Three Poems.(1) Beatrice and Benedict. (2) First Meeting. (3) Hallucinations of the Unicorn. (Revised).

                          1.

          Beatrice and Benedict.


Your name day has come round,
And your face shining, lit by an inner light
Even for me, your fiercest of enemies
Toying with murder in my cynical dreams.

But perhaps, although we care not, dare not admit this,
We are the dearest, the deepest, the firmest of friends,
Or perhaps, maybe even unequivocal lovers
Franchised by blood lust, the thrill of the hunt,
The tearing apart of our secret alliance,
The private anguish of an enforced separation.

This state of affairs we rarely admit
To friend, to foe, and especially ourselves;
We fear the raw edge of unendurable truth
Systematically cutting into the quick.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 16th. - 17th. 2015.

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                        2.

             First Meeting.


Stunned by the sweetness of your smile
My so obsessive rushing to and fro
Has instantly become irrelevant.
We are standing still, apart, quite motionless,
Captivated by an awkward sense of wonder.

The stars this morning are (perhaps) auspicious:
Well, according to the astrologers I refer to,
Those with gaudy charts in Sunday Mags;
And being of a Quixotic disposition
I tend to by pass common sense reality.

The leaflets advertising life insurance
That I dropped the instant you swung wide the door
Remain scattered at my feet.
I shall not now retrieve them
But, enthralled by the sadness in your eyes
I enter the quiet house.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
20th. September 2012.
3rd. - 14th. February. - 11th. June 2015.

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                     3.

 Hallucinations of the Unicorn. (Revised).


Carbon sky

Pewter rain
Scratching traces in the wind
Drain pipes oozing autumn mud

Berliner luft
(The over loaded Trabbies wheezing)
An extra cold November morning

The hunched bird silent on the ledge
White plumage
Folding

The girl
Concealed by two large fans
Stands beside a curtained window
Weeping

Her dread of death entraps her here

She dreams
But thinks that she is seeing
Her pianoforte      madly     swinging
Upside down
From the grey apartment ceiling

Perhaps it will soon fall on her
Wide wings breaking
Too weak to hold it up in space

The Kakadu
Thrusts her small curvaceous beak
Deep into her moulting coat
Much like the fabled Pelican

A need to self harm cracks her nerve
She has no young to feed on blood

(A video of a unicorn
Playing non stop on the wall
Keeps at bay the urban shadows)

The girl
Stares at the Kreuzberg street
And suddenly screams out my name

Trevor     Trevor     Trevor     Trevor

I turn and watch her third floor window
Break into a storm of feathers



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 21st. - June 1st. - 3rd. - 7th.- 11th.- 17th. - 19th. 2015.

Written after visiting the Making traces exhibition at Tate Modern, where I became reaquainted with and enchanted by the work of Rebecca Horn.I was also thinking of my friend Britta who introduced me to Berliner luft.

Harlequin and Companion 1901. (Versions One Two and Three). Revised.

Harlequin and Companion 1901. Version One.


Outside the circus the well lit bars seemed small and shadowy,
The features of the drinkers unclear, observed through smoked glass and absinthe;
But under the Big Top clarity dominates the scene,
The loneliness behind the wild laughter
Described in the curve of a lip.

The fingers also, forever making rude gestures,
Stretched out like the legs of a spider
Poised for an easy kill.
They appear ready to pummel and grip the face of the Harlequin,
Ready to draw fresh blood from the hard white mask.

It was the sadness of the clowns that enforced a change of focus,
Impelled the artist to paint black lines around faces
To impose isolation, radicalise a persona
And make it unique, a symbol, an icon.

Picasso,
Your originals impounded in bank vaults and offices,
Are now the preserve of boardroom investors,
The oil rich hoarders of virtual money.
But your images have long since been vital to the day to day scene.
Reproduced in art books, on ipods and plasma screens;
They are integral to our lives, more visceral than urban graffiti,
They thrust into our faces the tears of the poor.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Version One. 29th. - 30th. May - 1st. - 2nd. - 4th.. June 2015.

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Harlequin and Companion 1901. Version Two. (Revised).



