Friday, 23 October 2015

(1). Pomegranate. (2) A Couple of Dark Quips..

                 1.


       Pomegranate.



I split the pomegranate in two,
and then the blood of the angels touched my lips
with a taste both sweet and bitter,
so like your greeting kiss
when we meet.

Never for more than an hour or two
can you settle
in the old rocking chair in my kitchen
by the door with a view of the yard.

Eschewing the king sized bed, the plush armchair, the old sofa,
you honour this homemade item because it is rough and well loved.
Here you can sit while we argue
by the pine wood kitchen table
like cats on the garage roof,
and sometimes even make love.

This is your way with the world,
the quirky route you have always traveled
since you clung to the skirts of your mother
with an innocents` desperate fingers
while she struggled from barroom to blackout.

She taught you to keep moving on
to any number of roadside locations
A van ride up the A One,
and then, without phoning, returning
when the loneliness gets far too much
or the pickings begin to grow scarce.

Loneliness is a dark raw wound,
a hurt very few can live with.
So perhaps at the hour you come knocking
child in tow, baggage piled by the gatepost,
to announce you are now here to stay
for a lifetime, not just part of one day,

I will not lock you out;
and if this blood red fruit is in season,
this bitter sweet gift from the angels,
I will carefully cut one into segments
and proffer the choicest slice.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 23rd. - 24th. 2015.

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

                 2

A Couple of Dark Quips. 

                 a

Just Once in a Lifetime



My wedding day?

A tear on the edge of my memory.

                 ---


                   b

    Blessing the Globe.



A spade of horse shit and a corn dolly?

This combination should really bring on the clowns.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 25th. 20115.

Monday, 19 October 2015

Chinese Porcelain.


Reflected in the mirror behind us
As we set up another selfie,
The collection of earthenware pots
Displayed on the highest shelf
Above the worktop in my kitchen,
Delicate Chinese porcelain
Placed next to Irish stoneware
Rough as the Antrim hills.

And I wonder, as we peer at the photographs
Flashed up on the miniature screen
Held tentatively in your fingers,
That such a roughcast face as mine
Thumbed out of the clays of London
Does not seem an incongruous partner
To the gracefully sculpted contours
Of your refined Parisian beauty.

My smile looks discrete, self effacing,
While yours bursts out of the picture
Like the image of the golden star
Emblazoned on the sacred Oriflamme.
I turn and look up at the porcelain
That once seemed so perfect to me,
And note how the finest of glazes
Can be flecked with miniscule flaws.

Perhaps I should now replace them
With artifacts of your choosing.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 19th. - 21st. 2015. 

Monday, 12 October 2015

September 7th. 2014. (Revised).


The hushed day slumbers.

Sunlight ricochets off white walls
and stings my tired eyes without mercy.
Almost out of sight my neighbour`s cat
mimics sleep in a clump of grass.

The first Sunday of September,
a day set apart for an archaic ritual,
the baptism of a firebrand baby.

Inside the church the drifting incense
made my skin feel dry and dirty. -
Outside the heat sizzles off wide pavements
scorched into glass by the slanting sun.

I lean against the old lychgate
sipping a cup of ice cold coffee.
I note how empty the street has become
now the congregation has prayed and gone.

Deep in the thicket that shades the churchyard
a squabble of birds ricochet through branches
watched by the cat with steel blue eyes.
A few red leaves fall like confetti.


Deep in my bag the Blackberry rings,
it is time to go home and cook the dinner,
but a love of the past keeps me captive here
mesmerised, as though in a West End Theatre,
by a world to which I do not belong.

A strict timetable rules my life,
and I try to think why we cling to rituals
when the natural world is packed with wonders;
then I notice the cat bustling through the thicket,
her small mouth grips a ball of feathers.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. 2014.
September 20th. - 30th. - October 11th. - 12th. 2015.
August 20th. - September 6th.2016.

This is a poem about the moods generated by a stifling hot day in late summer, not about ideas. Thoughts just drift through the mind as though the writer is not fully awake.

Thursday, 8 October 2015

Early October 2015. (Revised).


It`s that time of year again.

Slugs in the pantry.
Snails underfoot.
The cracking of shells on moist evenings.
Dogs staring at an enlarged moon.

From time to time
a spider`s web will catch us off guard,
snagging a fine tangle of old lace
over scared faces
as though we were giant flies,
fit food for arachnids.

The nights are cold underworlds
unlit by frail stars
smudged by passing clouds.
We walk home slowly,
heads bowed into the drab dark
of deserted streets
razored by black rain.
This darkness overwhelms us,
cuts us to the quick.
It is more intense than the bleakest night
of the recent drowned out summer.

