greyish
As though the earth, the plants, the stony pathways
Were always meant to be as drab as concrete,
Urban concrete cracked by spores and cancer. -
Home grown Loganberries, scrumptious, good to eat,
All seem to have been freaked with specks of grey,
Not one ripe fruit as healthy as it should be.

Well, tomorrow, I`m told, will be a washed out day
With lightning flashes, clouds turning noon to night,
And the birds dumb, hunched cold on dripping branches,
Trees swaying and splintering in the gusts and squalls. -
Outside, in the street, a nightingale mocks this greyness,
And I am minded of a sudden dazzle of rainbows,

An evening of double rainbows, almost a lifetime ago.  

Trevor John  Karsavin Potter.
July 1st. -  2nd. - 3rd. - 4th. - October 4th. 2020.

February 22nd 2021.