Before the age of neon the nights were all smudge and colour,
The poor of the city observed through smoked glass and absinthe,
But now clarity has entered the urban scene.
The loneliness behind the Harlequin`s laughter
Described in the curve of a lip.

It was the sadness of the clowns that caught Pablo`s attention
As he painted black lines around haggard white faces
To impose isolation, to delineate a persona.
The understated ennui of these circus performers
Revealing the angst of life on the streets.

Tonight the city dazzles like a summer fairground
Packed with young people shrieking and laughing
As if pain never happens, hunger a mere rumour
Located elsewhere; but the background of shadow is dark and deceiving.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Version Two. 29th May. - 4th. - 7th. June 2015.

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Harlequin and Companion 1901. Version Three.



Two clowns sharing a lunch time Pernod.

Nothing to eat.

Nothing to say.

Life goes on as usual.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Version Three. 4th, June. 2015.

These three poems are to be read as a single group.

(1) Piaf. A Lyrical Mood Painting. (2) Two Parisian Paintings.

Summer moon
               I wish that I was in Paris with my love
La vie en rose
               The breaking of hearts by the Seine
Before our lips softly touch
               And part
Chanson d`amour
Born of regret
               Uncharted galaxies of longing


   Dark streets wandered by silent strangers
   Hunting for mementoes to post to America
   But looking askance at the strident red lights
   That burn all hours by Le Place Pigalle


Songs drifting stale smoke through crowded bar rooms -
Le Moulin de la Gallette - tourist shops and Bistros
Chansons de la passion                  Chansons du coeur brise`
Haunting Montmartre with unbearable sadness
              Darker than vast distances that separate the planets
The depths that Van Gogh really knew
              When we thought he was painting starlight


   Hollywood of course got Van Gogh wrong
Missing out the whores and the drunken brawls
   The syphilis that killed his brother -
   The myth was filmed
   The truth discarded


 On the boulevards car lights dazzle my eyes
      But I really prefer the quieter byways
  Courtyards packed with trees and shadows


Ah Paris
               Paris

The frail warmth of my lover in my arms
The night we strolled by the moonlit river
And talked of broken promises

                   Her long hair veiling her eyes



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
Sketched June 3rd 1984.
Extensively rewritten May 29th. - July 8th. - 9th.2015.
A lyrical mood painting.

Houses.

The houses are all innocence,
Little red brick boxes
Packed together like cases on a shelf,
Lined up spic and span in a nice neat row
Ready to receive the latest batch of people;
Honeycombs upright on a concrete pathway
Not yet oozing honey.

It is the people who stuff the houses up with character,
Gives them their interest,
Gives them their souls,
Gives them their grace and favour,
Life stories that settle the bills.
In that house over there for instance,
A man resides with his two fat wives
And a battleground of children.
And that neat house down the street
Contains a secret
That is not so sweet,
A mass murderer once filled its drains with corpses
While his girl friend made the tea,
She once made a cup for me.
And over the road, adorned in her fur trimmed hats,
The lady who quarantines cats
Is gradually stinking out the street.

The houses are all innocence indeed,
Its what we do with them that makes the difference,
How we make or break them,
Ship or shape them,
Let them tumble into ruins or keep them up to date.
My house is a case in point,
Something to talk about,
There is a crack across the window pane and it needs a spot of paint,
But who cares really, who really really cares?
A spot of paint can wait.
I am busy writing poems when I should be tending to such matters,
A poem is always urgent
Like the birthing of a baby or the baking of a cake,
A spot of paint can wait.
What you see on the outside is of no consequence at all,
Except to the nosey neighbours.
What is taking place inside is the true momentous story.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 26th. - 27th. 2015.
For Anne, who taught me how to trust my writing. 

(1) Christine.(New Version). (2) On Beachy Head.

                1.

         Christine. (New Version).



I remember the daisy chain I made for you;
You laughing like the small child that you were,
                                      innocent as a Butterfly;
A curved black feather crushed between your
fingers,
             A straw boater balanced on your head,
The crown torn open.


