Poet Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, your DNA is Dexterity carved on the marrow plaque of Prowess.

 

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Your verses are sickle spikes of truth, their marrow is satire and their bones are metaphor. The DNA is dexterity carved on the plaque of literary prowess.  The skull spanking lines profoundly sparkle like porcupine barbs from the resilient glint of sun rays. Antonia, your poems bury rags of misery, red- eyes of nostalgia, pricking thorns of quandary and grinding stones of grief in deep belly pit emotional parody and mind tilting word play comics. Poet Antonia Alexandra Klimenko uses the lyrical vintage and verbal bravado to speak history, death, loss, identity, pain and belonging. Her philosophical verses are socially, spiritually and politically fulfilling. Her poesy is original, confessional and is born out of a labyrinth of highly psychic charged thought processes.  Another unique nutrient in your writing is that they are  hybrid, they have of both symptoms of spoken word and page poetry. The depth in meaning and flexibility of reason qualifies the poems to be adapted into bestselling short films, cinematographic poetry .  Reading Antonia Alexandra Klimenko is a lifetime achievement, you get fulfilled with the art-tainment within and infotainment abound, you might want to  beat an African djembe for ritual poetry dance. Antonia Alexandra Klimenko is a multi award winning spoken word artist and an international acclaimed page poet. She is the current Poet/ Writer in Residence of Spoken Word Paris , an illustrious poetry reading  and performance organization  in Paris, France. TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC is wholesomely proud to publish Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, our first legendary poetry artist from France to grace our TIME OF THE REPUBLIC space.  We continue to promote a diversity of ideas, tolerance, creativity, inclusivity and exclusivity. ALUTA CONTINUA– (Blurb by Mbizo CHIRASHA).

 

 

 

Heart’s Compass

 

You pass through me

like windows on a train–

freeze-framed in Winter

my shattered Spring

I look for you

in all the compartments

of my heart

groping blindly

at flashes of reflection

 

(Why did you pull out? I ask

At which stop did you finally exit?)

 

knowing full well

I have swallowed you

the night before

swallowed you

as I have the sun    the moon

and all the dead stars–

light years of your grief

passing through me now

 

I   the cavity of Paris

compass without a needle–

my arteries stretching like roadmaps

across the universe of my heart

 

How I let you slip through me

I will never know

why

I sent you

to your own dark eclipse

your delirium of narcotic bliss

engraved on the head of a needle

 

What is it we hold in our hands

that slips through our fingers–

this human landscape of blood and tears

How do we hold onto heart’s needle

this compass of compassion

this shining star

this point of reference–

hold onto light lost in a City of Light

hold onto that one magnet that pulls us

to a place where we belong

 

 

 

One day                                                                                 new stanza

we may lose true North

lose our way

lose this moment

lose whole continents

of ourselves

like refugees

with nowhere to turn

like I lost you

you who once took refuge

deep inside of me

 

I still hold South

between my thighs

still wait for you to move me

like the earth

like this engine pumping blood

this train pumping iron

like Night and hydrangeas

exploding into the ecstasy

of novas and constellations

tunneling the black hole of me

the deep blossoming throat of me–

you   my heart’s needle-

a singing meteor

that passes through me as light

that hums in me like Spring–

the one place I cannot get to

 

I am the cavity of Paris

that lovers once poured into–

my heart a weeping sieve

Milky Ways oozing from

the swirling globes of my eyes and breasts–

the trickling cum of humanity

peeling Time from my lips like a mask

 

At night alone in my bed

I marry the sacred dark of you

I marry the souls of all your dead planets

all the sweet amnesias of heaven

that live inside my head

I curse myself and heavy-lidded Night

that slumbers through the day

I   dragging the moon

like my flesh behind me

while Dark goes on and on

like the bottomless sky

with no ending or beginning

 

Dark knows we are afraid of it                                                       new stanza

wants only to be loved

I swallow it

as I do my tears

I kiss it

like I drink in air

I stuff the shame of guilt

back into my horizon

praying that light will find me

 

I am the cavity of Paris

that lovers once poured into–

my heart a weeping sieve

Deep inside myself

inside the shadows I cannot contain-

statues and monuments to the dead–

a whole city of shimmering possibility

rises as smoke above a skyline of ancient syllables

quivering on the tip of my tongue

 

The pallbearer of my own dead poems

bereft of words   divine direction or

a satin box to lay my aching compass

I drift

alone in the dark

alone with you and the breath of Winter

erased by a night that forgives

 

 

 

That Cat Named Bird

 

                                Charlie “Bird“ Parker, jazz legend, 1920-1955

 

He could have squeezed the living daylights out of Hell

And so he did   And at his very leisure

His euphoric appetite for bright pain and dulled pleasures–

hip-hopping  be-bopping  jamming  slammin

pumping iron and ironic in metaphoric basements

where swinging trumpets blow– was legendary

His valves  those brass knuckles of brute sound

opened like delicate testicles (ah…the swell of it)

under the pressure of his well-manicured hand

Sometimes out of hand   But  then  that was Birdland

 

