She was lying in bed, half sick,
feeling, just feeling the song
eating her morning in a crescendo
she couldn't bear.
her pain spiraling downwards,
conjured her black heart,
to explode in accords
never heard before, 
slowly,
slowly.

Made of wounds we are

and nobody ever tried to save

us even when we prayed

and hoped for what we didn't know.

you are where i will never be

and our merciful amnesia 

separated us forever.

we need another incarnation

to live what was lost

and gone even before

we discover each other's hand.

this is our incredible love story.

yes i miss what we've never had.

there is a word in my language

for my inexplicable weird longing;

saudade.

love the sibilant and the dental consonants here.

they explode in my mouth

as i bend, covering my face

because i can't stand witnessing

my own pain.

but tomorrow, maybe tomorrow

i might be half civilized

and know how to kneel down

when i pray for us.

can you hear me, god?

can you hear me, my love?

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2014

Today I wrote I missed you for the first time

since your death in February

I reread all those poems you wrote me.

It was not easy to expose myself to myself

and declare I can’t hide our past behind the metaphors

you wove effortlessly out of my nothingness and dismay.

You tamed the words like no one ever could

and insisted on loving me as if I was blind enough

to believe a poet could love without bending

down with the weight of his own heart

and despair.

Now I realize you made me feel precious, weird and noble.

( your patriotism, cigarettes and small tragedies devoured me,

diminishing the intensity of my being and I hated what I was,

you were, we could never be)

You immortalized me gloriously,

giving me everything I could never have.

It was too heavy to be your symptom.

Couldn’t bear your incomprehension.

(didn’t know how to be your solace

or the mother you dreamt for your own child)

But now I can say shamelessly I loved you too.

( didn’t know I loved you – not as you deserved

or needed)

We are finally free, Tiger.

Life doesn’t need to happen again:

your poems still make my soul tremble

with awe and beauty.

Karla Bardanza

For Julio

The Mag - 192

                                             Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2013

Erhard Loblein

 

Those galaxies i hid in my eyes

as we touched the fragile worlds

Venus conceived by the unsounded sea

are still the untamed magic nurturing

my dried pious utterances when i fail

to lean over another eroded day.

 

It is a precarious position

to love what is here and gone

and feel how breakable you still are

after all these years.

 

But the lullaby goes on and

i still shout what has been returned

to dust.

 

If your soul contains my dreams and

I can’t feel you,

forgive me.

if stars still dance between you and me

and i can’t see them,

forgive me.

Our small particularities still survive

in those wonders that outlived

any visible delight, my love.

 

And as i write you this ex-last letter again,

there is a litany lying on my womb,

reaching an unbearable climax

but the responses never appease the angry woman

dwelling in my uttermost parts

so i kneel down to feel your name expanding

and shrinking my tears and memory

when i live without my life,

when I try to repeat those words which

are and aren’t anymore .

 

Karla Bardanza

 

 

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2012

Painting by john William Godward

 

 

 

I would approach my soul from yours,

opening the pockets of forgiveness,

beating my guilt's chest

just to see the blue

of your eyes collapsing

the night in a voracious silence,

as I leave behind

everything that has not worked

because we were never close enough

to know who hold grudges

or tire the years more.

I would approach my hand from thy

again and tenderly,

I would look through you

with all my forgotten wills

with all the lives that have just fled from me

and for some brave minutes

i would whisper what I can 't hear from my heart's mouth.

And as I try not to disappoint fate,

I would tell you my silly truths,

my paid sins.

and all those disasters that

still make me love you so much.

Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2012