An Early Morning Walk, 5 am. June 3rd. 2013. (Revised).

This morning I watched the sunrise,
A pearl in an indigo sea
Denuded of ships,
The far off clouds
Pale as distant mountains.

A solitary wren sang in a hedgerow,
My only companion
In this deserted street;
Perhaps a lonely wanderer
Pining for a lost soul mate?

Hands clenched against the cold
I walked to the local cash point,
That emblem of insecurities
More feared than an unhooked phone.

My fiancee has made me poor,
Emptied the Bank forever.
I looked up at the new found pearl,
Bright as an Irish Love ring,
And wondered how soon it would burn
A great hole in my pocket.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 4th. 2013. - July 3rd. - 4th. 2015.

A rewrite of the poem Early Morning Walk.
blogged in June 2013.

Short Poem About Bees. (Revised).

I keep a nest of bees under my bonnet,
Where they reside, restricted and yet free,
Safe as houses, long miles from fields of wheat
Soaked in pesticides, unsafe for busy bees.

Thus I have earned a tasty hoard of honey,
Private to myself, but sometimes shared with friends
Who need a fillip to lighten up their lives
While all around the trees are losing leaf,
And flowers are shrinking back into the earth
Having ceased to bloom and flourish.

Meanwhile my bees are safe and buzzing fiercely,
But once my hat is off    the puckish breezes lift them
Up and away into the fields of wheat, where
Sickness clamps their wings, and soon they shall be dying.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
2nd. - 6th. July 2015. 

Two Poems. (1) Dragon Princess. (2) Recalling an Old Poet. (Revised).

                1.

   Dragon Princess.


When I was a child you mother said,
"Touch my belly and feel the baby inside me".

Now we are fully grown
I watch you flirting with crowds of men,
Lifting your skirt and laughing.

My eye on the clock, & disguising my pain
As if time had never happened,
I recall that morning in the park,
Your mother carefully guiding my hand,
Her belly fat as a pumpkin.

Now I watch you provoke this drunken crowd
With a raucous display of twerking,
And I remember the sparks in your mother`s eyes
When I stepped back amazed at you moving inside her,
And I wonder which leg kicked me.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 3rd. 1984. - June 30th. - July 1st. 2015. 

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                  2.

Recalling an Old Poet.                      


Sorry Buddha
I can`t sit on the floor all day
Waiting for the penny to drop,      
I am an artist and a writer,
A dancer and an actor,
It is by hard graft and creativity
That I reach for truth
And sometimes glimpse Satori.

There was a poet I knew when young,
A soldier, a lover,
An ex pugilist, & never far from a barney.
He was my prototype, my hero,
My light on the future,
Writing scripts & poems until his mind gave out
At the age of eighty
And words became a babble.

He was a vendor of news and gossip,
A grizzled old beachcomber,
Notebook in pocket,
Some girl always in tow.
He trawled the sands for scraps of local knowledge,
Arcane or in yer face,
Ancient or brand new.
In his wise mind
Reality was apocalyptic,
Enlightenment an ecstatic love tryst
Carolled by loud cicadas
Under a burgeoning moon.

Buddha don`t tie me down,
Don`t bore me rigid,
Sat under the Bodhi tree
Waiting for something to happen
Day after day after day;
The poet has taught me to question,
and never to trust the answer
However concise and erudite.
His example I will cherish
In every word and careful action
Until the ink dries on the paper,
The last syllable trips and falls.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 27th. - 28th. - 29th. - 30th. - July 9th.  2015.

Notes.
Waiting for the penny to drop... = waiting to realize the truth.
a barney... = a fight / trouble.

Rapunzel, A Folk Tale for Grown Ups.

You crouch alone in deep monastic shadow
Combing your thick blonde hair hour by hour
With a kind of wild obsession,
Much like a child addicted to self harming.

Both pain and joy are equal in our living,
And it is true that separation nearly killed us
When we were prised apart.
But self pity and despair must not deceive us.

That ivory tower in which you long have lived
Can only give an incomplete protection
Against hard blows from day to day existence,
Sacrifices we incur to stay alive.

