Far West Dreaming.(Completed Poem).

This sympathy for The Outlaw -

Where does it come from?

I would have hated to have been Sundance -

Holding up mail trains and robbing banks -

Rampaging through bordellos with Pinkerton

                                                  on my tail,

I am too much of a hermit for that sort of thing,

A Zen Buddhist with a liking for old Jesus,

(I love Tenebrae but don`t fetishize the theology).

But to ride a half wild pony across the prairie,

That is my perfect heaven;

The dawn wind hitting my bare face -

The raw sun burning my cheek bones:

And every bird and tree and cloud so wondrous

I would never crave to enter a city again. 

Trevor John Karsavin Potter,

16th. - 17th. December 2022.

A Cold Awakening. (Now Revised and Rewritten).

A flash of white light stings me awake.

I throw off the sheets and break the ice,

Peel back the curtains away from the glass

And stare into the garden.

Such dazzle of snow is a shock that stuns,

Knocks me out like ice in the eyes

Whipped up by a speeding sleigh.

The sky is a fierce miracle this morning, 

A concave mirror, diamond bright,

Brilliantly blue, but chill as the arctic.

Perhaps I can lob a stone to shatter it,

Skidding the stone across the surface,

Crazing clear space. A broken window

Somehow staying in place.

 

 Trevor John Karsavin Potter.

15th, - 16th. December 2022.

Pictures for December Nights.

 

Aztec Fish.

Retrieved from a block of clay

An unknown fish,

Extinct, or simply unobserved

By Mexican scientists who search 

The blacked out depths

Of the deepest pits in the Atlantic.

Perhaps it was born the colour of the red earth

And was promoted to godhood by the Aztecs

Because of this weirdness,

Or perhaps not.

All that can be said for certain

Is that this is a very odd fish.

And will not be found laid out with the salmon in Harrods

Anytime soon.

Trevor Jon Karsavin Potter.  

1st. December 2022.

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Chinese Porcelain. (New Version). (2) On The D...

Trevor J Potter's Art: (1) Chinese Porcelain. (New Version). (2) On The D...:                   1 .     Chinese Porcelain. Reflected in the mirror behind us As we set up another selfie, The collection of earthe...

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.