Night Train.

           Night Train.


Outside the carriage window
The night has become spectral,
A ghost factory of forensic arc lights
Into which we are locked
While apparently speeding by.

I vainly search for houses, hedgerows, trees,
But the rural scene has been made invisible,
Disappeared behind a dazzling cage
Of hallucinatory razor wire.
I wonder where the stars have vanished to.
The people at the stations that we pass through
Look like stranded outcasts.

They stand upon the platforms in small groups
Staring pensively at flickering monitors,
And rarely interacting with their neighbours.
I dare not visualize what they are thinking,
But not one single passenger seems at ease,
Stood under the clock to await the London train.

The view from the window has become almost intolerable.
I close my eyes and try to think of home,
But can recover nothing to give me comfort.
Prison search lights piercing every secret
Penetrate the sanctuary of my dreaming
With the cruel precision of a surgeon`s scalpel.
The  death camp mauer stretches on forever.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 20th. - 21st. - 27th.  - 29th. 2014. 

(1) Red Table.(Trevor). (2) Triptych, Three Short related Poems. (3) False Dawn.

                     1.

      Red Table. (Trevor)


Suddenly, there on the screen
Was the portrait;
Myself, disguised as a drifter,
A South Bank down and out,
Mournfully contemplating my freebie breakfast
On a February afternoon.

I stood stone still
In the cold grey light
Studying a dessicated double egg and bacon
That the artist had thrown down
On a bright red table cloth
And allowed to rot for a week.

This, however, is not how I would publicize myself
If given half a chance.
I would bin that old string vest for a start,
And wear a more elaborate watch,
Perhaps I would even shave,
Comb my curly locks.
But I had little choice in these matters,
I was down upon my luck
And the artist was forking out some wages
So I had to lump it and like it.

If I had been granted a choice
The medium would have been music
Not paint on canvas,
A symphony perhaps
Or a contemplative string quartet,
To portray my mid life angst,
(My mother had recently died
And the old man was playing me up).

Something by Schnittke maybe?
Something with crashing brass
And sonorous violins,
The occasional vibraphone,
Such a neatly controlled dissonance
Would have best suited my state of mind
And revealed my inner Monk.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 29th. - November 1st. - 19th. - 27th. 2014.
Recalling modelling for Justin Mortimer at the Slade in 1992.

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

                            2.

Triptych. Three Related Poems.

                  
               (1) Untitled.

                   
                      Well
                I do love you
                       But

                
                (2) Manikin.


             Too perfect
             To be perfect

              Model with a made up mask
              Marble white
              Polished

              Reflecting the setting sun
              On the clear surface
              Of a curved mirror

              Dazzling
              The admiring crowd
              Of chique onlookers

              Too perfect
              To be plausible
              To be perfect

               Ice white
               Burnished

               Could you be
               The hum drum girl
               From County Clare
               I knew last summer

               Nails chewed
               Hair uncut
               Matted

               Face unwashed
               Crimped by spots
               And scratches


                (3) Futurity.


   When we kissed
   I thought we glimpsed the future,
   A smidgen less happy than I had hoped,
   But always with you.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 16th. - 17th. - 18th. 2014.

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

                        3.

               False Dawn.


               
                   Sunrise
         The moon now silver
             Just like my hair


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 20th. 2014.

Premonition of a Winter Wedding. (Newly Revised).

Lady disdain
Under the rim of your hat your eyes sparkled
Reminiscent of dancing fireflies.

You had not heard a single word of the sermon,
Nor scanned the book of my mind,
But your smile was exquisitely prescient.

It was certainly somewhat strange
That you should enter the crowded chapel
At that very moment.

The minister had just mentioned weddings
And I suddenly thought of your name
For some inexplicable reason.

Perhaps I was recalling that time
When we stood hand in hand by the river
Overawed by a black cloud of starlings.

But sometimes I manipulate a memory,
And your conduct has often proved shady,
Especially to me and my friends.

And perhaps our shared interest in scrying,
The holiday visits to a recondite gypsy
Was partly to blame.

I remember the cards we picked over
As we sat among guests at her table,
Yet I rarely believed what she told me.

Your opinion however was different,
You took notes of all that she whispered
To dissect her poisons at leisure.

She revealed you would light up all venues,
But why should you take this as gospel
In every conceivable detail?

You are not an interesting actress
Although at times you would like us to think so.

Speak truth sweet lady, slyness suits infants merely,
Not adults with love on their mind:

Fireflies light the woods at midsummer,
In winter they vanish away.


Trevor John karsavin Potter.
November 10th. - 12th. - 15th. - 17th. 2014.
February 15th. 2015. - May 25th. - June 3rd. - 20th. - July 7th. 2015. -September 8th. 2015.

