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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'm living.

come back later, around eleven,

when i have new laws

and the best disappointments to tell you

on the tip of my heart's tongue.

my door is closed.

for now

things that changed my sins,

pauses already tired of resting,

the sea, just the sea and laziness.

i'm living

and here it is just me and myself

in a time of old discoveries

and engedered dissolutions,

smart questions

and anti-songs.

still groping for the door,

i stand up and go ahead

completely incomplete,

absolute and entire,

almost frail,

almost.

but don't worry

if i don't come back.

i'm outside myself,

running away from

the things that die me.

karla bardanza

ps: it's not things that kill me but things that "die" me.

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

Welcome to my today.

the door is ajar,

you can come in 

and take a sit.

there is a special shadow

in that corner waiting

for you.

will you feel comfortable

if we all keep our eyes closed?

maybe we should forget

all concepts and start from

infinite.

maybe.

i know the voices 

inside you head are

numb:

you won't hurt anybody

but silence itself.

(yes, i know)

but whenever i think of you

red detailed words fall at my feet

and your mother bends

over us crying for acceptance.

i understand her heartbeat.

can't understand mine though.

it is strange to be in front of you

and see less than we all should.

your life aches.

our fears also ache 

and we are not prepared yet.

(no, we aren't)

(not now)

can you come back next week?

i'm sure we will have devoured

the how-tos by the time

your monsters attack the mango trees.

will you become what you can be?

what can i do for you

as the sun crosses the table?

forgive me i am too small

for big things.

the voices inside my head shout too.

no one can listen to them

but you.

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

Now that february insults me more

and the room is too small

to contain that pitiless professionalism,

i see you scattering seeds of tomorrow

as you rubbed our backs

with another degree,

and it is strange not to hear

another lesson on hopeless portuguese.

it was inexcusably depressing

to hear that poetry doesn't sell books

simply because i will never be prepared 

to what is mere reasonable.

that weighed in my mind

like a blown dandelion,

like an omminious headline

in the morning.

you invented an angry god

and a multitude of flies in my soup.

you - the next doctor spreading

taciturn theories,

you - the sexless combination

of a professor with a porn star.

i will never regret the fire

burning the serious furniture

nor the delight of criticism.

nah!

what we had was rare and dangerous.

i know i will miss our respectable battles

and the man who taught me more

about myself than i could expect.

you couldn't bid us farewell in flesh

and i know it was painful for you

to choose.

all i hope is that you can miss the illicit thrill

i caused you long before you disenchanted poetry.

(that will suffice)

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

I am an educated fool

tearing myself in two

for me 

and you

and you

and you too

from Monday to Friday

consider this.

it is exhausting

to make you think

my thoughts as

the heat dissolves our brains

and dignity

because you are

where you hate to be

and i am where

i should have never been.

(maybe)

that love is gone 

but i can feel it 

when my mind touches

your invisible heart

pushing you

to distant wor(l)ds of fire.

How far can i push you after noon?

how far can you go without me?

I am an educated fool

playing by the rules

that split myself in two

but who will help me

and save you,

you,

and you too

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

Listen

the words don't need my perplexity anymore

and it is hard for me to admit my incredulity.

yesterday i said i couldn't

and you replied "ok"

as if you could see beyond

my dead inspirational grammar and hopeless muse:

she - the one who aborted me

after a couple of unformed poems

and silent plosives.

yes, she wants images, not words.

i am covered with distrust and sorrow

but look at me,

i can only ask for a handkerchief.

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

Between us mars and venus 

and the virtue of wanting more

till the conditional "if" makes no more

sense as we theoretically touch

each other with our dark haired minds.

yes, i know i should be wandering

in another direction, holding just

pluto in my hands, prepared to destroy

or being destroyed, fading happily

when someone frowns or says

i am mathematically illiterate.

(why do we have to be measured

by our milestones of stupidities and joys?)

but i still long for small wonders

like unfastening my bra or taking off

my wristwatch after work and all

the complex things that 

the whole world secretly understands.

-it is so subversive to feel.-

i look forward to large imaginary seasons,

transits of uranus and possible concepts

because i'm pregnant again and

i will give birth to myself.

it is my merry vernal celebration

of fertility and chaos.

look closer there is no blood here,

only stars singing around the corner of the future.

who should be blamed for that

but the retrograde planets?

i am malleable now, face to face with my inner flesh

and all i want is to see

the house burning to the ground

as i find myself in hell and heaven

again.

and yes, it is so good.

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

When you sit in front of the glass

and the water reflects your face,

it is there, looking back at you

as if there was something you hid

from your fractured soul.

so you close your eyes slowly and

feel everything again till your body bends down low

and your hands cover your ashamed heart, protecting it

from your fury, 

from your fears,

from your pain.

your muscles ache,

and a thousand words you should have said

dissolve your skin, reaching yesterday,

withering every inch of you but you resist

the years, the transfixed moments,

the threads love weaved around you

because you are so young and wild:

your ideals come first. your hate comes first,

your country comes first and

it is a passion, a wound, a devotion.

just a few can understand

your disheveled hair and moans.

you don't need life. it is life that needs you.

sometimes you feel less strong

and more grotesque.

it is when the moon rises

and the world is in a drop.

you don't believe in miracles anymore

and today is not enough.

you need twenty years

or maybe what you can't admit

even to yourself.

it is too late to feel the flowers

in your hair but you still feel them

and the hands holding them.

for some minutes life has another name

and you find out a face beneath

your face.

but when you contemplate

the water in the glass,

it is only you so you back off

afraid of your pieces refracted

on it because you are

still there but the form

and the content clashed long ago.

and what you see is so distorted

and frightening.

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

No sound opens the walls
and lies down in the room.

a half-dead bed sighs in the corner,
an awkward pause of hopelessness.
holds the moment.

cold cabinets and curtains sleep.
it is a slow night,
it is the first day of freedom
and starvation.

she who had forgotten the gifts of flying 
a long time ago, hid behind
her own shadow,
contemplating the imprecise rings 
on the chair.

and for a time that even the clocks despise, 
she reread a suicide note
with eyes longing for
perishing things and falling words.

karla bardanza

Copyright©KarlaBardanza 2015

You should stray from what I invent:
small clouds of sisal,
waves without sea, salt and tragedy.
this is me without lipstick,.

nothing is true:
nor the reverse of the moment,
neither the dizziness in this plot,
or even the gift of a spasm.

a dream supports the body,
and I defend myself from
the almost spoken words
while afflicted,
I seek your voice in my skin.

these are rarities
and ambition.
these things are hoarse rhymes
of your heart.

but tomorrow
only fever and
a quiet and brief space
because nothing should last longer
than a newborn poem.


karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2014

She became a hymn, a solemn something
after the indescribable understanding
of her drained seas and portable shrines.

(her ordinary life, her ordinary mind)

it was supposed to be extraordinary,
it was supposed to be big and beautiful
but she gets up at 5, thinking less
about metaphors each day.
this is the rude poetry of life:
you always become what
you were designed for
even when we are ready
for the great challenge,
for the best riddle.

where are shakespeare,
yeats
and fernando pessoa?
where is she now?


karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2014