My American Sweetheart in the Movies..(Revised Version)

& now that you are everywhere but here
I sit and moody about you night and day
When I should really be well out of the house
Working, going to the Mall, seeing friends;
Buying that new TV,
                 promised but never purchased;
Pruning the roses.
One programme seems to dominate the rest,
A look back in time grooved on permanent replay,
Never letting up,
                          Never letting go,
Always on show at the personal Multiplex,
The at home flea pit,
                          The screen that never dies.
& just the one visual treat recovered out of that backlog
of mesmeric in house movies; petrified DVD dreams
In the Odeon of my mind,
                           Your smile the last time that I saw you
As you pulled down the Bedroom Blind.

Yes,          & here you will always be discovered,
                            forever lovely,      forever cool,
Sitting so carefully upright on the polished floor,
Legs stretched out in front of you, ankles crossed,
Hands dropped into your lap, sort of Buddha like;
As though you just lived to meditate, or quietly to
sit, An observer of mischievous life.
                         Spell bound               I listen to you
Like a Fan at a private recital, a compliant devotee,
Your elegant New England accent sings in the room
Lark like,
        Much sweeter than my blunt North London prose.

And then at night, in the privacy of true compassion,
The only lover who has ever completely known me,
Making me laugh and cry in a single ecstatic moment;
Your long and elegant fingers

    Laid resting over my heart.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
October 31st. 2012. - February 18th. 2013  
Written for a very special person.  

September Poem. (Completed & with picture).

                           She loved me
                                                 and in September
She wore the curling leaves in her hair
                           As we walked by
                                                 the mist hued waters
Where geese with clipped wings dipped their beaks for bread

                           and later
                                                 in the park she held me
while the red moon rose while buzzed the night crazed gnats
                           and great boughs
                                                  dropped noon ripe apples
Into our open palms

                         
                           Then quietly
                                              Hands clasped
                                                                      we drifted
                   Towards the dying embers of the sun
                            Out through white gates
                                      into a city
             Where hi tech threads of neon lights were spun
                                 into a flimsy tent
                           Out dazzling faded stars
                                  Until autumnal
                                         mist
Dissolved all sense of wonder - and proved our love talk
dumb

But now you smile                  More loving than at night
And spill a sudden clarity             Into the morning light


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
February 7th. 1965.  Final two lines September 23rd.1982. 
Revised October 12th. 2012. - August 29th. 2015. _ April 26th. 2022.

The Artist. ( In appreciation of the work of Marina Abramovic).

So this is what you meant by art
Throwing your self at a pillar until you bleed
Like a prisoner consumed by anger,
Or a child screaming for parental love
Against the blank of a locked door
Slammed tight in a small apartment.

So this is what you meant by art;
Just twenty years after Auschwitz,
The cities of Europe reduced to concrete constructs,
The Berlin Wall newly built.
So this is what you meant when you talked so calmly to us
In a Soho Coffee Bar.
That stark red star you etched upon your stomach
With a flick of a safety razor. Red star of blood
Encasing your womb with unreal barbed wire
While the child that once you were kicks hard and weeps
Within your imagination.
Oh let the prisoner free from the concrete cell
That never opens outwards to the sun
But remains forever snapped up tight
Like a Rat Trap in a metal box.

These are not the images that I could live with
As I tried to voice my pain in the newborn world
Of desolate bomb sites and sterile tower blocks,
I lacked your absolute grasp of truthful imagery.

So this is what I wrote when just gone twenty -

Ask me no more to portray these sordid townscapes 
You Managers of the cruel metropolis. 
A Rauschenberg type horror perforates 
The squared design for living
And sends me running........ 

I can quote no more
My response was real, but just not powerful enough.
I open my heart to your bravery, Maria Abramovic.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
October 19th. - 20th. 2012. 
Plus edit of an unfinished poem sketched 27th. May 1966.  

Love Poem.

These are my words
I throw them high UP into the air
To make their own way in the world
& hope that you will catch them
Before they
                   Fall
                          To the ground.
Like old birthday bouquets
Imitating the fall
Of autumn leaves.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter...
4th. October 2012.

October Poem.

When did I meet you first?
Where did we first speak?
In Germany or on St. Stephen`s Green?
By the Liffey or by the Rhine?
I just can`t recall the day, the month, the year,
And I barely remember your voice,
Or the colours in your eyes.
Recollections distort the logic of all dates,
Disrupt all sense of order.

I peer back downwards through a hall of mirrors
Into the troubled epic of my life
And discern no clear trajectory,
No clarity of light dissecting time,
No perfect dawn, no corn flower moon,
No ordered flights of galaxies hoarding memory,
Just a fizz of shooting stars;
Inconsequential phenomena that I study
For no particular, no considered reason,
Through the wrong end of a telescope,
And a tiny cracked reflector.
Sadly I accept that all that lives must die;
But nothing cuts deeper than the loss of dreams.

What I cannot forget is the walk we took by the river
That crimson streaked, cold October evening,
When we first linked hands in secret, shaken by fear,
By timidity, by the elemental imperative of love.
The trees cascaded bright flames all around us;
Burnt paper stars descending, drifting, falling,
Like motes adrift in smoke;
Burnt stars crushed beneath our carefree feet
That quiet autumnal evening, a decade or more ago.
Today the woodland fires are burning, burning, burning.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter. 
October 16th. - 30th. 2012. - October 18th. 2018.

The Wisdom of the Shell Borne Goddess.

                          1.

We just hate this cold October rain
It washes out all aspiration from us
And nullifies the brain.
We much prefer the salt tang of the ocean,
A Devonian sand bar, a quiet Aegean beach,
A stunning view.
We sit up close together, watching the ebb and flow,
The heartbeat of the moon dragged water world,
That ex Paleozoic kingdom,
From which amphibious creatures slowly crept
To colonise the pristine, sun baked shoreline,
That time,
before the gods were born & seas grew cold,
                 When life itself was new.

                          2.

Last night you broke all the regulations,
Diving, for all the world, like a naked white fish
Into the stormy rock pool of my bed,
Where I lay, almost sleeping.
We fought like shark and hunter, but lacking malice,
I let you win the fight.
                                 But in truth, I had to lose it,
An immaculate inspiration boosted your meanest arm lock,
The treacherous wisdom of the sea born goddess
Deifying our love lorn spite with a sly benediction
As she wafted up from her beach.
                                  Peace soon prevailed.
The moon, an on - off - on - off search light, flickered out of reach.
We curled up tight, a pair of soft sea creatures in a single shell
Caught in the quiet swell of our gentle breathing.

                         3.

Reborn every moment, ancient Aphrodite,
Is your schedule too frenetic to protect our love?
Required, from your box of goodies, (reject all mud cures),
One olive branch, one turquoise sea, one dove.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
October 8th. - 10th. 2012. 


 

The Night Watchman. (Original Version).

Engraved upon night,
Gaunt, solemn as ruins,
The moonlit wharves appear
Never to have known
The ear splitting dissonance of engines,
The clamour of voices,
The scurry of shoes.

At home in your arms
I do not fear
These hours of silent watchfulness;
The sparse silhouettes
Distorted by moonlight;
The threat of a flick knife
Uncovered in shadow,
The sure footed thieves;
But only know
The warmth of your presence
Curled deep into darkness,
The pulse of your breath,

Your fingers guided by praise.

Trevor John Karsavin Potter 
April 25th. 1967. - October 23rd. 2012.