The Survivors. (Revised).

The whistling of the kettle seems to indicate
That this lonely house is in fact my home
Not just a rickety, ramshackle concrete shell
Peopled by silent ghosts.

To counteract my loneliness I occupy my days
Contemplating images that my imagination creates
Deep inside the flick house that is my brain.
Nothing new materialises from my looking,

Every flickering image is just a memory
Viewed in such a way that it seems an original,
A polished fragment of my wishful thinking.
The more that I remember the sadder I become.

But it is not the dead folk that make me sad and wistful,
Their days are done, today is not their country,
They would be strangers in this lonely villa
That once they bought on spec, restored and furnished,

And quickly made their own.
It is the living folk that now I mourn, despair of,
Those who think that history is humbug,
Who would wreck my home to build a block of flats.

I belong here. I am a pensioner but I`m not selling.
My past cannot be pawned to bounty hunters.
This husk of a house is the story of who I am
Writ into wood and concrete with sorrow and with love.

The whistling of the kettle puts me at my ease.
I shall sit in my rocking chair and drink a cup of tea.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
June 3rd. - 7th. - 8th. 2019.
I was thinking of D Day Veterans when I revised this poem. Too often they are not treated with due respect by local councils and the state, but are fussed over by the media and politicians when a significant anniversary comes around.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Breaking the Code. (Revised Version).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Breaking the Code. (Revised Version).: She sat next to me like a cat on a cushion purring, her shoulder, touching mine, slightly stooped as she looked away, far, far away, ...

The Gift of Music. (Completed Version).

I played the recorder,
People laughed,
They said the electric plank was the only thing,
Rock n Roll would dominate the future.
But the recorder is a beautiful instrument,
A pipe that rings like dulcet bells
Softly echoing through ancient hallways,
Or Skylarks and Swallows on Midsummers Eve
Greeting the sun with mellifluous voices
From the shelter of my garden.

When I found I loved you
I gave you my recorder,
It lay in your hands more easily than in mine,
And your blue eyes laughed when you began to blow,
Shape in the air your elegant dances.
Being a Gypsy you are a gifted player.
The whole house filled with the scent of roses,
The deep south sweetness of new picked oranges,
The rumpus of children in their room upstairs,
Your music is ancient and wild and delightful.

At night in my arms the silence claims you,
But deep in the silence I hear your songs,

Songs without words that would have slept in the shadows
If I had not given to you my prized recorder.

And Rock n Roll? It is an old mans thing.
It seems so distant from who we are.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 28th. 2019. 

Trevor J Potter's Art: Under the Bridge, Poems 1 - 2 - 3 & 4. Illustratio...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Under the Bridge, Poems 1 - 2 - 3 & 4. Illustratio...:       Under the Bridge, Poem 1. Under the curved bow of this bridge The river, a placid mirror Reflecting nothing. The fisherman, cas...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Short Poem About Bees. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Short Poem About Bees. (Revised).: I keep a nest of bees under my bonnet, Where they reside, restricted and yet free, Safe as houses, long miles from fields of wheat Soake...

The Broken Sanctuary. (Revised).

We did not expect to find these pictures on our computer.
Now we understand how cruel pornography is.
It is the clawing of the sacramental out of the human
And thus transforming the naive, the quietly innocent
Into a cheap commodity,
Something to be sold on line.
A kiss in the dark is merely a kiss in the dark
When viewed from this perspective,
And the long happy hours that we secretly spent together
Changed into a peep show by a sly, self righteous photographer
Peering in through our window, Leica pressed to his nose.
He can only see what the digital camera sees,
He can noway perceive the mystery, the tenderness of this love
Between such very different, and diffident, lonely people
Born decades apart, and in two antagonistic cultures
That so rarely come together,
The Roma and the city dweller.
All he can see is a man and a dark haired woman,
Her bridal gown neatly laid out on the table,
Their naked bodies entwined on the hotel bed.
We did not expect to find these pictures on our computer.
We cried for days when we first caught sight of them.
But the truth that we own cannot be found in hazy photos,
So we take life as it comes, and try very hard to forgive.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 20th. - 21st. 2019.
Partly inspired by various modern takes on Petrarch.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Under the Bridge, Poems 1 - 2 & 3. Illustration fo...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Under the Bridge, Poems 1 - 2 & 3. Illustration fo...:       Under the Bridge, Poem 1. Under the curved bow of this bridge The river, a placid mirror Reflecting nothing. The fisherman, cas...