I know you are in rehab (no no no)
and have been clean
for three weeks.
No alcohol, no nothing.

I know court is on June 23 rd
and Buddhism is helping you
to cope with the raw experiences
of life.

I know we still are two lost souls
raging, aching, living, trying not
to see the inviting open window
again.

I am repeating I know as if
my limited knowledge could give me
solace when solace can't be found
simply because I can only contemplate
the geometric progression of our pain
and losses.

What we feel is bigger than us.
It is a thought moving fast,
multiplying the horizon
and swallowing the sun.

You grew inside of me,
spreading fast like ivy,
like the moonlight on
the surface of the days.

And nothing is here,
nothing.
I can't find what
we saw, we shared.
Silence creeps around me.

There are many words
in my distorted mouth.
Many unreachable words
waiting to be cuddled,
embraced, touched.
Some things are so distant
even when they are inside us,
even when they want us.

I feel. Oh! I feel
and it hurts me,
and we both love what
never existed
because we...we never
existed.

Karla Bardanza

For G

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2013

Painting by Juan Medina

What happens after love?

Weightless I lie with my heart
in my hands, immersed in prepositions,
dilemmas, wh-questions, longing for a second life,
a second chance, a second something
which I know not how to name
for I am too exhausted to reduce
my doubts to a metaphysical question.

What part of me continues after love?

No part of me shall survive. I do not own
any part of me and everything I supposed I knew
about myself disappeared after my ultimate reality.
I can't even speak about you:
I couldn't register you in my mind other than vague,
ephemeral images of an impossible-him.

Yesterday I read Sartre again, trying to find
a philosophical answer but nothingness is a condition
of my being. My (il)logical contradiction is beyond
your ability to understand my black eyes and
sunburned brain.
Maybe I am tender contradiction uncovering
your paradoxes.

After love, Schopenhauer is here with me
in a trap of nature, making love with my theories
and atrocities.
I don't feel anything. My transcendental Will
just wants to sleep and there is no hope for tomorrow,
only some didactic phrases spoken in between my teeth
when somebody asks me about the metaphysics of love.


After love, only the preposition remains.




Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2012

Painting by Judith Eisler

She carries me and walks in light,

saying what binds us is delight,

we might be two halves of one,

a knot of love can't be undone

for it is the Gods' unique rite.

Her quiet dreams are my only sight

when death calls me dressed in white

and I don't know when I should run.

She carries me.

I am outside myself in another flight,

soaring high in her hands like a kite,

counting shooting stars one by one

riding Mother Moon and even the Sun,

as our story we retrace and rewrite.

She carries me.

Karla Bardanza

For Cinda

Rondeau

A Rondeau is a French form, 15 lines long, consisting of three stanzas: a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet with a rhyme scheme as follows: aabba aabR aabbaR. Lines 9 and 15 are short - a refrain (R) consisting of a phrase taken from line one. The other lines are longer (but all of the same metrical length).

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2012