One Poem by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

 

Mayday! Mayday! 

 

Can anyone hear me    

over 

I am a country in distress 

a state of emergency 

over 

and under protest   arbitrary arrest 

a rescue mission     in critical condition 

an act of sedition    without contrition 

 

Can anyone help me? 

over 

a hungry nation 

a demonstration 

without work 

without food 

without a roof 

a word of truth 

is not what I was paid for 

is not what I was made for 

is not a promise I can keep 

without a dream to sleep on 

                               to keep on    keeping on 

 

Every day   I work   I struggle 

my hands bruised chaffed and worn 

I crawl on my knees 

birthing the stillborn hopes 

the blood sweat and tears 

the growing fears and pleas     

of untold workers  of bygone years 

the  trust of  the unborn 

while you  and your pagan bureaucracies 

are sowing new seeds of dissension 

in a bottomless sky 

our pensions in suspension 

Can you hear me? 

Can i ask why? 

over 

 

Every day I sighhh a little  

Every day I die a little 

over    

We are a sinking ship 

in your dick--tatorship 

your sea of despair  

your I don’t care 

While unemployment 

is on the rise 

we break our backs  

we are old hacks 

at carrying this heavy load of shit    

the refuse of       the injustice of   

old age  outrage  and doom 

Just Another day on the garbage heap 

Just Another day    of the in-Seine 

to suffocate under the stench  

of your cheap perfume  

your cheap perfume 

 

So  Save me   Save me 

from your social reforms-- 

the one i supported until I aborted 

the way you went about it 

Do not doubt it   i will shout it 

Your 43 years of political  norms 

your rainy day 

that I was born  

to pay for         

over and  

over   

 

I AM the dark before the dawn 

 

Can you hear me ?

Over  and over 

Do you care? 

 

Is  anyone there?

 

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, 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 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 was 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. 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 in May, 2026.