Somewhere
There’s a place for us, somewhere a place for us
West Side Story---Leonard Bernstein
No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark
--Warsan Shire
When History brings you Yesterday’s news--
headlines dripping with the blood of Gaza Lebanon
Syria South Africa—schools of children like fish
in cardboard cradles pulled from the sea
when you read your own obituary in the Unwanted Classifieds
your passport has expired and you're now officially dead
when the death toll has reached you posthumously--
go ahead and just ignore the front page entirely
head straight for the comics pull up an easy chair
before it too floats away
and heads down the river for the jaws of the Unknown
The mouths of the Innocent
are begging for mercy are longing for freedom are gasping for breath
from their own stench behind a barbed wire fence
and you give me a banal dirty look and ask me where I am from
I who have torn off my limbs who have grown gills and fins
to slip through the eye of your needle your narrow canal
I who cross my own self every day and pray
I will make it to the other side!
Doesn't everyone come from another place?
Doesn't everyone want to get somewhere?
Even standing still Nothing stands still
Stars need a space to turn a space to burn for
a little grace
Even Heaven needs a place to yearn for
There are mansions in the sky
black holes in the homeless terrain
there are people who will never
know their own worth the origin of their birth
who dissolve like refuse in the ocean
who are recycled in the center of the earth
who dissolve in the rain or unfathomable emotion
becoming something else again and again
We are all in the process of becoming
something else someone new some other place
Dark shadows that once wore a human face
at the bottom of the sea and those deeper waters still
that no one can replace-- who tried to make the crossing
or whose blood spilled and left no trace
Some who waded through their own fears
who waded through their own tears
Others who learned to drink them
while still others tried to sink them
No one
wants to leave a place they call home
No one
wants to give up everything
At night I dream of cities
with thousands of windows like mirrors
and children being thrown out of them--
thousands of doors opening and closing
But there are no floors on which to stand
or take refuge in a tempest or a bottomless sea
with thousands of empty shoes
thousands of empty shoes
and no souls left to fill them
Every night
I toss in uncertain seas uncertainties
Every night
I cling to my modesty cling to my dreams like a raft
while the draft of your political wind chills to the bone
triggers terror in my eyes
Where are you from? Blackie!
What would you expect me to say?--
I'm shedding old skin and the new feels like home?
I who have torn off my limbs
who have grown gills and fins
to cross the sea of no return
I who cross my own self every day and pray
I will make it to the other side !
I am my own country my own floating Island
this side of the rainbow somewhere I do not know
I carry the sacred past in my faith for a future--
the known to the unknown the dead to the living
I'm in the business of forgiving forgiving forgiving
FORGIVING!
while you retire in your easy chair
and sigh This is living!
What are you afraid of? you who turn away in silence--
that I occupy a thought on the outskirts of your mind?
seek asylum in your smile? take refuge in your kindness?
Who knows...one day I may migrate to your heart
I sing songs to the Invisible as a whale or a dolphin
I sing songs of remembrance sing songs in the dark--
write poems for lost prayers in blind halls of oppression--
tortured cries of the abused haunting pleas of the unheard
How long can we live with this malignant repression--
the absurd unfairness of the privileged few
No one wants to stay in a place that doesn’t want them
No one wants to be in a place that feels untrue
One day I shall return to the sanctity of there--ness
I pray one day I won't have to pray for you
for those who would suffer
the total eclipse of eyes
the sudden death of midnights
the umbrellas of childhood
forever shut
whose minds have toppled
from their balconies of anticipation
whose dreams have drowned
in their blue wounds
whose suicides
have plucked from their every finger
each splintered minute
of experience
whose hearts are broken
and many
who bear the light of their love
in Your eyes
Song of the Blind
It bothers me that my eyes are broken
and God will not fix them
Each morning I watch and listen for Him
and wonder through which doorway of my senses
He will choose to enter next
Each day He and I together
make and remake the bed–
make and remake the world
Mostly it is the same
And that is both my comfort and my fear
I have heard that once someone is truly loved
she is never the same
You cannot imagine how I long for change!
You cannot imagine how I long for certainty!
