(1). A Short Story.(Revised Version). (2). Hypatia of Alexandra.

                               1.

                      A Short Story. (Revised Version).


The woman could not afford to bury her child.
The woman did not know the whereabouts of her husband,
nor did she care.
The woman had only herself to rely on.
The child had died unexpectedly in her sleep.
The child was six months old.
The body was kept on ice by the Undertaker for several months.
The woman worked late to earn some extra money.
When the body began to putrefy the funeral took place.
The woman could not pay the bill in full.
The Debt Collector ransacked the woman`s home.
She was left with a small box of clothes, a bed, a single ring cooker,
a pet cat, her wedding ring, some black and white photographs of her family.
The woman was then visited by the police.
The police let her go with a warning.
The woman had sold her car to pay for the funeral.
The car had been abandoned by her husband.
The woman cried in the silence of her home.
That night she considered committing suicide.
The woman was aged just forty.

This just happens to be a true story,
But you will not read about it in the Press.
The woman just happens to be a gypsy
And therefore thought to be a waste of space.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
March 25th. - 26th. - 31st. 2014.
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                         2.

         Hypatia of Alexandria.


Hypatia

Black water rippling over white marble

Blood on the city streets

Locked in their orbits the distant stars look down

Ice glints on moonlit rooftops

Dogs sniffing and licking scraps of human offal

Blood on the floor of the sanctuary

Weeping Willows dropping sprigs of memory into black water

Monks wearing daggers

Astrolabes smashed into fragments

Hypatia raped and murdered inside the cathedral

Her works destroyed

Her face cut to the bone

Black water rippling over white marble

Memorials drowned in the wide sea


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 24th. 2014.

(1) Her Timed Entrance. Version No.2. (2) Ludic is Love.

                  1.

       Her Timed Entrance.


Quietly through the labyrinth of time
You followed the clues I had scattered,
Your footsteps, although muffled,
Discerned at ten years distance,
Their soft sure tread
Praised from the first.
your gently whispered words,
A far away enchantment;
Your elfin features, a shadow in my mirror.

And now you have arrived
To the minute,
On the very day expected
At the meeting of two paths.

I am hoping that our planets are aligned,
Preferably with the near perfect precision
That atomic clocks are tuned to oscillate.
From now on we should chart the course together.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 23rd. 1966. - December 29th. 2012.
February 20th. 2014. - March 21st. - 23rd. 2014.

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                       2.

            Ludic is Love.


Ludic is love
Like a kiss in the dark
Unexpected and unrepeated
But for all times remembered;
Or the smile on the face of an infant
Caught dipping fidgety fingers
Surreptitiously
Into a bowl of blancmange;
Or the instinctive moves of a dancer
That hush the babbling crowd. -
Last night we ran through the garden
Frenetically laughing and crying
Like lost souls at a shindig
Spotlit by the moon.
Such moments are rare indeed,
Rarer than untainted honey,
But without them our lives are worth nothing.
Ludic is love.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
21st. - 22nd. March 2014.

A Grief.

                     1.

How can I write about grief?
It is almost impossible.
How can I write about grief without telling a lie?.
How can I write a sentence that is not anodyne?

There is just too much sorrow in my life at the moment.
The weight of all this pain is almost unbearable,
Suffocating
                  Like an overcoat thrown over my head
Covering my eyes, my ears, the whole of my face,
                                                              My body.
Too many deaths,
                           Too many griefs dropped out of the blue
Unexpected,
                           An unstoppable avalanche of deaths.

Faces that were here suddenly not here anymore,
                                           dropped out of sight.
The local streets crammed tight with new, much younger
                                                                            faces,
Strangers,
The old ones deleted entirely,
                                             Wiped out beyond yearning,
Taking my comfort zone with them,
              That old warm blanket riddled with tiny fag holes,
Chucked into the landfill bin;
                            Thrown out with a bag of old keepsakes,
The knick knacks of long gone lives.

                         2.

And you, my Thorn Flower, just one lost among many,
For you I have cried each night for forty years,
My friend, my partner at the campfire dances.

Your friends gathered in twos and threes to nurse you.
Sat silent and watched the snow thaw while you slept.
Sat silent counting the minutes, the hours break slowly,
We, who were more uncertain, more terrified than you.

