Autumn Travails / Winter Blues. (Rewritten).

Perhaps we are already in mourning.

The passengers all appear to be wearing black.

We huddle inside this commuter train,
Jolted unceremoniously towards London
Like a jumble of nondescript frieght.

As has often been the case in my life
I appear to be the odd one out.
I am dressed in sober grey,
Black is too formal for me.

October will begin tomorrow,
The golden month with the cruel edge,
A knife in the belly of the year.
Even now the sun grows mellow, indistinct,
Soon it will vanish completely,
Drowned in a bruise of clouds.

I stare out of the carriage window
At a city drenched in rain,
The Plane Trees leaning sideways,
Their roots submerged in mud.

The passengers all appear to be wearing black.
I find it hard to look at them.
I think they must all be doctors
On route to a colleagues funeral.

I touch your photograph in my pocket
And dream of California;
We two holding hands in secret,.
And waiting for he sky to fall.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 28th. - 29th, 2013.
June 13th. - 14th. 2014
Rewritten July 22nd. 2015.

Soul Poem, Love Has No Perfect Language.

Soul Poem, Love Has No Perfect Language.

In the secret darks of your soul -
Cold desert space - a forest stirs -

Probing with myriad roots
The tangled depths
Of dappled time -
Deep inner emptiness -

Seeking a source to tap -
A fault to crack open -
Cram with new life -
A blank to score with raw power - eradicate.-

The forest is full of noises -
A filigree network of sounds
Warping vacancy into self awareness
With the weft and weave of language.

You touch my hand -
Having newly accepted my presence. -
I struggle to find a pattern of words
To adequately express this moment.

Not speaking we accept the primacy of love -
We seek empathy in the pain of silence
As we stand face to face - apart -& yet together.

Love has no perfect language. -
We stand face to face - enthralled by the knock of our heartbeats
But blind to the world - brimming with life around us. -

Heedless on proud wings fly the feral swans.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 18th. 1969. - January 30th. - 31st. 2014.
February 3rd. - 10th. 2014. 

After the Swim, An Aegean Nocturne.

That evening
I found you lost and alone
A mile or two from your companions.

A Greek Goddess out of tune with nature
Standing under the fragile blossom
That shuddered pink snow in a sudden shower.

I walked, head bowed, slowly towards you,
An acolyte in awe of your lissom radiance,
Your eyes the colour of nutmeg.

Only the white towel wrapped around your head
Conveyed a sense of the ordinary.

Your pet dog chaffed against his muzzle.
Perhaps he would have torn me into pieces
If given half a chance.

You grabbed me fiercely, compressing my knuckles;
I stood stone still, stunned by your presence.

Your pet dog growled and leaped in frenzy
Chasing mad circles around our ankles.

Somehow we side stepped his brutal Volta.
Deftly giving him the slip
We ran swiftly out of the garden.

That night the birds sang outside your window,
Singing all night as though trained to please us;
And twin stars danced brightly above Mount Olympus.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

June 22nd. 2013. - January 22nd. - 23rd. - 31st. 2014.

Shakespeare.

Shakespeare, I meet you in the pub,
The brothel, the goal.
You are one of our number,
A rogue and a vagabond, a whore monger,
Dirt under your finger nails, spittle in your beard,
Cocking a snoop at turkey fat puritans
As you write your plays to the thrum of the clock
In a smoke black alehouse.

Friend, you do not belong on the West End stage.
Rapier sharp with sexual fury
Your words daub the tenements with a visceral anger
More relevant than untutored graffiti
Telling us exactly how the world wags;
Even squeaky clean school books cannot sanitize you.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 14th. - 22nd. - 23rd. 2014. 
Revised January 7th. 2015.

(1). A Russian Christmas Eve. (2). Bonne Nuit Gymnopedie.

                     1.

 A Russian Christmas Eve. Revised Version.

How strange the time feels
Those days when my home town
Seems to emulate the beauty
Of a half remembered foreign city
That a lifetime ago I visited.
But the drab cold rains quickly swab away
All vestiges of vibrant colour.

Tonight is the Russian Christmas Eve,
But already shoots are breaking open
The lid of ash grey London earth
Compacted down by boot and shovel
Over the bulbs buried in my garden.

