Birthday Blues.

This is the birthday my mother never reached,
The birthday that she most looked forward to.

This morning I study my face in the steamed up mirror.
Not too young. Not too old.
But perhaps my features are just a mask after all,
An actors mask designed to show a calm
That I have rarely felt, or rarely looked for.
For seventy five years I have been marooned on this planet,
The raging storm my natural environment.

My attempts at humour are usually oafish,
But no thing is permanent, no thing can stay the same.
These hands that once danced easily upon the cello strings
Are now twisted out of shape,
And music is something I can only dream about.
I listen to unaccompanied Bach on the radio
And mock my inability to play one coherent note.

Tomorrow I shall go and study the paintings of Monet,
Perhaps his painterly eye for the natural world
Will fill me with wonder, calm my anger at time,
But more likely not.
I shall be in a part of London I lived in when very young
And all the people I knew then are just photographs in my album.
I have long ago given up looking for friendly faces
In the hectic squall of the throng.

This is the birthday my mother never reached,
The birthday that she most looked forward to.
This morning I study my face in the bathroom mirror
And wonder if she would recognise me now.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 26th. 2018.
My mother died just three weeks short of her seventy fifth birthday in 1991.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Tussy. (Rewritten).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Tussy. (Rewritten).: Tussy was not buried, Not swaddled by black earth Evolving into hillocks and                         dark hollows Gradually, season by ...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Chinese Box.(Two Poems).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Chinese Box.(Two Poems).:       Chinese Box. No.1. No sun. No moon. A temple carved from soft wood. Two white herons on the water. Black sky. Black stream.  ...

Caliban. (Companion poem to "Miranda" and to "Prospero").

Hi Miranda,
I Caliban am not your servant,
That is Ferdinand,
That frail wimp of a log carrier
Lodged in my mother`s cave,
The shackles cutting his ankles.

He is just a pawn in your father`s game,
Another victim of White Man politics
Who must marry you
Just to keep the peace
Between two ageing brothers.

Meanwhile I shall continue to play the fool
In his snotty nosed presence,
That Ferdinand,
Bowing before him as he tends the dung fire
Before I sneak off to your bedroom.

We have been together for quite some years,
Miranda,
And I don`t see why we have to break up
Just because of an arranged marriage
Brokered by Prospero, your irate father,
That Boss Man with the straggling grey beard.

Mother Nature is far stronger than Politics,
She has never carried a health warning,
A codex of rules, Miranda,
And besides,
Your father is merely a Book Bound Magician,
He has to read up every spell before he castes it,
Wasting a boat load of candles.
My Egyptian mama could not read nor write
But she taught me the secrets of our magical island.

So remember Miranda, when you set out for Milan
I shall be sailing along under cover,
Stowed away with the luggage and cattle,
The books I will save from the library.
I shall teach you how to keep secrets,
How to climb out of windows at midnight
To meet up with me, and my messenger Ariel.
That brave new world you will enter
Cannot now be complete without me.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 13th. 2018.

Prospero. (A Companion poem to "Miranda".)

Miranda
My eyes are full of stories
That you could read
If you glanced back over your shoulder
For just one moment.

Meantime
I sit in the corner by the bookcase
Watching you quietly walk
Out of the Living Room
Into the unlit hall.

Yes
The scope of my realm is small,
No larger than the ground floor of my house,
The curtains closed,
The front door bolted,

The carpets thick with dust.
Yes
This is the world I own,
My private magic island
Fashioned from bricks and mortar,

The only world you know.
Meantime
The storm my books unleashed is changing all things,
Smashing the shoreline, tearing trees apart,
Wrecking ships in the harbour,

Bringing your future husband to seek shelter
In the cave where the logs are stored.
You will find him there tomorrow,
But tonight you must sleep alone
Unaware of the vows you will take.

If you could look through my eyes
You would know all this,
Miranda,
But you have always lacked the foresight
To seek beyond the walls

Of our home that is smaller than most.
I need only a handful of books
To study to shape the future,
But you need far more than I have.

You need the voice of a stranger
To call you out of your dark room.
You need the freedom to love.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
March 18th. 2018.

I do not like Prospero very much, I think he is a bit of a control freak, but sadly, I seem to understand him far too well. Perhaps I will prefer Caliban when I make a study of him.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Magic Carpet. (2) Note to Poem.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Magic Carpet. (2) Note to Poem.: Why don`t you just jump onto your magic carpet? Hitch a lift on the wind? No cancelled trains. No queues for petrol. No traffic jams we...

(1) Magic Carpet. (2) Note to Poem.

Why don`t you just jump onto your magic carpet?
Hitch a lift on the wind?
No cancelled trains.
No queues for petrol.
No traffic jams wearing out the brakes.
You could be with me in merely half a minute,
Flying from door to door,
From bedroom to bedroom.
The carpet parked securely under the table
As though it had always lain there,
An integral item of my Dining Room.

Your voice is just an echo down the line,
And the photographs you send me, flat unfocused images
That lack the living warmth
Of your sleeping body snuggled up to mine.
Oh how I miss the laughter and the tears,
The shared Sufi trance of peaceful nights
When we just cannot let go of one another,
A Sufi Heaven is when I am with you.

Why don`t you just jump onto your magic carpet?
A Paradise Garden woven just for us
On a great loom in Safavid Isfahan.
Craft magic woven for us
Six centuries before we were born.
Love, I am not cut out to be an ageing hermit,
And your rent free metal caravan, that sieve,
Is no fit home for you,
Nor for your pack of troublesome, brown eyed,
Long haired Lurchers
That poach rabbits for your table.

Women make the most competent airline pilots,
Or so you have often confided,
That is why the magic carpet is not in my keeping,
But was entrusted to you.
The barometer is now forecasting perfect weather,
Perfect for flying.
So now is the time to pack your scant belongings,
Unroll the carpet and speed due south to me.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 9th.2018.

Note. My daughter Natasha suggested that reading this Poem was like actually taking a ride on The Magic Carpet, instantly moving from place to place, moment to moment. This for me is most evident in how the carpet is one instant flying from Leicester to London, and the next is in situ under my Dining Room table.  This is how Magic Carpet journeys are supposed to happen, one moment the carpet and passenger are in one location, the next they are in another. To me this is a kind of visualization of telepathic communication, a form of communication that I have experienced many times, especially with people I love. Modern science has yet to prove, or disprove, that telepathy actually happens, but we know less about the human brain than we do about the Solar System and far off galaxies, and we know almost nothing about other dimensions, black matter, etc. I have never allowed science, public opinion, local custom or religion to close my mind. Magic Carpets are of course only symbols of aspiration, but on Persian Carpets are woven symbolic patterns representing the Garden of Paradise. Maybe that is a destination we all hope to achieve, hope to achieve through the powers of genuine love, which is always both spiritual and physical. God Is Love.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 11th. April 2018.