(1) The Return. (2) Her Timed Entrance.(New Version)

                    1

           The Return.


Hugging you close tonight
After two years absence

The coolness of ocean currents
The desert winds forgotten



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
5th. November 2014.
--------------------------------------

                     2.

   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 slim elfin face, a shadow in my mirror.

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

Give me your hand, my nerve is strong,
Your sense of purpose certain.
The way ahead is narrow, dark, unsure,
Disrupted by twists and turns,
Our destination not yet on the map.
The maze retains some mystery,
Shadowed by ambiguities
That we must navigate to find the centre.
Please do not turn away, I am no stranger,
We should talk freely, learn to help each other
Now that our paths have crossed.
Give me your hand, we are powerless when apart,
For lone travellers the journey could prove fatal.
Empathy has long since been our guide,
We can surely reach the sanctuary together.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 23rd 1966. - December 29th. 2012. November 7th. 2014.

For J who was with me when I began this poem in 1966. 

Halloween Haunting, A Cryptic Poem About Southwark.

Only good whores become saints.

The black cat with a human face
Stared out of the shadows of Park Street
Like a Winchester Goose turned bad.

I ran for the shelter of the market
But sensed that I was hotly pursued
By a girl in a crimson dress
Wearing a steeple hat.

This was the moment that I decided
That marriage is a safer option
Than wandering the streets at night.

I have been trying to avoid you for some time,
As you have me,
But please now accept that my motives
Are entirely chaste and honourable,
And that I have never meant you harm.

The brushing of your fur backwards
That Saturday afternoon
Was merely a simple accident,
Not the revealing of my true motives.

Love always comes at a price,
Especially for social misfits,
So don`t you dare alter to please me,
I prefer the rough edges intact.




Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 3rd. - 4th. 2014.

Sunflowers.

After we had made love for the first time
The old gypsy women wrapped you in a thick blanket
To keep you warm, there being no fire in the room,
And heat thought of as necessary
To guarantee conception.

I was barred from hugging you close for most of that night,
And lay quite still at the edge of the bed weeping
While you slept soundly, snug in your nest of wool,
A safe calm world
Sacred to you alone.

For the rest of that year we rarely saw each other,
And then one morning came a call from the hospital
That sent me dashing out into the rain.
Your smile was radiant as a garden filled with sunflowers
When I walked quietly into the ward.

Holding our new born child while a nurse taught you to breast feed
Behind a white curtain, shut tight to hide our fears,
Helped me to blank from my mind those many nights
When I walked, without friends, through the empty streets
Calling out your name.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 29th. - 30th. - 31st. 2014.

(1) .World. (Revised Version). (2). Tragic Song.

                       1.

                   World.


I listen for the true voice of the world
That appears to me like a frozen heartbeat
Suspended in the solitudes of space.

The hawk returns to my hand when I call
And accepts the hood as I slip it over her head
Having no notion of the hangman`s knot,
Nor fear of my intentions.
She has been hunting above the long hedgerows
While I stood here on the empty moor
Watching the wind shake the autumn grasses.

In this place I feel strangely haunted,
The voice of Gaia seems to resonate
In a rough primordial language
Through the fissures of the rocky landscape.
Her words lack form or meaning,
But I know that she is mourning
For the pains her children give her.
The slights.The savage wounds.
The broken promises.The near annihilation. -
I sense her pain, accept it as my own;
I feel as fragile as the half scorched moth
That once I tried to rescue from the gas lamp
But accidentally crushed between my fingers.

I should not have lingered on this rugged outcrop
To watch the orange sky fade into black
As the sun dips out of sight.
The tethered hawk fiercely grips my wrist.
Her lungs are aching. Her eyes are sore.
Her tongue curled hard and dry.
A raw fog tainted with the stench of diesel
Is seeping slowly through the autumn air,
Blotting out the stars.
I long to let my hawk go, to take her flight,
But we are long term prisoners to mans folly,
Trapped on a dying planet, and cannot now escape.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 19th. - 20th. - 22nd.- 23rd. - 24th. 2014.
Revised June 30th. 2015.
A poem for Emily Bronte.

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

                          2.
               
                Tragic Song.


The world is my sustainer,
My true mother,
But I am not so kind,
I do not love her
And could, without due care,
Annihilate her
As easily as my goshawk snatches rodents
From between the broken branches.

This night is free of cloud.
I scan the sky
With my binoculars
To watch the winter stars
But cannot find them.
The raw lights on the distant motorway
Dazzle my aching eyes,
They are all that I now see.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 19th. - 23rd. 2014.