Today I still keep watch for you, my Thorn Flower,
Placing a candle by the kitchen window;
Listening for the knock that never comes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 9th. - 12th. 2013.
February 20th. - March 17th. 2014. 

Dante and Beatrice in Florence. Poem No.2./ Dante - A Painting.

      Distilled fear terrorises this vision of perfection,
A tumult of lonely confusion snagged on the townscape
Like a fraught dream that is yet to materialise, erupt, overwhelm,
    Dissolve the quiet hinterland of the poet`s imagination
         With an abrupt squall of chaotic emotion.

      Proud Beatrice walked serenely through the city,
      Then turning briskly into the crowded courtyard
        That fronted the grand house of the Portinari,
Offered no comment as the great doors banged behind her.

Entranced by a wistful smile, Dante, her Courtly admirer,    
   Has long since come to terms with vanquished hope
And the power that her venal father has over his daughter.
The poet wept
   Then continued his lonely walk by the river Arno;
The sight of a bevy of swans for a moment consoled him,
                         Assauged his sorrow;
But his fears had already confronted that savage Inferno
   Where thwarted lovers scream out their visceral pain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 7th. 2009. March 23rd. 2010.
March 11th. - 16th. - 30th. 2014. - October 7th. 2014.

Five Quirky Short Poems.

         Maurice


Ravel
Sensitive as a cat`s paw
                         Poised
To scratch a child.



March 7th. 2014.
----------------------


          Love.


Sleeping alone in single beds
We breathe in unison
Although a hundred miles
                             Apart.



March 7th. 2014.
-------------------------


        Out of Season.


My pot of Basil has survived
                    a frosty winter.

Perhaps your severed head has
                                        kept
                    the compost warm.



March 7th. 2014.
-----------------------------


2 HEADLINES


 MOON SHOT
MAN INJURED


December 13th. 1971.
-----------------------------


....and now of universal significance.


Sitting cross legged on my lap
You stroke the anatomy of the ridiculous
Starry eyed.

Did your mother warn you about Quasars?

Too late now                       we`re pulsing.


December 15th. 1971.


All poems by Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Collated March 7th. 2014.

                           

February Daffodils. (New Version).

The butter coloured horns of early daffodils
Rock without sound in the snow flecked wind surge
That almost tugged the scarf from off my shoulder.
They shiver in tight knit, short lived families,
Under the scuffed and jagged parapet
Of my red brick garden wall.

I watch the static dance of these winter flowers
And think back to the night when we lugged the rough hay bales
A good half mile through the storm shook forest
To feed the tethered horses.
That was the night that our daughter was conceived
On the cold wooden floor of an unfurnished Vardo.

We were just visitors to the Roma encampment,
A good hundred miles from my loose tongued neighbours
And the unflinching eyes of the gutter Press.-
Our tryst had been facilitated by this band of Travellers,
Their friendship giving us a taste of the freedom
That our cityslicker life styles could rarely access.

And now, five long years since I last caught sight of you
Swanning in your finery through the foyer of a theatre
To lap up the plaudits of your loving public,
I am suddenly reminded of those bunches of daffodils
That we gathered after we had fed the poor horses
Under the bare wet trees.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
26th. - 27th. February 2014.
6th. March 2014. 

Three Poems. (1) The Healing. (2) Cat Dancer. (3) Girl.

             1 

     The Healing.


A crushed snowdrop
Slowly opening in my hand;

Absorbing tap water
Cupped in my palm.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 19th. 2014

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               2

       Cat Dancer.


After the storm
Even our cat trod the walkway
with a new grace,
a linear elegance;
Tip-toeing around the fetid puddles -
The broken fences -
Much like a Maitre de Ballet
Gifted with four swift feet.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 28th. 2013 - February 19th. 2014.

In memory of Max, a very cool cat.

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                   3

                 Girl.


Girl
Mother of secrets
Face white as the northern ice floes

She retreats into shyness
Hiding beneath her heavy skirts
Two fractious children

Two heart breakers
Impatient to burst out onto a world
Not readied for their fearlessness.

Girl
I once danced with you through the small hours.
Why do you lower your head when I pass?


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 19th. - 20th. 2014.