I can only imagine
I never quite know which
I will stumble into next:
Death that l o n g night
or
Life that l o n g day!
Dear Lord
I am without sight
I am not without vision
Please find me
Song of the Deaf
What can I say
that you haven’t already heard
before me?
I feel left out
Everyone else has two sides
but when I turn around to face the other way
I still point in the same direction!
Sometimes people talk behind my back
right in front of me!
Of course I must expect that
I try to anticipate everything
otherwise I fall behind
and I have nothing to fall back on!
That is why
my world is suspended in animation–
I use my hands to balance silence
the way stars hold up the sky
A cloud can fall back on the sky
but I must climb deeper
into God’s Ear!
Only…where does the sky begin?
I’d give anything you know
just to hear the color blue
Song of the Homeless
How long can I go on
pushing my life before me?
My feet are bare and swollen–
they do not know me anymore!
And I haven’t yet enough hands
to keep me warm
nor make a pillow for my head
Maybe I’ll grow new fingers tomorrow
so they too can stick out like a sore thumb!
I suppose you think I should find
a better place to hide
than in the poverty of my skin
Do you think I like
carrying my heart
around with me in a basket?!
You do not care
that I have forgotten the words
to the songs I am singing–
and I am running out of songs!
How could you know first-hand?
that it is not my death I fear–-
only that I should learn of it
second hand
Song of the Sexually Abused Child
Look at me
I am the child you stuck
in a cage long ago
the child whose crimes
we must never never tell
the child who could not
cut her own meat
and so you did it for her
the child who gave up
her own thumb
to suckle yours
I am that child
Look at me!
How long must I keep
my tears in a bowl by the bed?
praying you will not spill them
You who must never never
You my fondest nightmare Daddy
Daddy only…
Daddy PLEASE!
Don’t mess with my dreams!
Don’t touch me there!
or I am lost on the wrong side of the mirror
and even God won’t find me!
Look at me!
For I am the hand
that holds the Mirror
For I am the voice
that reaches through the bars
and unlocks silence
I cannot take back this cry
any more than you can
give me back my life
This is my song– -it belongs to me!
And we are non-negotiable!
The rest is up for grabs
Song of the Depressed
I am the O of nOthing
Each day I sink deeper and deeper into that well
until I am so empty
I haven’t any tears to drown out the pain
And this cloud I once called my mind
cannot lift me out beyond the darkness
When will it all end? I ask
And where is God
When I need Her now
to throw me the end of a rope?
Deep in Holiness
She takes Her time
unraveling all that Light!
Even in the dark–
humming
Song of the Dying
Hello darkness my old friend
Sounds of Silence—Simon and Garfunkel
O Dark Sphere–
face revolving with the earth
changing shape and color–
will I never see the whole picture?
I am falling within
the flickering shadows
of my eyes They are the fields
of childhood
patterned with liquid dream
disappearing into their horizons
I am closing within
the closing eye of the needle
that threads light
through the visible veil
of God’s invisible world
I know all your human songs from memory
The unpopular the unsung
remain on my lips–-
my mouth opening like a grave
Who with her long black gloves
holds a hand darker than night
and places it over each living eye
so we cannot look into the Light–
the beautiful Light that remembers?
Tell me Old Friend
is it your bow
that draws so sweetly
across the universe of my heart–
a single violin?
Song of Myself
Hello my friend
Are you still there?
Yes you... here
in the looking glass
staring back at me
How do we do it!
How do we hold it all in?--
this breath of Spirit
this body of work
invisible to the naked eye
How do we show up
every day
reflecting deflecting
light in all the shattered dreams
of the world?
I see you you know
a little lost
forever searching
for some thing some one
to ease the pain
But please! don’t despair!
BELIEVE in your self!
Never lose heart!
We shall meet you and I
beyond the frame beyond the glass
in that place that always remembers
For I am your mirror
And i am here to remind you
that you are not alone my friend
That you are and will forever be
the miracle that you are
Beautiful
You ARE beautiful
and Eternal
Always remember that
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 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 was a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award 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. Her selected poems The Looking Glass is now available.
