By Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Please don’t ask me
what I do for a living
besides breathe !
It is all that I can do
to get up every morning
(well…ok…not every)
to make it through the night
to care
for this human flesh
that pays the barking bills
launders that second skin
drags the comb through thinning-hair-days
(which will surely be gone tomorrow)
though life goes on and on

Suffering IS
my profession
my preoccupation
my greatest ambition
I specialize in depression
I’m fluent in Pain
and I cry like nobody’s business

This is what I live for

Oh what I’d give for
just to peel back
one more layer of skin
to see how the other half lives!
to offer up
another tear another year
of unadulterated sin
to feel and be healed
by the scent and touch of it
the too little and too much of it

But even
when there is nothing and no one
to return to in the evening
there is always I must be dreaming !
as I catch my own reflection
Oh God is that really me?–
(I have to laugh)
grey roots missing button
yesterday’s dribble down my undress
Who else ? I sigh
but my own work-in-progress
ready to give Life new meaning

With every sigh with each small death
I pass my hand through
the All Nothing of me–
the blessed dismembered All Humanity

Other mirrors other lives other layers of myself
transparent transformed translucent
are reborn
with just one glimpse in the looking glass

Hello
I say waving back
I remember you

The Importance of the Arts and Humanities

We are all creations, human be--ings who are connected to one another and in tune with the Universe. Uni--Verse. One Voice. We mirror one another and our reflections enable us to see who we are to ourselves as well as one another. Our creative expressions, also mirrors;, enable us to empathize to better understand ourselves and the world around us. Our very memories are the history and herstory of the world, itself. The greatest art is that of living and loving. It is an on-growing process, a creative and transformative prrocess which informs our very human be--ing. As necessary as physical nourishment is food for thought. It nurtures the soul and comforts the heart. This is what it is to be human.

This poem is a creative response to Mia Funk’s portrait paintings.
I love Portraits/The Audience... So many recognizable faces. Artists who have inspired and continue to inspire long after their passing. One, in particular-- Salvador Dali with whom i shared a brief but meaningful conversation with at a Paris soiree in 1969. Only last week i visited the Pablo Picasso museum in the Marais. Louis Armstrong whom i met not once, but twice at Golden Gate Park's Bandstand in San Francisco. So many spirits. They say energy never dies and Mia's wonderful wonderful artwork is an inspired reminder of so many in the art and humanities community who have become such a part of our lives.

A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, Antonia Alexandra Klimenko is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) Jazz and Literature, XXI Century World Literature (which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the Poet in Residence. for SpokenWord Paris. Her selected poems On the Way to Invisible was recently published by The Opiate Books and is now available.

Image credit: Veiled Memory by Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

The Creative Process is created with kind support from the Jan Michalski Foundation.