Thursday 28 September 2017

Wednesday 27 September 2017

Soul mates. (New version. Truth is a many splendored thing)


By the lakes edge
the flash of electricity in the air,
cracking the night sky apart,
breaking my window.

Your face, caught in the mirror
just before our first kiss
as we crashed out of our loneliness, landing softly
on the unmade king sized bed in the back room.
It seemed that we had fallen through our own reflections
like Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Free falling through a hail storm of disconnected images
of who we thought we were, our half imagined lives;
the kings and queens we dreamed up in our pre-teens;
the jolly Bodhisatvas that preached aeons before
the sceptics we now are.
Your face, caught in the fractured mirror;
pale moon between dark clouds.

For years my nights were troubled by inchoate dreams
Of a young woman that I had never met,
or at least I do not think so.
                                       Her perceptions were forensic.
She seemed to know every detail of my life style,
the ins and outs of my daily drudge,
and she spoke to me like a wife with many a bone to pick.
This was long before I bumped into you at the Casareccia,
when I nearly dropped my coffee in your lap.

Pseudo Romantics call this Loving at First Sight,
but I might suggest second sight would be more appropriate,
a thousand aeons of deep knowledge pre dating the kiss
that smashed to smithereens our preconceptions
and broke every mirror that reflected former times.

I turn out the light, we curl up close together, our tangled hair still wet
from the journey home, the road a torrent, a cudgel strike of rapids
warring down the hill, the traffic at a standstill.
That rush hour in the rain seemed to take a lifetime.
Ten decades fighting squalling head on winds.
                                         Perhaps a thousand aeons?
Or was it just ten minutes?
Who cares? What does it matter?
Folk tales of life and death, of dark immortal longings, don`t concern us,
and Bodhisatvas rarely come to Hendon.
This crumpled double bed is world enough.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
November 4th. 2016. - May 5th.2017. - September 27th. - 28th. 2017.

We all live in our dreams, our preconceived notions, that is our reality. Truth is a many splendored  thing.

Sunday 24 September 2017

Friday 22 September 2017

Pre - Natal. (First Version).


Crossing the steel bridge to the market
An ordinary girl, yet full of poems
Red in tooth and claw;

Unruly babies, not yet nurtured,
Already spitting fire, like dragons
Deep in her world, the echoing shadows,
The darkness where all life is formed
In secret, all the lanterns out.

Here dwarfish gods
Make swords for giants
And birds speak plain to purblind heroes,
The seas are born, the Kraken roars,
The mountains fall apart.

Crossing the steel bridge to the market
An ordinary girl, her shoes worn out,
Crying poems to the wind;

Come and buy.
Come and buy.
You lost and lonely
Come and buy.

But no one would give her a penny.
No one would give her a look.
She was just a poor girl, a useless malingerer,
Someone to kick because she was down.

But all the children of Camden Town
Withdrew into silence when she turned away.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 21st. - 22nd. 2017.

Tuesday 19 September 2017

Sunday 17 September 2017

Three Poems (1) The Bather. (2) Deep Night. (3) September 1st. Sparkling Sunshine.

              (1)

      The Bather.


Your body, a black wand
Seen against white blossom.
Teak bending in the wind.


              (2)

      Deep Night.


Sleeping hand at rest in mine;
Powerless, gently turning,
Black leaf on white water.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 19th. 2017. (Poems written as a pair).

--------------------------------

              (3)

September 1st, Sparkling Sunshine.
        

I open the curtains.
The light rushes in.
The house resounds to the clamour of bells.

Scared by these sounds
The ghosts depart,
Fidget their wings then swoop like doves
Up to the loft             to wait for the night.

This afternoon I shall stroll in the park,
Sit by the fountain,
Drink lemon tea.

As I drink the tea I shall taste the day,
Bitter but sweet,      a hint of Autumn.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 1st. 2017.

Monday 11 September 2017

Tabula Rasa. (Completed Version).


Under the watchful gaze of the philosopher,
The weight of his words,
She burnt all my letters,
My ham fisted hieroglyphs of love
On the concrete path
Outside his bedroom window.
She watched them ghosting into the fading light,
A pellucid column of acrid paper smoke
Shifting in the glint of torches,
The shimmer of the August moon.

My words curled up into a dance of ashes
Pirouetting on the fretful wind
Like black leaves floating on the water,
Slow currents sieved through ancient sunken stones.
Water is forgiving, but fire is not,
And soon all my words were drifting upward,
Like prayers whispered to the setting sun.

She could never tell me why she burnt my letters,
Something to do with the shedding of attachment,
Something to do with changing who she was,
Just like a snake sloughing off dead skin,
Shape shifting into a new persona.

She could never tell me why she had to do it,
Something to do with clearing out old debris,
Something to do with dumbing down the past.
And for a while I would not lift the phone
Just in case she learned to speak the truth.

My family has the habit of keeping letters,
We do not think a life should be forgotten,
But her philosopher taught that he knew all the answers,
And she fell hook line and sinker for his bait.

And for a while, night after restless night,
I dreamt the four wan horsemen rode the wind
Above the roofs of London.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
September 5th. - 7th. - 10th. - 11th. 2017.
October 27th. 2017.


Monday 4 September 2017

Sylvia. (Revised).


So this is where it happened,
In the rooms above this blue plaque,
Behind locked doors
On a freezing winter morning.
Here where the policeman stood,
The pressmen took their photos,
The neighbours talked,
A poet is remembered,
My teacher and my friend.

You are part of who we are now,
Lodged in our DNA,
In books and grubby mortar,
The crowded Underground,
The streets we hustle out of
To get from A to B.
You are part of the air we breathe in,
Just like Keats and Shakespeare,
Milton, Yeats and Shelley,
A sweet American girl
Cut down by raging sorrow,
Your cry not just an echo,
But etched into the marrow,
The solid London clay,
The back bone of our history.

I hear you in these wet streets,
In Regent`s Park, in Chalcot Square,
At noon on Primrose Hill.
Your voice is never silent,
But shivers through the small woods,
The tight North London suburbs,
The scrum in Camden Market,
The heights of Hampstead Heath.
A voice that cuts straight into
The hallowed euphemisms
We construct to section grief.

Today in Fitzroy Road
I stand staring at your window
Just like a three day tourist
With one less box to tick.
I recall my teenage self
Sat awkwardly at your table,
Your Biro in my right hand,
A thesaurus at my elbow,
But unable to write one word.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 31st. - November 11th. 2017.