Irish Whisky
“whisky”- –of Gaelic and Old Irish
descent meaning “water of life”
It’s like the letter you were expecting
but had forgotten
the dream you almost remember
upon waking
One day you are writing to yourself
to prove that you exist
the next day you are talking to someone
who doesn’t
How to talk to oneself
is a language all its own—
a message behind distorted glass
with the swell of the crumbling cork--
the skewed tongue that no longer fits
I have tried
translating myself into another language—
a new language that I might better understand.
Translations are at best
like well-known paintings rendered
by unknown artists—
Impressionists-- every one of them—
always the colours just a little off
always something missing
In the pale blue hours of the morning
In the wee green hours of the marnin’
I weave back and forth forth and back
doing a poor imitation of me-self---
cutting a rug set in its own pattern
without a thread of light
to add to my design
Today I received a letter in the mail—
no words, only a blank page in an envelope—
handwriting slurred
a crooked stamp in the corner---
those suspicious wavy lines
No problem
Pas de probleme I say—
reaching for the real thing—100 proof—
my words turning up like drunken sailors
stumbling off the tongue…
I always read my poems sober
I always write my poems drunk
Pisces Rising or Why Mermaids Don’t Limp
Element: water.
Last sign and melting pot of the zodiac whose symbol is two fishes swimming in opposite directions. Reputed to be a compassionate dreamer) Pisces rules the feet.
Oh shoes! …how you wear me down so!
Either defying gravity on my pointed Swan Lake toes
or on my humbled hobo knees
shuffling for your twin
Give me your tired your
worn...
your unlaced
well-heeled marked-down tugboats
drifting like smelly used dreams in the basements
of Salvation Army and Good Will stores
discarded and unloved
feet–-yearning to be free
Always that scorned and vacant stare–
this one wanted to grow up to be a skyscraper
this one was completely worn out
this one (boo-hoo) was only worn in
Why can’t you all be like sandals?--
flat and reasonable like the desert. (haha)
Like the ones Jesus wore
when He dragged the sea across the sea.
Imagine my friend
if He tried to do that in stilettos!
O thorn so perfectly imbedded in my imperfect soul
at the bottom of my unfathomable life
you are like that old wound that never heals
walking across all the shattered crowns of the world
in Someone Else’s shoes
Only…please…!
Stop running my pavement with your slippery excuses
that come in every broken chord of the rainbow
Stop fishing with your subtle hook on paradoxical lines
casting your nets with those pathetic peek-a-boo cut outs -
Stop seducing me with your arpeggios of restrained freedoms
my cello of endless pity
Remember…we are a Pisces
And I will always love you
But after all… I am only
barefoot
onesizefitsall
after
e.e.cummings
If ever I am
HERE
again with you
and the earth with you in it
moving inside me
our world spinning ‘round
If ever we should would could
make
(shall we not taste that soft center
oozing so sweetly?)
love
limbs
thrusting upward
our
roots in the sky
there would be no words
no more waiting
for our Eternal Spring
(Summer
Winter Fall
with one mind between them
are opening and closing too like windows)
Today on this our first day of
remembrance
because I
(let me torture you gently)
want you
because I ooze Love’s deep utterance—
that shudder of vowels
through the dark syllables of night
Today
(because you torture me gently too)
every cell sings from that branch
where nightingales telling our story have
never stopped
Every thought a garden (opening and
closing)
rises to meet our every season
follows
yours my breath and breathing
out and in
becoming ONE
If ever I (planting kisses)
should bite your tender bark and suck its sweet
sap
I want to hear your voice
to listen to your song
to feel your deep flow
of that river that is forever rising
If ever I come to
you
with you again my love
having everything and nowhere else to go but
HERE
my heart might never skip a beat
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary James Meary Tambimuttu of Poetry London–-publisher of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thoma, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few. his death, it was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish. A former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Joseph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.
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