Watching that old film was a mistake.
My pictured friends - blurred images
Animated to an analogue soundtrack.
My on screen presence - confined to a Scene
Long since revised for the history buffs.
Truth left rotting on the Cutting Room floor
To make more space for reductive legends,
Legends filtered through static and snowfall
That reconfigure a well known view.
Everything I knew turned upside down
To fake a sanitised story.
When I review mementoes of the nineteen sixties
I view them as shadows, the shadows of dead dreams
Darkening the gentrified inner city neighbourhoods
With stains of hidden histories.
When I wander through Soho, or Fitzroy Square,
I search for landmarks that are no longer there,
Airbrushed out of time,
Their relevance disregarded.
This was my home patch, my manor so to speak,
When I was a wannabe poet and actor
Trying to get laid, and sometimes writing songs.
I was twenty years old, I knew every backyard,
Every cul-de-sac, every alley and stair well.
I knew that fetid archway near Rathbone Place
Where junkies hunched close in clandestine huddles
In fear of the shadows of passing strangers.
I watched them slope off to derelict stables
Where they slept on floors in old sleeping bags.
I spent some afternoons in the Greek Cafe,
And that is where I first met my girlfriend.
She offered me an apple across the round table
As we sat sipping Turkish Coffee.
Watching that film was a bad mistake.
Some faces on screen are lifelike ghosts
That I can pin names to, but never meet.
Big John is dead, so too is Jailer Mick,
And also, I suppose, kids I can`t now name,
Scoffing at the camera to mock their audience,
And that right now - alas - is me.
And they were right to scoff,
I can no longer lord it in that crowded Bar
Although my image stands out on the screen.
I am a passing stranger - an old face at the door.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 13th. - 14th. - September 8th. - 9th. 2021 - March 9th. 2022.
