Trevor J Potter's Art

Monday, 19 September 2016

End of Season Love.

I cannot tap tap deaf and dumb language,
My hands are wrecked,
bare bashed up quires where no birds sing,
cracked columns leaning hard against the sun
begging only questions.
So if you wish to talk to me with signs,
please semaphore your meaning with your eyes,
or come out front and act a scene or two.
Do this and I shall know just how to answer,
with a wink, a nod, a seismic loving stare,
a quirky stage side laugh
as I nudge and elbow obstacles aside
and try to keep the sight lines unencumbered.

Truth is a shadow danced across your lips
as you try to shape the words you cannot sound,
words I can only answer with a glance.
It seems we must now make up our own language.

My hands are snarled in knots,
bashed up and nearly useless
curled in upon themselves like mollusc shells,
the life and love lines scrunched up tangled threads
delineating lies.
I can no longer hold a book, a pen or pencil,
throw a ball, wear a pair of gloves,
but these bandaged paws can still stretch wide and clap,
set free the moment you command the stage.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 18th. - 19th. 2016.

Written after attending a performance of Imogen at The Globe, and shortly after attending a season of readings of wonderful Restoration period plays written by neglected female writers given at The Rose Playhouse, Bankside. The writing in all these plays was truthful and to the point, no fudging and blurring of the edges. My poems are nowadays conceived as mini performance pieces, and I am trying to make them as truthful as possible, even if the results sometimes go against the grain, the fault lines of contemporary wisdom.

Friday, 16 September 2016

September 1666. (Revised).

The flames touched the books,
gently at first,
lingering over the leather covers
with a rough curiosity,
that awkward disdain for knowledge
often displayed by the willingly ignorant
when faced with something they do
not understand.-
The covers darkened, curled up their
thick parched skins
allowing the flames to break through
tough layers of protective membrane
deep into the pristine pages,
the pale faced children of the holy word
here gathered together,
compliant students marshalled at prep school
to receive a more salutary benediction,
the gentle blessings of a careful reader.

Soon all the books in the crypt were ablaze,
caught in the wrath of that Armageddon
that straight laced puritans had long since prayed for.-
The vault of the crypt burst wide open,
shattering the heart of the ancient cathedral
that had seemed to beat in the depths of the
maelstrom
a quiet prayer of hope,
not a scream of fury, not a cry of desolation.-
But when we stood among friends on the banks of the river
to watch London burn, we wept not only for people,
but for all the razed churches, for all the burnt books.

When London ceased burning,
and before our mallets beat down St. Paul`s,
the blood red walls left standing,
we found only one relic completely intact,
the marble statue of old John Donne,
enshrined, cocooned, in his funeral shroud,
swaddled up tight like a new born baby.
Perhaps he thought of prayers unsaid
as he lay, rehearsing the perfect death
his insurance against the divine inferno.
Or perhaps he gained comfort recalling his sermons
preached out of doors at St. Paul`s Cross,
or a stanza or two from his poems.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 16th. - 17th. - 30th. 2016.
Revised February 18th. 2017.

Tuesday, 13 September 2016

Metamorphoses. (Completed Poem)

Cracks breaking through a black square.
White light of a winter dawn
crazing the glass of consciousness.

I wake up with a start.

Your face sleeping on the pillow beside me
is like a shadow in the dark,
a memory of what I thought I knew
before you turned your back and left me,
heaping curses on my name.

I reach out my hand to try and touch you,
making a memory whole again,
solid as marble,
warm as breath.
Invincible life renewed by an artist
shaping beauty from raw Carrara,
a young woman without a heart.

My fingers press the cracks in the glass.

Specks of blood spotting my pillow,
staining the cloth where you once slept,
your head pressed firmly against mine.
Two separate minds.
Two different realities.

White light streaming through the window
lasers me into wakefulness,
with a sudden violent jolt.
Was I awake or was I dreaming
as I lay wishing your return?

The window pane is firm, unbroken.

The pillow case clean and warm.

Is it your artifice I long for,

your painted face in the mirror,

and not the woman behind the gloss ?
Perhaps it was the art I loved,

and not the life in you.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 13th. 2016. - May 30th. 2022.

Thursday, 8 September 2016

In Concert.

Late summer heat.
I rest in your arms
listening to the silence fall
like veils of mist across the moon,
the leaves not yet crimson.

It is 48 years since we sang Hey Jude
in the swaying crowd in the TV studio,
The Band euphoric,
the spotlights searing,

but to me you are still the pale faced girl
with the ash blonde hair and the quirky smile,
scorned by the press,
loved by the cameras.

After the Show,
the lights turned out,
the audience heave-hoed,
we sang and we danced all the way home,
the sleeping streets our rain dashed stage,
the cloud haired man in the distant moon
winking.

With the crowds departed we felt so lonely,
cold strangers in the midnight town,
out of place and out of time,
our shadows walking before us.

Late summer heat.
I rest in your arms
and watch you fall asleep beside me,
your grey hair trailing across my shoulder,
your eyelids flickering when you dream.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 7th. - 8th. 2016.

Wednesday, 7 September 2016