I thought that you would live
for ninety years.
But last night your friends cut through the door and found you,
A fifty year old woman face downward on the floor,
Two emptied vodka bottles by your elbow,
                  A burnt out cigarette stuck to your lips.
An unused railway ticket in your purse.
You looked just like a tattered fabric doll, a once loved toy
                  Chucked by a fretful infant.


And scattered all around you on the carpet,
The love letters that you had never posted
Lay in untidy heaps.
You had kept them in a bag under your bed
Stored with some fairground keepsakes, a handful
                                            of dried flowers,
A beat up hat, the remnants of a feather.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 23rd. - 24th. - 25th. 2015.
June 20th. 2015.
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                    2.

      On Beachy Head.



Edge,
Such a final poem.
Maybe there was nothing to say after that.
Maybe it was time for the black sky to fall.

Beneath the white cliff wall the seagulls are wheeling.
Perhaps if I dive now I can catch one in flight,
Hitch a lift on a small wet back.

Edge,
The raw waves rustle through the rough hewn shingle
A broken lifeline below my gaze,
I am not as blind as the martyred Gloucester,
But my luck ran out at my conception.

There is no Poor Tom to break my swift fall;
No strong arm to reach out, to pull me back.
Edge,
Beneath the white cliff wall the wave surge
Saps my will power, rips my nerve.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 21st. 2015.

Parliament Hill Fields Revisited. (New Version).

Those kids you wrote about had hardly noticed you.
You were simply a woman standing on a hill
Notebook in hand,
Your expression slightly abstracted,
Slightly unconnected with the moment
That they completely occupied.
You were merely part of the landscape that they owned,
An object to be ignored, to be quickly shuffled around,
Or brusquely nudged aside.

You were a mother snatching an hour of peace and quiet,
Observing the city, the bomb scabbed human hive,
The battered streets
Spread wide in skeins of mist below the park.
But it was not the view that occupied your thoughts,
Not the smoke black towers, the gaps between the houses,
The nests of cranes like splinters in the sky; -
The embryo of a poem, conceived from signs and sound-bites,
Was forming brand new stories in your head;
Stories that spoke of children, alive or dead.

That moment was long ago, and the passing crocodile of infant egos
Has long since shunted out of primary school
To occupy the world of adult angst. Those kids have grown quite old now,
And your poem has been fifty years in print,
A text for first year students; a classic to be wondered at.
But those schoolgirls in the park that February day, -
Grandmums perhaps, comfy in post war flats, -
I doubt that few recall that classroom outing,
Or a woman standing windblown on Kite Hill,
A notebook in her hand.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
12th. - 15th. - 18th. - 19th. - 20th. May 2015.

Locally the hill is known as Kite Hill, because it is the perfect location from which to fly a kite.
When I was fourteen or fifteen I had the great good luck to spend an evening and a day in the company of Sylvia Plath. We talked about Keats, a new discovery for me at the time, and she impressed upon me the supreme importance of poetry. God bless her.

(1) Sappho, Fragments still tell us........(2) End of Spring.

                           1.

Sappho, Fragments still tell us.............



Sappho......................your voice always
...............................................................
Only......................................................
It is not your sexuality that intrigues me,
It is just that your poems are pure music
Designed to be sung in our hearts.
................................................................
......................................................indeed
................the briefest of fragments.........
....dropped among Samian Ware..............
.................discarded sandals.....................
..................................................................
..................................................................
.....the fetid remnants of an army cesspit..
..................................................................
Is this, perhaps, the future of all culture?..
To be part extinguished in rubble, and......
....half rotted excrement.............................
...................................................................
...........................but yes.............................
Our (responsibilities) .....always with us... .
............................travails in the underworld
.....irrevocable loses.....................................
So.................................................................
.....................................................................
........................................Sappho, I..............
............in my time........................continue...
and................................................................
.......aware of your guidance.........................
......................................................................
.......the wind touched Lyre...........................
............................................................O.......
..........the Lark overhead...............................
..............................................soaring.............



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 7th. - 8th. - 16th. 2015.

Written while listening to the results of the General Election.

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                        2.      


            End of Spring



 The Tulips are falling apart
          Broken vessels
Losing their hold on the sun



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 15th. 2015.