Tonight I kneel before an icon;
The Virgin Mother holding the Saviour
In hands that are delicate, yet strong:
Her eyes, blank with pain, are weary;
Her face wan as a child`s in Auschwitz.-
The guttering candles sting my eyes
As I kiss the ancient gilded image
With the compassion of a lonely stranger;
An Outsider unnoticed in a crowded church.

How strange the time feels.
I have long been an exile from my Russian past;
The emigre dancers, musicians and dreamers
Who nurtured my intellect when a child.
A world of ballet, of poets, of painters;
Of Stravinsky and the Orthodox chants:
The surreal counterpoint of Pushkin`s chained cat
With Stalin`s Gulag, where a relative died.
Yet London has always been my home city;
The golden domes were a distant dreamscape
Sheaved in the mists of my imagination.

The bulbs that I planted in late September
May perhaps create an oasis of colour
Between the stone paths of my garden

And lend me a sense of belonging.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
6th. - 7th.- 10th. - 14th. January 2014.
July 18th. 2020.

Originally titled January 6th. 2014. 

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

                          2.

          Bonne Nuit Gymnopedie.


Satie flicked the nail across the head
Whereas Richard Strauss grandly missed the point.

Proust picked the petals from dead flowers.
Ravel flecked the keyboard with snipped lace.

Boredom could ensue, but, let me see?
Yes. - Pass a menu. Pass a serviette.

Lean back on this umbrella, it is the only one I have.
Dismiss that cup of coffee:. - Devour a cigarette.

Life is a roulette wheel of lonely nights and days,
Quickly pass the whiskey mate - and then decide who pays.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
7th. - 30th. January 2014.
18th. July 2020.

On a London Street in December.Revised Version.

Just one backward glance
Then you were gone;
The dissonance of city traffic
Distorting the sound of your footsteps;
The edge of your long white scarf
Lifted deftly upon the wind
As you turned the corner.

The shadows have now become
more sharply defined
than just one hour ago.
The distant moon, strangely translucent,
Shines through the mottled cloud
Like an electric light through muslin.
For a moment I clearly recall
The smile of my long dead mother
As she watched two restive children
playing together. I thought I could snatch the moon
If I climbed up onto her shoulder.

When memories fail the world turns bitter
Like a dark night with no bright star;
Flowers that have lost their colour;
Windfalls that rot when handled.
The electric moon continues to silver the rooftops
with a cruel and eerie brilliance
that dazzles my half closed eyes.-
London seems empty without you.

Send me word from your distant homeland
The moment that you are free to do so.
I am already missing your soft voice;
Your pale face creasing with laughter.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
29th. - 30th. December 2013. 
2nd. - 31st. January 2014.

Doctor Faustus.(Revised)

Faustus, of course, got it wrong,
As necromancers and licensed profiteers
Invariably do;
Relying, as always, on a dead and musty tradition
To validate nefarious activities;
The back stabbing daring do,
The gilded handshakes with politicians,
The abuse of the poor,
The lack of a moral compass.

Faustus followed this tradition to perfection,
Preferring a night on the tiles
To academic success;
And a dead queen really got his pecker up.
But when all is said and done, he was merely
a lousy businessman, sold on an easy profit
and a chance to hoodwink authority.

After twenty four years of not doing a proper job;
Wasting his petty investments; filching illicit sex;
Mocking God; preening like a cut price cowboy;
He got booted down into Hell
To be steamed in a permanent sauna;
A Health-Spa so ultra exclusive
               it could not be hired out by the super rich.

Was this final scene worth all the farce and the fury?
The magic circles? The tattooed arms and wrists?
The well scratched backs? The snuggling up to the devil?
Only our hero could answer these pointed questions
Provided the script was made ready,
But his speechwriter went on a binge one starry night,
Got stabbed in the eye, and could no longer come up
                                                           with the goods.
Faustus was left without help, lost in the melee;  uptight;
Dumb as a mannequin,            ditched and out of sorts;
Cursing the day that he devoted his life
To beach party hijinks and amateur sports.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
December 23rd. - 25th. - 26th. - 30th.  2013.