(1) Not Quite a Ghost. (2) Sunday Morning.

                    1.

        Not Quite a Ghost.


And as you walked away from me
I remembered the child that you once were

Four hours gone
Your expensive scent remains
In the textures of the back room
Transforming every fabric
Into a Succubus of memory

Even the indoor rose bush
Has flowered out of season
Adding a delicate tenderness
A pure ethereal beauty
To the heady mixture

Outside in the rain
The dead leaves on the garden path
Spiked into broken threads
By your high heals turning
As you turned to wave goodbye

A child waving from a distance
No adult could encounter
Your blue eyes wet with sobbing
Your white umbrella knocked and turned about
By a gust of wind


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 28th. - 29th. 2017.

                    2.

       Sunday Morning.


Alert and assured
I walk downstairs
To greet the sun

This is my happiest hour of the day
Before car doors bang
And the telephone rings

Now 1`m at ease with the whole wide world
Pouring the coffee
Counting the roses
Honey melting on my tongue -
You asleep in our darkened bedroom
Curled in your basketwork of dreams

But the moment your hand rests on my shoulder
I cease to be who I think I am


Trevor John Karsavin Potter
November 4th. - December 1st. 2017.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Poems. (1) Bad Music. (2) Bond Street. (3) P...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Poems. (1) Bad Music. (2) Bond Street. (3) P...:                     1.            Bad Music. For you, I am bad music. I am the song you don`t want to sing Any more. I am the love l...

Three Poems. (1) Bad Music. (2) Bond Street. (3) Pygmalion.

                    1.

           Bad Music.


For you, I am bad music.
I am the song you don`t want to sing
Any more.
I am the love lyric you need to forget,
Throw over,
Turn off at the socket;
The ear worm that drives you crazy,
Echoing through you,
Jamming all systems.
I am the repeat switch on your old player,
The switch you can never reset.

I am the number crossed out in your phone book;
The recorded message lamely unanswered;
The secret whisper into your pillow
As the nights draw in
And you bury your head deep in the blanket.
I am the cold wind shaking your window
As you set the alarm and put out the light.

I am your memory of that moment last summer
When a stranger smiled, and you smiled back.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 26th. - 27th. 2017.

                    2.

           Bond Street.


This little book of poems?
Great art in my pocket,
Rembrandt compressed into words.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 17th. 2017.

                    3.

           Pygmalion.


I live alone
With my dream of you

A pale figurine
I dare not touch

In case I lose my grip
Then stumble

Cutting my fingers
On the scattered shards

I live alone
With my dream of you

Afraid to face the consequences
Of seeing what I dare not see

Of knowing what I dare not know


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 27th. 2017.

Brexit Babylon.

The sacred icons of the Tory Party
Lie broken in the inner sanctuary
Of the British psyche,
And no one cares to mend them.

Their burnished frames and gilded haloes
Blackened by the stench of cities
Sinking under the hollow god
Of sanctimonious piracy.

Young people with a social conscience
Despise the sacrificial altars
To capitalist supremacy,

They have ceased to crave the morning sun,
They seek the lights of democracy,
Of Human Rights, of absolute equality.

They dream a world with no hard borders,
No phoney saints in Tory colours
Scrawling lies on Campaign Buses,
No oligarchs, no poverty.

The sacred icons of the Tory Party
Lie broken in the inner sanctuary
Of the British psyche,
The votive candles burning low.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 24th. 2017.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) 9AM. 22nd. November. (2) Sad Dance. (3) Leila....

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) 9AM. 22nd. November. (2) Sad Dance. (3) Leila....:                      1 .   9AM. 22nd. November. The sun is different today, An electric winter sun, A brilliant white spreadsheet On...

(1) 9AM. 22nd. November. (2) Sad Dance. (3) Leila.

                    1.

  9AM. 22nd. November.


The sun is different today,
An electric winter sun,
A brilliant white spreadsheet
On which the clouds are printed.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
22nd. November 2017.

                    2.

           Sad Dance.


My God, you are beautiful,
The pavements sing like children
When you walk on them,
Your black high heels
Tapping out Bach and Chopin.

It would be a sin to make love to you,
But you are not perfect,
A prized black tulip
Compressed between the fingers
Of a crazed admirer,

Your smile like a thin pressed crease
On a sheet of brown paper
Pulled tight over a birthday gift,
A box packed with whispered secrets.
Indeed, you are no Madonna,

But when I dance with you
In the privacy of your first floor bedroom
To the sad strains of a Slovenian love song,
I seem to be holding the whole of creation
In the circuit of my arms.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 18th. - 19th. 2017.

                     3.

                 Leila.


When I woke up this morning
I was dreaming of you,
Your light delicate hand
Always on my shoulder.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 22nd. 2017.

These three poems seem to belong together, a little family of verse.

Anna.

The fat old lady smiled at me,
The single smiling face in a silent crowd
Of Soviet musicians and their guardian angels
All dressed in silver grey suits.

After I had sung,
(Something by Brahms, or was it Tchaikovsky?),
My teenage treble out glistered by the grand chandeliers
That hung in the semi darkness
Of the great domed smoky ceiling, they all applauded,
But none as sincerely as Anna.

Years later, as we talked in her small apartment,
Swamped by hot house flowers and the scent of brewing tea;
The plain shelves filled with books I loved to look at,
But could barely decipher
Because I had not been encouraged to study my father`s language,
I slowly became aware she had once been an exceptional beauty,
Photographed, sketched and painted by artists in Moscow and Paris.

Anna has been dead for fifty years,
And I have read her Requiem, her Wind of War, her Poem Without
                                                                                              a Hero,
In English translation, (unlike my sister, I still cannot read a word,
Cannot come to terms with the bleak originals),
And so I experience her voice as a deaf man might hear music,
A distorted, muted echo that clogs up syntax
But does not kill the pain that honed these poems of Terror.

Anna, it is not the gulag that first comes to mind
When I think of you waiting in line in the Leningrad snow,
Head bent low with sorrow,
It is the hard won smile you gave me, two decades later
As I stood on the stage, imperfectly speaking your language,
But stunned by the love in your eyes.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 17th. 2017.