Monday 5 December 2022

Three Poems by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko








November



Myth of unsolved mystery

Colour of smoke and shadow

What have you done

November

with October? last September?

Not even cold December

could resist your profound shudder—

your dark obsessions musty scent

distant rolls of thunder



Silent film on tiptoe—

Chaplin Bergman Pasolini—

heavy trains of thought

limping through me now



Deep in my throat’s forest

your oboe’s haunting timbre--

twisting tones of burnt sienna

living embers turned to ash



November

dismembered

hands pointing to

The Eleventh Hour

ever on the edge of slumber

your days of dead

were never numbered




Twilight



His love of open space
left blanks between his words
gaps between his teeth
silences within
All intervals in time--
the measure of height and width
the depth in which all things exist

and move moved in him--
a boundless three dimensional
journeying between the planets and the stars
the flat surfaces of his mind

How he distanced himself
from things and people
invading his terrain--
floor space parking space
objects and events which occurred

in the space which occupied him--the Absolute Space--
was beyond even him

Often he would go to great lengths
extending himself
the rings around his eyes--
sunken in their dark orbits
spinning
in some alternate Universe

Space
is relative to position and direction
he said
but only in the physical realm
The celestial beauty of inner space

is infinite
There is no separation between
sunrise and sunset
shadow and light
the dead and the living
Life belongs to both worlds
and to neither--
rests in the breath
inhabits the mystery
of here and oh so there

He said he said
taking one last drag
on his burnt-out cigarette
before he shut the door

behind him

Blew his brains out
in the hallway he did

Now, go to Hell !
he said




insomnia



that long grey yawn

that stretches you

beyond the pale

of your imagination

beyond the remote

of late-nite date nite

white noise Pink Floyd

God

I wish you were here



here

the cold breath of absent lovers

in bus terminals

in hospitals

in insane asylums

in graveyards

evaporates as smoke

or vapored angels

all

have disappeared through windows

beyond your trace--



those who you felt close to

but never really touched

the letter you wrote

but never mailed

to the suicide

whose heart you broke

reaches for your mind

just one last time

one last time

one last time



you roll another day

like a stale cigarette

in the all-nite diner of your soul--

a drunken masquerade on parade

in a dingy motel

just killing time

just killing time

let me entertain you



as death

floats around the room

paces the floor with the ticking clock

curls your blood and voyeurs

in and out of you

in and out of

twisted bed-sheets

dressers and drawers

shoes and socks

with two left feet

that know you

no better than strangers



it's the inverted world

where

night is day

and day is night

where

right is left

and wrong is right

in the blue and lonely hours

Mirror stares

at her own glass face


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. his death, it was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, 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 2023.




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