Anna.

Kreuzburg liebeskind,
russet hair
(reminiscent of autumn leaves
pictured on my calendar,
the one purchased in Vermont
in 1964).
Feet of a dancer,
splayed but delicate.
Hazel eyes - smoky with sadness -
the smudge of tears -
searching deep deep - par blind into mine,
(a life raft of desperate questions
on her mind),
not fathoming an answer
but noting my ordinary fear,
my fear of being found out,
of being acutely known.

The morning you set out for home
the stone steps to the river
were awash with freezing rain;
the pathway through the park
concealed by fallen branches.

This scene was an epitaph,
an epitaph to our nascent love
born without a spoken language.
Our shared addiction to music
and the empathy of the dance,
had kept us on our toes.

But once the show was over,
(you speaking little English,
my Deutsch somewhat under par),
we relied too much on telepathy
and the simple slang of pop songs
to re - ignite the failing spark:

a touch of fingers in the dark,

a hug - a kiss - a laugh - a smile -
a sudden        doleful       glance.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 13th. - 18th. 2015. 

Internal Travelogue. (New Ending).

The planned engineering work on my mouth
will enable me to eat
grilled cheese sandwiches,
and perhaps
give me the confidence to kiss
your downcast eyes,
your black nailed fingers,
the red warning tapes
that are your lips.

Meantime the Circle Line rattles through the depths
that sinew London
with the taut griefs of anxious travellers
commuting to and fro.
I dream of Hades,
the darkness of Roman catacombs,
barricaded North Sea coal mines
poisoned by gas.
These visions flare on and off in my mind
like emergency lights passed speedily in the tunnel,
or grainy clips from half remembered films.

I fidget my analog wrist watch aimlessly,
and resist real contact with my fellow passengers
while staccato warning bells
start to clamour in my brain.
TOWER HILL NEXT STOP
repeated by an unseen actress
makes me think of Traitors Gate,
the photo of a stabbed child that made me vomit,
Sir Walter Raleigh waiting for the chop.
The hound now squatting by the sliding doors
exhales a smelly yawn,
then fixes me with a dope fiend`s look.

THE TRAIN TERMINATES HERE -
STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS.
The journey to see you is always a squalid chore,
an apparent loop line slowly going nowhere
as though I had travelled in and out of a madhouse
made from buckled glass.
Meanwhile that girl with an acrobat`s muscular thighs
has completely burnt out my eyes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 13th. - 14th. 2012. - September 11th. - 12th. - 16th. - 17th. 2015.
October 18th. 2016. 

This is my vision of the Inferno. City life is Hell, but too interesting to let go of.

Autumn Pruning.

Sorry Mister Spider
I have to encourage the new growth
and you made your home in the old wood
that I must now cut down.

Next year I require fat loganberries
to cover with sugar and cream,
and I am less occupied with house flies
than you appear to be.

So forgive the use of these secateurs
that I brandish with such ease,
I am planning a cascade of white flowers
to entice my co workers, the bees.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 10th. 2015. 

(1) September Dusk. (2) Cabbage Fly. revised. (3) Love. (4) The Lion.

               1.

  September Dusk.


September evening

The sky like
a Chinese painting

black boughs
dropping
paper leaves



The copper sun
washed out
turning ochre

a bruised apple
burst
on the hard earth

tainted

breaking down



I walk alone              in the cold air

trying to get used              to my loneliness



It is now six weeks
since you died

Passed
like a withered flower
out of my life

yet tonight
I am sensing
the pressure of your soft breath
nudging my cheek

Your hand         clutching mine

warm as a midsummer morning


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - 14th. 2015.

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

                2

       Cabbage Fly. (Revised).


White as my notepad
I am tempted to write on your wings
A miniature monograph
On the history of flight.

But the moment I enter the Hot House
You seem to get wind of my meaning
And flit right up to the ceiling
Where you sit tight until I leave.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 3rd. - 4th. - September. 10th. 2015.

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

               3.

            Love.


Birthday gift
Secret
No more

Ribbons undone
Spread over the floor

A glass of wine
Spilt on the table

A torn cushion

A slammed door


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 5th. - 17th. 2015.

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

                4

         The Lion.



"It was a legal hunt"
The white man said.

The lion did not think so.

The lion is now dead.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. 2015.

Aylan. The tragedy that Changed Everything. (New Poem).

One image can change the world.

One image can punch harder
than any word
in any book
ever written.

One image can show the truth
the whole truth and nothing but the truth
without any trace of redacting.

One image can remake a religion.

One image can shake the most hard hearted
man
to the lonely core
of his being.

(I once saw an SS veteran weep
at the sight of cygnets hatching)

One image can force us to witness
our shared humanity
in the eyes of a child who is dying.

One image can make us see
the anguish of a displaced people
Who speak in a foreign language.

One image can speak out louder than any words.

One image can teach us to know
that nothing human is ever foreign;
not the outcast, the tortured, the refugee.

One image can show us that war
is a savage human sickness
that somehow must be cured.

One image can force a politician
to serve the population
that one time he thought he ruled.

One image can remake a civilisation.

One image can teach us to understand
The vulnerability of all that is good.
The vulnerability of human love.

One image can activate a reformation.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 5th. - 6th. 2015.

The Migrant. (A Lost Soul in Modern Britain).

I am a migrant.
I come from a foreign place,
A maligned country
Once renowned for fairness and equality,
For intellectual tolerance
And racial harmony,
But now torn apart by factions,
By greedy warlords,
By smart suit racists,
By ignorant fundamentalists,
By rich fools bating the poor.
These are the individuals I now write to.

I am a migrant,
An unwilling frightened traveller
Forever on the move
With nothing in my back pack,
Pockets torn and empty,
Fighting to cross frontiers,
The fiercely guarded barriers
Of self interest and inhumanity,
Of terror and self doubt.

I am a migrant,
But I do not come from Syria,
From Afghanistan,
From Africa,
The once civilised Palmyra.
I have not changed my dwelling
For more that forty years,
I have not been kicked into the highway
Covered in blood and tears.

You cannot handcuff me and fly me home,
Efficiently deport me,
Shove me on a wagon and transport me,
Lock me in a Death Camp,
Cut me down at dawn.
I am a refugee from the time when I was born,
April 27th. 1943,
My place of birth, London,
Then at war with tyranny.

But it seems that you can casually ignore me,
Deride my "Love thy neighbour" eccentricity,
Cut access to free knowledge,
Deny my right to speak.
You can, it seems, defile my old ideals;
Smash up my hope, the humane Welfare State,
Maroon me on the narrow beach of history,
And leave me there to drown.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 3rd. - 4th. 2015.

Grief.

Now that you are dead
The dawn is a blank curtain
Pulled across the sun
To hide the light.

Your voice on the chrome cassette,
A mono echo of time past
Relayed through a single speaker
In the corner of my room.

My hand that held your hand
Now only grasps the air
That once you breathed:
The air you filled with song
When I first spoke your name.

Paper flowers in the vase
Have turned as grey as ash,
Grey as your brittle bones
Now buried in the earth.

And yet our yesterday
Is as clear and bright as spring
In the confines of my mind,
The jewel box of my memory.

But the contents are just a mirage
Flashed on a silver screen;
They remain as insubstantial
As your sweet recorded voice.

I do not long for death,
But without you life seems empty,
A shadow of the clear bright days
That once we knew.

I do not long for death,
But I need a private sanctuary
Where I can learn to make my peace
With this dark remorseless pain.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 30th. - 31st. 2015.
September 8th. 2015.