Wednesday, 2 February 2022

Waiting For a Parcel.plus Denouement. (Completed Poem).

Waiting for a parcel
Curtails my social life
My spiritual life
Until the postman calls
And then abruptly leaves.

I cannot leave my home
Until the postman calls
To drop a cardboard box
At my unshod feet
Before abruptly turning.
I cannot leave my home
Until he softly knocks.

Waiting for a parcel
I cannot visit friends
Fill my shopping bag
Stroll in the back garden
Go to church.
I must stay in one space
The radio softly playing.

But when the parcel comes
I shall have ten new light bulbs
So I can stay up late
So I can write my cheques
So I can read my books.
Waiting for the postman
Now keeps my life on hold.

          Denouement.

Waiting on the fifth day
A sharp thud on the front door
Shakes me from the numbness
Glueing up my brain.
The postman smiles at me
Like the Hangman at a wedding
As he hands the parcel over.

"Have a nice day" he simpers
Before retreating down the pathway
Like a cat evading guilt.
I gingerly break the seal -
Four lightbulbs in pieces - six intact -
A cheap comment on my life story? - Perhaps.
I cannot recall a day when something was not trashed.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
2nd. - 6th. - 7th. February 2022.

Sunday, 30 January 2022

Writing About Deep Feeling.(Revised).

Your body curled close to mine.
Your nutmeg coloured hair folds over my face
Hot cascades of love.
Writing about deep feeling is not easy nowadays.
Romantic bliss degraded like an ancient photograph,
Framed but shoved into a plastic box
Out of mind somewhere in the attic
Where mould eats into bygones.
Porn has become ubiquitous day and night,
Outpacing Superman to the starry heights
Of school yard chit chat - office innuendo -
Sunday sermons against freedom of thought.
Romanticism has lost its razor edge
And can no longer cut deep into the imagination
To carve out poems with words older than time.
Time is a human concept thought up to mock our dreams,
Tarnish bright hopes then chuck them out as garbage.
But my dream of you has been constant since we met,
Your nutmeg coloured hair folding over my face
A hiding place where we can share our secrets.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter, 
30th. January - 24th. April 2022.

Monday, 24 January 2022

Thinking of Nina Hamnett. (Revised).

Your body draped across the spiked railings,
A sleeping bag heavy with broken dreams
Dropped from a bedroom window. -
Drama was always your forte, your reason
                                                for surviving
The weird excesses of Fitzrovia,
The hunger and the cold, the countless swigs
                                                   of whiskey,
The not too cheap champagne.
Also
The independence Modigliani helped you
                                                           discover
When you were both at home in Paris
Seeking individual ways to shape the modern. -
You could have been a spectacular artist, but
The lure of whiskey and wild nights
Clogged your brushes, wrecked your steady eye,
Separated your life from the remnants of talent
Too quickly swabbed away. -
This familiar portrait of you in the Courtauld
                                                           Institute
Shows a pensive face, thoughtful but secretly grieving
For a loss you dared not share, or perhaps were scared
                                                             to name
To yourself, or sozzled friends in the Fitzroy Tavern. -
Your death was terrible, painful beyond imagining,
An unseen fall from a high up open window
In the quiet damp chill of morning.
"Why don`t they let me die", you whispered to the doctors
Who already knew they had no means to save you,
But dare not give that final dose of morphine. -
I was a schoolboy in grey suits at that time, but already
                                                                               knew
The sinuous darkness of Soho, the bustle of Charing Cross
                                                                                Road.
I think I saw you once, a slightly hunched old lady
Lost in the noisy crowds, childlike, far from home.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
January 24th. - 25th. - September 4th. 2022.

Friday, 21 January 2022

Friday, 14 January 2022

Paintbrush Meditations, - Four Short Poems About Art. (Revised Sequence).

                        1.

Love the new painting I just painted,
Not because I painted it
But because I painted it with love.

                       2.

Art is my language;
I cannot talk small-talk to strangers,
Or neighbours,
Or old friends,
Its far too insensitive,
Far too out of touch.
But the paintings I paint are not mute,
They will tell you the whole of my story
If you just stay still
And look.

                        3

No, I will not sell my paintings
Even though you beg me.
They are the reason I exist.
They are my children.
They are everything I am.
I cannot sell a part of myself
Even if snide loan sharks 
Batter down the door.
Only a fool could sell his child
To buy a loaf of bread.
Once the bread is finished
Then everything is lost.
No, I will not sell my paintings;
What you do when I am dead is up to you.
                         
                        4.

This painting tells an intimate story.
It does not give up its secrets easily,
If it did it would not be true to life,
Our squabbles and our laughter.
Love this painting, not because I painted it,
It is a law unto itself, outside the wall of words.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter, 
14th. - 16th. - 21st January 2022. 

Thursday, 13 January 2022

Stardust Kisses.

The kisses that I saved up just for you
Posses the powers to turn back every clock,
Make each new day the first day that we met,
Then hold back winter for a thousand years.

Your kisses also have these special powers,
They taste of springtime, of cups of cherry wine,
Of Gypsy blessings spoken in a trance
While lace is draped across the wedding bed.

When I am with you January seems to melt,
A pale grey ghost leaving by the back door,
An early April sun has pierced the blinds.
When I am with you daffodils never wither.

The kisses that we saved up for each other
Are stardust kisses, they fill our lives with light,
Change us to the children we once were
Chasing after wild dreams in the park.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter,
14th. January 2022.

Winter Night.