Demeter blessed my coffee
with another doubt

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.

She held the puppy,

lulling her with tears ,

feeling full and empty,

as she thought about people

and their inconsistent attitudes.

"No, nobody is interested

in newly born dogs taken

ealier from their mothers"

 she whispered sadly,

mesmerized by

 the animal's melancholic eyes.

That pup in her arms

was a baby like any other baby.

She deserved love and warmth,

she deserved things forgotten

by her disconsolate heart.

And as the puppy fell asllep

draping over her chest,

an invisible force bound them together,

soothing the stars,

saving her from herself

and for the very first time

she understood what a mother is.

Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2013

Inside my blood, Pluto freezes
with such a violence before
November as if I could be what
the constellations whispered.

But I laid my doubts in this world
as soon as she cut my umbilical cord
with her teeth, thinking peace
could echo through both of us.

I - an unavoidable wreckage
after another attempt.
(I could never be your salvation;
who promised you my scalp?)

And as we grow old and wild
into the woods, we stare each other,
searching for that lost magnificence
we have never had

like two victims of the stars,
every word touches us
as we expire outwards our love
and hate on each other's faces.


Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2012

Painting by Serge Marshennikov

She skins my pride,

I bruise her feelings

before I fall from my pedestal.

(never asked her to place me there)

She swallows my words,

choking with my anger,

I slap her ego

and it is too late

to ask respect to sit

between us.

Her eyes aren't her eyes anymore

as I try to find a manual to consult

in cases of fire but everything

is incinerated.

Can't shape the ashes into a heart:

my hateful hands tremble.

Can't climb up her altar again.

I bend with burden of my role.

I got up with her singing.

Her voice is the lament of the sea

when the wingless seagulls cry

on the shore.

She can't understand her life

dresses my infinity

neither the reason why the sun

meets the water instead of the moon

every single day.

And when our tired eyes contemplate

the sorrowful horizon,

we are unable to wide it

and stretch love.

Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2012