You name this season autumn,
the sad weeks haunted by Hades,
the days of the blood red leaf.

But I name this time the new spring,
the season of quiet beginnings
evolving deep in the earth,

the new year lurching towards birth
under our mud clogged footsteps

as we struggle back home in the dark.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 8th. - 9th. 2015.

Friday, 2 October 2015

Leila (Revised Version).

1969.

Chorus:

Even we peaceniks adored her.
Even we pacifists loved her pure zeal.

So beautiful
She paid a surgeon to carve her face
Into a mask more commonplace
So that she could not be recognised,

So that she would not be known
For the icon she once was,
The flight 840 hijacker.

Hair wrapped in a keffiyeh
And holding a kalashnikov rifle
In her delicate feminine hands -
(An AK she never fired in anger),
Our fierce Palestinian Angel,
The girl snuggled up to her gun
In that refined, but frightening photo.

An image of cultural resilience.

A girl forced to battle unreason,
A girl forced to make a stand
When zealots stormed over her country
And stole her ancestral land.

A dream of the outcast made free.

Chorus

Even her detractors absolved her
From the anger they forced her to feel.
Even we pacifists loved her.
The Press made her into a star.


2015.            Coda.

Chorus.

That was a long time ago.
Since then there has been too much fighting.
Since then far too many deaths.
Too many men who would kill for an acre,
For a misinterpretation of The Bible,
"Love thy neighbour" put on the back burner.
The women left at home to cook supper.
The children shot down in the street.

But once a dream has been crafted
It cannot be unmade
But must remain intact
Within our memories,

The light of inspiration
Burning deep within ourselves
To guide our hope filled lives,
To sanction aspiration

Although the template is lost,
Although the image lies broken,
A relic of former times

Dropped in the desert sand

Strafed in the ruins of Gaza.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 27th. - 28th. - 29th. - October 2nd. 2015.

This poem is partly influenced by my reading of The Oresteia, as well as the famous photograph of the young Leila Khaled, taken before she underwent surgery, a deed of great unselfishness.

Monday, 28 September 2015

Eclipse of the Harvest Moon. Version Two.



Equinox moon
dragging her swollen body
through the harvest skies.

A blood red goddess
heavy with ancient children
that can never be born,

never be given life
in the cold heavens
above the fertile earth,

the fecund biosphere, so
vivid with pain and beauty
and rich beyond measure.



And we, true acolytes
in awe of this blood red moon,
walk in our mutual loneliness
under the autumn stars.

Under a rare conjunction
of moon and distant sun:
the crimson face of the goddess
cut through by a black edged knife.



As we walk we speak of the time
when you lay in the hospital bed
with our dead child placed beside you,

an infant perfectly formed
but cold and white as marble,
her heart too tiny to beat.

A victim of our imperfections.

A cruel and needless sacrifice
to the insanity of self love.



Thus we talk to assuage our grief
as we walk across mown fields
to observe the great eclipse,

a singular natural event
made holy by ancient magic,
the primitive dream of redemption.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
28th. September. 2015.
14th. October 2015

Thursday, 24 September 2015

Two Poems. (a) Harvest. (b) The Widowers Complaint. (Revised versions).

           (a)

       Harvest.

              1

Alone
Stooping in the garden
Like a gnarled tree
Waiting for the axeman
to call


And you
Already lopped
Not a leaf
To remind me

             2

White flesh of wood
Spread
Over the russet pathway
Where once we ran
Larking
Looking for
                          (a place to lay your cloak)
A willow hung
Hide away


And the grandchildren laughing
their newness
through the old grove
unaware how autumn
brings such sudden changes

the pruning hooks

the Harvesters

the rasp of spinning saws

              3.

High overhead
a single swallow

Brief shadow on the sun


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
September 8th. - 10th. 2015.

-----------------------------------------
                (b)


The Widowers Complaint.


For the sake of propriety
Your son forbade us to meet -
although we were obviously
far gone in love
and had been so
for more than fifty years -
the chance to put an old wrong right
now made nigh on impossible

This is how the loyal offspring
(so caring and so loving)
like to manipulate their elders
once retirement age has passed -
Second childhood is perceived
to be hovering in the wings -
and happiness with a long term lover
ruled distinctly out of court

Dresden porcelain ornaments
displayed inside a cabinet
provoke a similar strict behaviour
from those rich enough to own them

Not to be tarnished

Not to be moved

Not to be placed beside
an inappropriate partner

Not to be exposed
in an unbecoming light

All signs of extra - mural frolics
kept under lock and key

But we who are old were young once
and have not yet lost the strength
to challenge those who would keep us
from our less than perfect selves

We can still kick up a rumpus
and foment the odd surprise


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 24th. - 25th. 2015.

Glass Bubble.