Propriety decreed you should remain in ignorance
Of wars and poverty, the profit margins of your kind;
Your heroic dishonesty was meant to stay inviolate
To impress the highest bidder.

It was a secret that one time I was your lover,
And to shut me out your aunt designed a tower
In which you sit and grieve. It was a secret that
This witch would bed you nightly after supper,

Then kick you back to your room with the dawn.
And now you crouch alone beside the  mirror
Combing your golden locks hour after hour;
Songs of heart break shivering on your lips.

But if you accept a less self conscious world view,
My reluctance to play the great romantic hero
Will not seem quite so strange. I will scale the granite walls
Up to your chamber, but not with ropes of hair

I have more sense, and will not risk my neck
even for you. But now it seems this tower is merely virtual
And can be turned off with a simple switch. This I will do
Provided you will grant me one small favour,

That is to marry me as once you promised,
Before you fled back to your childhood dreams
And became entrapped inside a lonely castle
Built by a maiden aunt, who was, I think, a fable.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 21st. - 22nd. - 23rd. - 25th. - July 7th. 2015.

Train Ride.

                   

The woman in the seat right next to mine
Displays her pale green fingernails
That signify some danger, or so it seems.

Maybe she serves the horrid Noon Day Witch,
Sated with the blood of reckless children
Who just would disobey;

Or perhaps her hands are breaking into flower
As the train gets closer to her destination
Where her lover waits, his heart a nest of birdsong?

Her snow white face reflects no certain clues,
An impassive mask rebuffing all enquiries,
Keeping the world at bay.

I suspect there are no secrets to impart,
None to set black cats among the pigeons;
She is just a clerk returning home for tea.

But those pale green nails must give me pause for thought.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 18th. - 20th. - 21st. - July 7th. 2015. 

Two Surreal Poems. (1) Music Lesson.(Revised). (2) Halloween Haunting. (Revised).

                1.

      Music Lesson.



That morning early
You walked out of my room
With your guitar slung over your shoulder.

Well, it certainly appears that my rival
Has six strings
And a very elegant neck.

I cannot compete with such beauty,
I am old and somewhat tarnished,
Shaped like a Double Bass
and drooping every which way.

If you tap me hard, like a drum kit,
Or play on my nerves, pizzicato,
I will surely sound cracked and hollow; -
My good bow a jumble of horse hair,
My pegs flicked onto the floor.

But
If you decide to return, and I`m hopeful,
Just leave the guitar in the hall.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
18th. - 19th. June. - 6th. July 2015.

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                  2.

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 now hotly pursued
By a girl in a short crimson dress
Wearing a steeple hat.

It was at this instant that I decided
That marriage is a safer option
Than wandering the streets at night.

The brushing of your fur backwards
That Saturday night in the Snug Bar
Was merely a simple accident,
Not a revelation of my inner motives.

And when I brought up the Winchester Goose Girls
The reference was purely historic,
But perhaps the Hot Toddy was talking.

Love always comes at a price,
Especially for social misfits,
And a Party is no place to make friends,

We get woozy just staring at costumes,
And gabble inarticulate comments.

That red skirt did remind me of broomsticks,
But don`t you dare alter to please me,
I prefer the rough edges intact.

But remember, I do not like claws,
And I was not dropped to earth by a bat.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 3rd. 4th. 2014.
Rewritten June 19th. - July 6th. 2015.

The Bishop of Winchesters Geese were medieval prostitutes.
I hope that I have not offended any of the spirits of these fine Southwark ladies.

Victims. (1945).

The laughter that rippled through your voice
Like a delicate wave of sunlight;
The electricity of your kiss on mid summers eve;
The warmth of your loving hug;
The turbulence of life that danced in your eyes;
All this has gone now, quite vanished away,
Dispatched in a cart load of human ash
Spread over a Ravensbruck field.
And we who remain, heart weary and cold,
Lost on the far shore of the bleak North Sea,
Know only the ice in the eye of the wind,
Taste the raw salt scuffed in the breaking of waves
As they tear up this beach, where we stand, heads bowed,
Pale orphans of a mad, nihilistic god.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 15th. - 16th. 2015.