We both know what 
the black stars hide:
our brainless fears,
our lost encephalic mass,
our forgetful silhouettes.

yesterday i spent some time
staring at an indiferent mirror
in a restaurant as if that
amnesiac face could tell me
what to do.
but there is no goodness
in keeping memories
when one can't remember them.
time is deceitful.

i look at her,
holding the heart of my heart,
forgetting who she was
to see who she is now.
tomorrow is an oblivious man
dressed in white.
tomorrow we will shoot doubts 
at him like two soldiers in an execution.
i wonder if he can decipher
the enigmas written in her mind.

if i could for one single moment,
stop the process of being swallowed
by time,
i would be a baby in her ever open arms again:
she made me think i was a butterfly.
she made me think i could be
whoever i wanted to be as long as
i believed.
but i am afraid of praying:
the raw wounds in my knees,
the words i repeat in exile,
the holes in my weird faith.
i know it loves me like
a distracted god.

there is no comfort
in being a bleeding moon
when we become a lovely concept,
an ideal forgotten in the drawers
of a memory.
i am not prepared to accept
and as i weep for both of us,
the clock haunts me more.

against me time, the deaf king runs.

the future is a three-dimensional black image,
an x-ray of our bitten nails
as we wait for Astor Piazzola
to play oblivion again.

i even don't know how to end
this poem.
it is late and all i can do
is to murmur to myself
to be strong,
to be honest,
to not cry
because life is a miracle,
because she still remembers
our love, our ties, our misery.

kala bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2016

I summon you

to touch her suffering,

lifting the veil of the blue moon

because she whirls within a circle,

protected by the stars,

resting in a faith

a few dare to understand.

she is the radiant is

and loves you as you become

what you are, and

you are the earth i am standing on,

the falling water reflecting

my face:

everything that honours life.

shhhh...

(women are holy here:

they speak in tongues

and their rhythms belong

to the drums as the winds rise.

if for two seconds

your intellect could ascend to her,

the whole mankind would be

forgiven and beauty could be

revealed.)

but

your eyes brought you

face to face to heaven

and there one sided truth

prevails.

we are not different though.

my original impulse 

still summons you

to vibrate

because faith pulses

everywhere,

because suffering escapes me.

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2016

Demeter blessed my coffee
with another doubt

her poetry squeaks:

it is hate,

After her,
i grant myself the permission
to wait for nothing.
that doesn't mean
she was the best option
for our collective unconscious.
we inherit retro dreams,
stupidities and
the incomprehensible macho stance:
the burden of the burden.

The leaf waits for me
like a woman in love:
naked, eager, languid.

If you could get out of your own light

for three minutes

and accept the burning words,

the implausible darkness

we all hide and hold,

you would forgive

my postmodern sexuality

and sunlit mind.

She's walking into smoke
again and her mind swirls,
avoiding linearity,
stretching over
the repulsive night.

i am afraid when her eyes
is a force against me
and release the past in
small clouds of self-pity.

I hope you talk in poems,
touching my insides with
words painted in flames.
my sun in the glass,
the crystal of the hours undoning
my grief;
roses picked in small vowels,
the spirit of the letters lightening
my perpendicular urge for more.
i hope

to love with my palms open
as Vaults sing, as our reflexes

This poem will coagulate
like blood, staining our black land
with unheard prophecies 
as i try to write you
what was taken away.

look at us:
the wind broke over our skin
and we stretched our muscles
to feel our perfect nothing;
we lost our blunt knives
and we can't fight anymore.
consider this.

Ladies and gentlemen,
here she comes.
a big round of applause, please.
she cooks, sweeps, does the ironing
and the washing-up.
(nah!she's not chained home!
she works out most of times too.)
she sews, mends and serves everybody
as if she was paid for that.
(but she isn't...oh!!!)

Draw me again
to nameless things
because they are the soft ones.
simple as a stone
simple as yesterday.

Against the cold, we crawl
like toddlers.
it is below zero
and we freeze slowly
in our galaxies
as we grow more brazilian
month after month
so scared, so tired of scratching
our elbows on invisible desks
and thorns.

our painful pleasure
always climbs my mossy walls
and it is sweet
to make me suffer
with so much care.

I'd like to tell you
i'm surviving but not breathing
not now, not yet.
you know
it's been pretty difficult
to be confused all the time.
consider this.
my demons, my angels,
my perfect halo, my desire
to succumb to myself again,
soulless, weird, naked, disform.
i'm filled with strange things
and i don't know who
or what put this in me.

There she goes

ripped apart

bleeding poetry

as somebody thrusts another love-knife

deeper and deeper.

she.

who is she?

(nobody,

nobody)

When she cried

her eyes were shut hard

as if she were looking inside,

comteplating something indescribable.

i think she owns immense deserts,

immense hours.

I have nothing

but the sea

and it dies in me

like liquid poetry,

like foam and beauty.

I am going to pick shadows

before it ends.

you never told me

about this silence sitting

between us.

you never said i would have

to wait a whole reincarnation

to see what is memorable.

yes, i miss something

i can't name and yet

and i know i lost it long ago 

not because i chose to lose

but because i had to.

here i am paying for my crimes

as i read another stupid message

on my phone.

here i am ready to watch the night,

feeling less, feeling less.

the day has cursed me.

I look around

while everything sleeps.

still wearing you,

i get up and go to the window

just to be sure

of myself.

the universe is so generous:

it leaves me here a little longer

just to witness that

life goes on.

i wait silently

as time soothes the hours

because your Poetry still reminds me

of whom i still am.

and with eyes closed,

i make a great effort

to remember

how to be happy.

Karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015