Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Short Poems For Aunt May.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Three Short Poems For Aunt May.:                           1 .                   Endgame . There are no poems in the eyes of the dead Only the shadow of a sun gone out...

Out of the Ark.

Woodworm,
Deathwatch Beetles,
Carnivorous Ants
All snuggled down discretely
In Noah`s timber Ark,
But never offered Noah
A single word of thanks.

Thus it is
With politicians,
With casual friends,
With Dogs and Cats,
They take what is on offer
Then smartly turn their backs,
Needy eyes fixed on a new horizon.

Naamah,
Lamech`s feisty daughter,
Don`t count my worth in cash,
Don`t pack your shoulder bag
Once my turn is done,
My credit in the wheely bin,
My reputation trashed.
Please don`t make tracks.
I etched a dove upon your wedding ring,
Please take note of that.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 13th. - August 8th. 2018.
Naamah was Noah`s wife. She refused to get into the Ark until the very last moment.

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Snow Queen. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: The Snow Queen. (Revised).: My eyes soon tire of such opulence. In future please keep to simpler costumes So that I can dream who you really are. In the meantime I...

The Snow Queen. (Revised).

My eyes soon tire of such opulence.
In future please keep to simpler costumes
So that I can dream who you really are.

In the meantime I sit quietly in the amphitheatre
Watching you move among the other dancers
Like a shaft of light intermittently piercing the clouds,

Your blonde hair almost touching the boards of the stage
As you trust yourself to the strength of your partner,
The choreographed moves planned to look improvised.

To be honest, I prefer you in torn jeans and trainers
Standing incognito outside the theatre,
Just another pedestrian in the bustling crowds

Juggling the choices of tube train, night bus or taxi,
The applause a small part of the long weary day.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 2nd. - 3rd. - 5th. 2018.

I am indebted to Tchaikovsky for the first line of this poem. 

Colour Box Blues.

The world that I live in seems unreal right now,
Unsubstantial,
Impermanent, quickly changing.

The colour of my skin changes with the quality of light.
English summer light,
Venetian light,
The whirling lights in a third class dance hall,
The orange glow of city street lamps.
You cannot catalogue who I am
By just looking at my skin.
Tomorrow you may not quite recognise me, brother,
If we meet in a different place.

The painting that I completed after midnight
Looks different now the sun is up
And silvering the curtains.
I open the curtains, the colours come to life,
The images that I drew under lamplight
Now shimmer with a new quixotic brilliance,
But if I close the curtains
The colours will dull down again
Like embers becoming ashes.

In the meantime I embrace the beauty of the first light,
Revelling in the unreality of each moment
Because this unreality is crammed with beauty,
The sunlight making patterns on the ceiling,
Patterns that change even while I look.

The shadow of my hand darkens the bedroom mirror.
Each morning my face is new to me in the glass.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
July 21st. - 24th. - 27th. 2018.

Schumann`s Last Piano Pieces. (Revised).

The angels that Schumann heard
Singing in the night
Were real to him,
And are all too real to us
As we sit side by side at the keyboard,
Two pianists with awkward fingers
Trying to make sense of the score.

These angel voices were perhaps the tongues
Of madness
Breaking through the stillness of the night
As he snuggled down to sleep beside his wife,
Or perhaps they were as real as he believed,
Real as his wife, his seven restless children
Curled in their cots,
The night lights flickering palely.

They were not the songs of ghosts,
But more like the ringing of Easter bells
Out over suburban gardens,
Bleak patios purple with hyacinth,
For yes, these chords are truly loud and clamorous,
They ring and shout and thunder
Beneath our struggling fingers
Like sonorous church chorales
Greeting the resurrection.

No, Schumann was not mad when he wrote this music.
It was the silence that followed, the loneliness of the asylum,
Where, cut off from his family, the laughter of his children,
He was forced to renounce the validity of his dreams.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 6th. - July 24th. 2018.

The Sound of English Spoken. (Revised).

The sound of English spoken
A mouthful of herring bones
Salt to the tongue and brittle
Raw noise in the ear
Terse - but precise


My native language is a border guard
When love is deep and powerful


Sometimes the Latins are lyrical
Melding syntax to human heartbeats
Youthful hearts beating in unison
Touching the sunlight with music
A tender kiss


Love
When I think of you I am singing
Singing intimate songs without lyrics
My native language kept in quarantine
When it cannot dance lightly


Dance lightly from partner to partner
True stories that need no telling


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
April 11th. - July 19th. 2018.