La Vie en Rouge, poems by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary James Meary Tambimuttu of Poetry London. A former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, her work has appeared in (among others) 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 cofounder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.

La Vie en Rouge

Brave heart depraved heart City of rose-tinted glass Heart at my unframed window Heart with your thumb up my ass Oh Rouge!! how softly you weep onto cobblestone— the freshly cut grass

Pulsing Portal  eternal  immortal imposing muscle  scalpel in hand-- your open-head surgeries your mouths your wounds too many to count Heart ready to beat the band

Beating! Beating! Beating! heart with your Billy clubs  your gases In-Seine River of blood and tears

Red heart  dead heart in your bright yellow vest how you cried out in vein all these years

Sainted heart   not for the faint-of- heart no longer the pale pink lie I’ll live to see red yet another day

Cross my heart and hope to die

Art Isn’t Dead—It’s Still Dying

“like Dali’s melting clocks” - Steffem Horstmann

How you plan to kill time means nothing to me as your troops invade my body Outside the city falls to its knees I hold it crying in my arms as I fall in love with strangers

Come my friend let us crucify the hour— minute-hands nailed to the cross-- our faces slowly turning like Dali’s melting clocks to and from the horizon

Please let us hurry! We must go! There is no arguing the yes and no of night and day

But first let me murder the piano one by one and in every key— lifting and lowering each tone into its ebony grave its ivory tower— raising even the dead in living color as only an Impressionist can who draws pictures and no conclusions— my blood spilling onto the human canvas stretched beyond all measure— lamp-shades of skin and ash

(How beautiful the light that carries the weight of its own unbearable absence) See how the undying wave to you now from the unframed corners of my mouth (that other gas oven)

in muted screams of crimson and orange bewildered yellow muffled brown acoustic blue— How sudden inspiration Dada!!! Mama!!!“ can explode like shooting stars or automatic fire into the tone-deaf illusion of pitch-black Nothingness Come let me recreate the fluorescence of your smile let me reinvent myself as I on display walk these random streets freshly garbed in widows weeds Paris 1942

Even now as I speak I am painting my screams green I am dying my hair red (as only the color blind can) I am changing my name to Violette and I am returning to that other country

Art Isn’t Dead—It’s Still Dying

I a Russian da-da refugee as cumbersome as obscure as open as any French Door by Marcel Duchamp— my windowpanes—translucent fragile cities of light— my memory polished beyond recognition my nose pressed to your shattered glass— Paris my mirror O Paris How often I have wandered your truth— looking for me in search of you And where is God when I need Her now to find my way back in the dark? Please let us hurry! Let’s go home! Let us marry the bed Let us marry the mirror Let us marry this moment—-

my fingers kneeling before yours in prayer folding the blessings of faceless angels into the corners of my mouth ...contd

Only this Only this There is no other moment

crossing the threshold of Dream passing through our veil of tears crossing myself as you enter me through the window of my reflection transcendent decoded Holy Yessssss

Shhhhhhhhh

© Antonia Alexandra Klimenko/liveencounters.net