He lived for…Oh, what he’d give for:

whole notes suspended from jazz-stained ceilings

ripping  renting  warbling  squealing   A yardbird

desperate to fill the uncompromising space

His face   a black hole  where stars exploding

collapsed into fusion  replaced  glass windows

shattered like melting mirrors from the Ice Age

Nineteen was a nice age   The kid had class

His Cherokee in B flat—pure synergy—

(unsurpassed) peeled poems off of every wall

drove a silk fist  with a twist through blood knowledge

stripped down to the quick    Once he heard the call…

 

no one could keep that horn in its cage

 

 

Dawn and neon merging together echoed

his interpolations   Muted shades of strobing rhythms–

he was a language of collisions–a free fall

of featherless wings   Icarus caught in the wailing gale

the chromatic scale of stark illusion  penetrating confusion

soft callused lips cut from the equinox of  tonal

depth and fragile power    The cryptic

and unspoken lodged in his bill–a shuttered

windowsill opening into a symphony  an epiphany

a sunflower smiling wide in the ache of his throat

The dark chords of his vocabulary—stuttering nocturnal–

perched, now   in treetops   pronouncing his return

 

Melodies rose up through rampant leaves of  invention

Green summer ferns  potted plants  rotted plants

April in Paris  Bird Gets the Worm  Ornithology (no apologies)

Thirty-four years of unearthly episodic breakups   breakdowns

a narcotic intervention gave him pause   but no rest

 

 

Melodies rose up through visions of greatness                        stanza continued

sketches of  Miles  Monk and Dizzy

burnt bulbs eclipsing  distant strains mixing chaotic

in fresh saxophonic, kaleidoscopic dimension

 

Pneumonia in half breaths  a heartfelt diminuendo

What was he thinking?  This is it  maybe

This is the moment   this is the tone

this is the one sound I can really bring home

No more hot-lining liner notes for the final crescendo

Play me the sudden death of midnights  Baby!

Play me the jazz-beaked Bird   that old deaf fool

Play me that one impossible screech of a cosmic sage

Blue on ebony    arpeggio of dreaming

 

No one could keep that horn in its cage!

 

And in one hush of morning   Destiny brushed

his dry parting lips  his unfettered hips

the suicidal longing of his cold wet drool

The wick of his short flame lit an interval higher

in a sky of blazing burnout—his fame gone cool

That formless ghost of his haunting moan–

his feathers clipped   nothing lost   nothing wanting

His music out the window   his notes off the page

 

no one could keep that bird in his cage!

 

 

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 the morning paper hands you Syria

with her throat slashed

headlines dripping

with the blood of children from South Africa–

schools of flailing thrashing fish

in baskets    in cardboard cradles pulled from the sea

when you read your own obituary in the Unwanted Classifieds

when your passport has expired and you’re now officially dead

when the death toll has reached you posthumously–

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                                         new stanza

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 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 I’land

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–          new stanza

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

 

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary Tambimuttu of Poetry London–-publisher of T.S. Eliot, 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. Although her manuscript was orphaned upon ‘Tambi’s passing, her poems and correspondence have been included in his Special Collections at Northwestern University. A former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and devotee of Spoken Word, she has read and performed at various venues including S.F.’s renowned Purple Onion and The Intersection for the Arts. Her sold-out one-woman show Where the Blue Begins was presented in conjunction with Sonoma’s performing art series Women on the Edge. More recently she has presented her work at Shakespeare & Company, participated in four présentations hosted by Three Rooms Press as well as performed at 100 Thousand Poets for Change here in Paris. She also placed second in the 2015 Poetry Slam hosted by Paris Lit Up. Klimenko’s works are widely published in journals and anthologies, among them. CounterPunch, The Rumpus, Atlanta Review, The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology, Big Bridge, Ragged Lion Press, Levure Litteraire, Writing for Peace, Strangers in Paris—New Writing Inspired by the City of Light, Paris Lit Up, Vox Populi, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Criterion International Literary Journal, Occupy Poetry (in which she is distinguished as an American Poet) XXI Century World Literature (in 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. Her collages have been exhibited in galleries, the DIFFA (Design Industry Foundation for Aids) Showhouse in San Francisco and featured in Home and Garden Magazine. 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, will be forthcoming in Spring of 2021.

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TIME  OF THE  POET REPUBLIC- An Internet based  Writers  Center,  Archiving Theme based Digital Poetry Anthologies and  publishing Iconic Poets ,Writers and Artists from around the globe. TIME OF POET REPUBLIC was  founded  by  UNESCO-RILA Affliate ARTIST. Freedom of SPEECH Fellow PEN-Zentrum Deutschland.2019 African FELLOW ihraf.org and  Acclaimed Literary Arts Diplomatie,Mbizo CHIRASHA