Let Me Be Honest with You
I'll be honest with you
Alone in a hotel bed
on Christmas Eve
with neon Jesus
playing to one wall
and Deep Throat
oozing through the other
I was looking pretty good to myself
I thought about it--
taking you-know-what into my own hands
How often the moon
comes into her own fullness
in the light of unveiling madness
No less
the ecstasy of stars
the trembling of the earth
the heaving of waves
Why not then
the shiver through our own joy of being?
I'll be honest with you
I felt the shiver of being as a
child
but it wasn't exactly joy
I was the one
who never said a word
who nodded smiled
then nodded off to sleep
who shook her head
or shook in terror
The one
with silence
blooming on her lips
like a blood clot or a question mark or a
tumour
Two more on my breasts
another you-know-where
And pain-- that old
scab
wouldn't leave me alone
so I picked at it until it healed
then loved it until it bled
And so it did
all over me
all over creation
all over the canvas of my soul
I think I'd like to be an artist I
said
So God in Her mercy
planted meaning on my tongue
and my mouth began to water
And so it grew and multiplied
and I came to call it joy
And joy sang and cried and danced on air
and beat its wings of orgasmic light
leaving a trail
of the mysterious of the Invisible
leading home leading to Grace leading to
you
I'll be honest with you
All my life I wanted to fly
I was the one
with shoes so blood-red tight
I'm coming I'm coming
I'd whisper
into God's ear
as I limped
all the way to KingdomCome
I come to you
in the becoming of me
offering myself
in waves of pleasure
in waves of sorrow
in waves of prayer
hoping it is true this time
this gift of love
Let me be honest with you
we say
bearing our bodies
but not our souls
Wanting to touch
to be touched
we tear at our own
wrapping
to get inside the gift
I come to
you
in the blossoming of me
says the becoming moon
to the being sun
year after year
again and again
as they come and go in the dark
I am finally
coming
into myself J.B.
is what we say
announcing our own arrival
in
board-meetings
in bored
rooms
in strange towns
before
mirrors lovers and other strangers
We offer ourselves
to ourselves
tearing at the wrapping
parting the tissue
seeking the gift
only to find
the box empty
the moment sorely wanting
They say
the joy that isn’t shared
is the joy that dies young
I am old now and full of
joy
I am young now and filled with sadness
Let me be honest with you
Neither
has ever fallen
in silence from my lips
nor sat waiting for me
under a tree
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 Thomas, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few. After his death, his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish.
A nominee for the Pushcart Prize and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (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. Her collected poems On the Way to Invisible is forthcoming in 2022.
Extravagantly beautiful in its suffering and its ecstasy.
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