A Love Not Spoken.

I only hear bad talk about her.
Posters flaking off a billboard
becoming less coherent by the day;
but that is only half the story:



she phones me with her
                         thoughts,
   but never says a word.


Her thoughts echo through
                                      me
although no words are
                               spoken.


Pictures flicker on a screen
like
        distorted film clips.


Her smile in a darkened room
reveals our mutual sadness,


the hopes kept strictly under wraps
because they are too private.


My mind a dazzled retina
on which her thoughts are grafted.


All our mutual dreams and fear
in one        small             glance.



I have only heard bad talk about her,
but only I can read her news.



Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 11th. - October 8th. - 10th. 2016.
March 6th. 2017.

I was thinking of both telepathy and on line communications when writing this poem.

Black Moon. - Full Moon.

      Black Moon.   (For two voices)


The nights are drawing in.

The heating turned up high in the hallway.
The blinds pulled firmly down.

No people talking outside in the street
until the light returns.
All hint of summer gone.

I feel empty.
A shell without a kernel.
A room without a door.

Tonight a black moon hides among the stars;
a bruise punched deep into the Autumn sky
by some malevolent god.

When I leave the house at eight
I am a stranger among many,
a shadow lost amongst pale shadows
drifting slowly through the town.

I try to talk to no one,
although the streets are crowded.
Every face I see is blank and weary.

The black moon seems to make the sky more dark.
The stars are hollow eyes that do not sleep.
They glint with silent tears.

My lover phoned to say she had miscarried,
the third time in just so many years.

Hope is a child weeping below stairs
unable to reach up to find the light.


                      *

              Full Moon.  (For one voice).


Well yes, she really does exist,
the White Goddess, dressed in vapour trails
that drift like veils across her stony face.
She makes us quarrel,
fight all through the night,
conceive disruptive children full of chatter,
weird ideas that challenge adult thought.
She is divinity gone mad and feral,
fierce as a teenage army on the march,
beating up the town.
And yet she is the true goddess of love,
pouring balm upon our splintered hearts
as we sit alone all night on vacant beds
waiting for a calm voice down the phone.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 3rd. - 4th. 2016.

The Holy Feast. (Lancelot Andrewes). First rough draft of this poem..

The saint`s tomb is buried in Autumn flowers,
cut down at dawn, the dew still on them,
but soon to lose all colour, all fragile scent,
under the Caen stone arches, the delicate rib vaulting
raised in record time by pilgrim monks,
who had tramped the rain sodden tracks
and braved wild seas to London,
in a world where the horse was worth more than a wife,
a bull more than a serf;-
and the sailing ships were equipped with narrow oars -
their single masts and dragon prows
made nervous folk recount old battles fought with Vikings.

These flowers are little martyrs picked to sanctify
those honoured words, first spoken by the saint
at Christmastide
to jostling festal crowds
when vicar of St. Giles in Cripplegate.
These flowers represent an ancient pagan custom
revived to add some grace to modern times,
their heads lopped neatly off, just like a recusant priest`s
                                                               at Tyburn Corner,
although our saint died snugly tucked in bed.

But it is that girl, standing silent in the crowd,
her appearance innocent as a Van Eyck angel,
who captivates my gaze,
disrupts my quest for peace.
A lonely figure, the only person standing,
she holds a taper tight in trembling fingers
as she looks straight at the altar, the gilded reredos,
her blue eyes bright with tears.
She reminds me of my friend who played St. Joan
so truthfully she could have been a sister
acting out the family tragedy:
and for a moment I feared that girl, so pale and silent,
intense and statue still amongst the throng,
could face a judge, a shrewd inquisitor,
with all the power of truth that steeled St. Joan,
and become a modern martyr.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 26th. - 29th. 2016. - See February 2017 for completed version.

Note. The congregation sits to pray where monks once knelt or stood. 

I live in Many Minds. (Newly Revised).

Late summer stillness.
I drag a stick across the pond
and watch the mud come to the surface.-
At dawn moisture danced upon the cobwebs.
Can this be an early hint of winter?
I shiver at the thought
although the day is bright and warm.

I retreat into the house,
my hermit`s sanctuary,
and lift a favourite book from off the shelf;
Omar Khayyam, the melancholy physicist
who just happened to write perfect poetry.

There always is a shadow at midday
that moves solemnly across the garden,
relentless, like the hour hand of a clock;
but I`d rather sit and sip my wine in peace
than dwell too much on a sense of loss.

Like most bookworms I live in many minds
so I doubt a single thought can be my own,
and too often I look back to comments I have read
in tattered volumes tucked inside my library.

I suppose the stick and pond
are simply scraps of ancient Buddhist imagery
that I do not have a clue how to let go;
but if I threw a hefty stone and watched the ripples spread
then I would surely know my thoughts are not my own.

Well, it seems I am an acolyte, not a natural leader,
and therefore, my friend, to whom I write this letter,
If you are so inclined to visit me at home,
please bring with you a batch of new ideas
that we can study over beer or coffee,
pernaps, in time, I`ll claim them as my own.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
23rd. - 24th. August. - 18th. - 24th. - 30th. September 2016.

12th. May 2022. 

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.

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.

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.