Trevor J Potter's Art: Red Bird. (Revised).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Red Bird. (Revised).: My poems are pictures  painted with words, and not true poems. For example - Aware of the intensity of sunlight as July approaches I rejoice...

Adapted Surfaces.

When I was a child and adolescent in England in the nineteen fifties and early sixties, abstract art was taboo. So called modern artists were mocked by cartoonists in the tabloids, especially Picasso who had had the temerity of discovering cubism three decades before I was born. Unbelievable as it may now seem I read a news magazine article attacking Cezanne when I was in my late teens or early twenties. I felt an outsider at that time because I loved progressive art. I had met a number of progressive artists , including Picasso, before I was twenty, and knew that I was with them and not the tabloid fuddy duddies. But the old prejudice against modern art has scarred me, and when I rub and scrape raw paint into a rough wooden surface I sometimes suffer a pang of guilt because I am not painting a sweet landscape or making a detailed sketch. Sorry conscience, I paint what I paint because I love doing it my way; and the same rules apply to how I write my poems. Get over it.

 

A Mid Winters Night`s Dream. (Revised).

Melancholy conifers command the ridge,

Four weeping queens crying out to Theseus,

"Our husbands lie unburied.

Ravens crowd out the sun".

Four hooded queens, bruise black their dresses

Torn and bloody, trailing in the mire

As they shriek and holla for justice to proud Theseus

When he rides out to his wedding.

Then after the first act the queens depart,

Their wrongs righted,

Their wealth restored,

Their husbands buried deep in homeland clay,

Their enemies routed,

And Theseus, having fought the good fight for them,

Can once more ride out to wed Hippolyta.

And for the next two hours the honest jailers daughter

Goes mad with love for Palamon,

An escaped prisoner in love with Emilea.

He had fought for Creon against the wily Theseus

In the war of the unburied kings.

And the audience is all agog at the jailers daughter,

Forgetting the weeping queens, who started the story

That led to her imagined romance.

I have forgotten to mention Arcite`

And his fall from the bucking horse.

Its the jailers daughter whose candle we tend to carry.

We picture her in our local spilling pints of sadness,

Her voice so loud it blocks all conversation,

But tonight, for some reason, these ageing conifers,

Bent double by the push and pull of the weather,

Remind me that the queens requests for justice

Created yet another pile of corpses.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 

28th. November 2022.

A brief synopsis of The Two Noble Kinsmen - plus the conifers.

Riposte. Song in my Old Style. (Completed Version)

Oh my Josey Blue

You just don`t get being true

So how can I settle with you?

Oh my Josey Blue.

Oh my Lady Blue

You know that one and one make two

But think that six from two will do,

Oh my Lady Blue.

Oh my Josey Blue

What I hear aint what you do

So how can I be square with you?

Just what`s the deal? I thought you knew.

Oh my Josey Blue,

Just can`t say, "I cherish you".

Trevor John Kaesavin Potter. 

24th. November 2022.

My New Wooden Buddha.(Revised and Completed).

Images shape a truth in space

                                          and time

With such strict clarity and power

That words fall silent - lose all purpose -

                                    rhyme  or reason 

Become tongue tied like children caught

                                          red handed,

Their pockets crammed with sweets and 

                                                 cigarettes.

Wood is a coarse grained medium to work

                                                             with,

And few plying chisel, lathe or plane

Can reveal the mystery of life distilled in

                                                  stillness,

Or a moment of music seemingly withheld,

Even though the secret songs the tree once

                                                     whispered

To wildwood friends and parkland neighbours

Remain embedded deep in root and branch. 

Perhaps it is these ancient forest songs

That this hand carved Buddha seems to be in touch with

As he sits - an icon of quietude -

In the room where I display my paintings and my books.

But he is not simply a work of art - he is too alive in his 

                                                                    stillness,

His absolute powers of concentration

Made visible by the raw skill of the artist

Who shaped him from the rough wood - revealed his quiet

                                                                                    heart

Still beating deep beneath the polished surface.

And the smile on the face of this Buddha seems so ancient

I am almost sure it was formed before time existed,

Poem by. Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

16th. - 18th. - 24th. November 2022.

Lingers deep within the carvings core.   

Red Nude.

 

Trevor J Potter's Art: Mill Hill Ridgeway. (Newly Completed Poem).

Trevor J Potter's Art: Mill Hill Ridgeway. (Newly Completed Poem).: (The greenest of suburbs are haunted by ghosts) I love to walk in these fields at midnight, Feel the earth breathing beneath my feet, A...