Saturday afternoon Zen, Listening to Pulcinella. (Revised).

Unwilling to trash the mood made by gentle music

Now playing on my radio

I do not pick up the telephone when it rings.

Living alone in lockdown I find I have new choices,

I do not have to answer every question on the dot,

I have reached a point of equilibrium,

The still centre of a lifetime, perhaps a new way of being.

I might be on a mountain top looking at the sunset,

The wild ox I hunted, caught and deftly saddled

Reclining at my bare feet, but of course I am not.

Everything I need for happiness is hidden deep within me.

Even Stravinsky`s music seems a part of who I am,

Or just now I thought so, before I switched to OFF.

At sundown I cherish silence, but I`ve never quite known why.

After a while I turn the radio back on.

An early Beatles classic makes the day seem real once more.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

February 12th. 2022.

Monday 7th. February. Waking Early.

A clatter of broken wings. 

A cascade of paperbacks.

My picture fallen on the carpet.

Old ornaments knocked off the mantelpiece,

Also on the carpet.

February is not my favourite month.

I do not think there was an earthquake overnight.

A sudden wind blowing through crevices

Too narrow for a moths wing to penetrate

May have been the culprit.

This morning the mayhem was emphatic.

This morning even points of daffodil spears

Look out of place in the wind torn garden.

February is not my favourite month,

But it will soon be passing:

A child`s hand waving farewell from a window

Open to the sun.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter, 

February 7th. 2022.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Waiting For a Parcel.plus Denouement. (Completed P...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Waiting For a Parcel.plus Denouement. (Completed P...: Waiting for a parcel Curtails my social life My spiritual life Until the postman calls And then abruptly leaves. I cannot leave my home Unti...

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.

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.

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.

Trevor J Potter's Art: Paintbrush Meditations, - Four Short Poems About A...

Trevor J Potter's Art: Paintbrush Meditations, - Four Short Poems About A...:                         1 . Love the new painting I just painted, Not because I painted it But because I painted it with love.              ...