Bueno Bueno
for Helene Cardona in loving memory of Jose Manuel Cardona
Every day
I look for Good
Every day on my knees
I search for Her
Sometimes I find Her
Sometimes not
On metros and bridges
in parks and cafés
up tree-lined streets
blind boulevards
down crooked alleyways
Not here Not here
On the banks of the Seine
I search for Her --
the Louvre Sacre Coeur Montmartre
moving invisibly through the ghosts
of Joyce Hemmingway and Sartre
Not here Not here
Into the eyes of strangers
I fly--
catching only glimpses
in Her mirror--
my own perceptions imperfections
shattered everywhere
At Chatelet (Pont de Change)
a young man--
his figure frail and bent--
stretches out his hand for change
Please madame please!
while his ravaged sores
weep openly
onto the cold hard pavement
510 people died last year
on the streets of Paris alone
510 people died
perhaps alone
Aut still...
Not here Not here
Blinded
by the light
I cannot see
Haunted
by the voices within
I crawl on my knees
alone
in my room
in the dark
Here
I fumble for words--
those undying coals of passion
reduced now to 12 point font
on my Apple Pro 13
How many unheeded pleadings
of neglect and deaf omission--
explode as bursts of genius
onto the silent screen
Oh to be a poet
with tragedy for inspiration
possessed by this disease this obsession--
the ink of my own confessions
coursing through my veins
How to have compassion
etched in each expression--
in every line and wrinkle
of the page of every face
on the face of every page
Instead
Not here Not here
Today
I look into the tender soul
of my friend Jose Cardona
Jose with the voice of an angel
Jose who eats like a sparrow
And I am here beside him
I am here I am here
I say
Bueno Bueno
says he
One day we will slip through the sphere
of breath beyond the dust
I whisper--
his daughter pressed to his ear
I am here I am here she says
Bueno Bueno says he
Je t’aime Papa
Je t’aime Hélène
And
Earth with a zillion stars
and Night on her shoulders
will turn to us
I am here I am here
she cries
Then
we will step out of our body
our radiant garment of luminous petals
and pass beyond the glass
Bueno Bueno
says he nodding…
off to dream
humming on his way
Every day
on my knees
I look for Good
Every day
in his heart
he finds her
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, 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. She has been a featured guest at Shakespeare & Company, on a number of occasions, as well as performed or read in other literary venues in the City of Light and elsewhere. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France), Jazz and Literature and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at 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 Poet in Residence. She is also Writer/Poet in Residence at The Creative Process.
Her selected poems On the Way to Invisible was recently published by The Opiate Books and is now available. Her selected poems The Looking Glass is forthcoming this year.
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