Ricardo Fernandez Ortega

 

 

 

A flower is not a flower.

It is an illusion floating toward the mirror,

flooding my astigmatic eyes with hyper-surrealism

as my timid mind travels in hope

to the unreachable shelves of my hours.

 

It has been silent for a long time

and I can only listen to the murmur

of my poems on the screen as if

they were trying to save me from

my immortal insignificance

every single day.

 

But they are tired of my blindness,

my complexes and paradoxes.

They know my poetic mind won’t

resist much longer the tasteless duty

of being a poetess, a poet, whatever.

 

Poetry will never make the evening news.

 

A flower is not a flower,

a poem is not a poem

and I am neither a poet nor a poetess.

 

 

Karla Bardanza

 

 

 

 

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2012

If you judge people you have no time to love them. ~Mother Teresa

Painting by Duy Huynh

Come here

and let's feed the sparrows:

they do not sow and neither they reap.

They just live.

What if you extend your generosity

to everyone who is different from you

 and drop your guard for a change?

We are all human beings.

I move effortlessly through the days:

my wings are not heavy to carry.

This unbearable lightness is my mystery and pleasure

but you can read between my lines.

I have written a user's manual

in a language you can understand.

The earth doesn't ask for your permission

to keep turning and neither do I.

If you look closer,

you will see your God in me:

let Him forgive you for your limited sight.

The flowers are still waiting for your contemplation though.

One thought has just occurred to me

in the middle of this remarkable poem,

that I have a heart and I love people indistinctly:

maybe here lies our biggest difference.

Maybe.

Karla Bardanza

   

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2011

The poem was quiet in the freezer:
it was still, waiting for my soul.
My frozen hands couldn't warm
my hateful mind: there was a blizzard
in my throat. The wind had blown away
the words and the feelings.
Could I live in the eye of the hurricane?

When I looked at the sky, the sun had grown
cold too. Maybe there was an extratropical
cyclone coming: all the instabilities caused
by the stream flow are still here.
Natural accidents are poorly understood.
I look back and the typhoon is lying on the
sofa, half dead, afraid of tomorrow.
I wonder when the poem will defrost.
My hands are cold.
I always thrust them into my pockets,
searching for some warmth and some things
which will remind me of yesterday.
There is only death there.

The poem is cold
and my shrine is inaccessible.
I remain on this glacial pedestal
immersed in wise disorder.
My fingertips are marked on
the mysterious ice.
I feel nothing.
Numbness is so warm.

Karla Bardanza