I put love in my mouth

and I swallowed it.

It'll never desert me again:

It is within.

I ate it with my trembling hands

and agonizing body.

I won’t lose it anymore

when the treacherous rain destroys

the sky.

All the beauty loves

hides is mine now.

What was just outside,

is inside too living in

my tormented corners haunted

by nostalgia and by the blind time.

I put love in my mouth

and it rests in my bowels.

I ate every bit of it so gently.

I feel that my soul doesn’t fit

in my gaps muffled by pain any longer

after this surprise.

Love (who would ever guess!) tastes

like watermelons, dreams,

poetry.

Love is still the raw material

that only children and poets understand

when they talk with stars and light up the words.

It's here in my mouth

every time I am naked and crazy

shouting that I am never tired of watching

fireflies courting the night

suspended between those who love

and those who wait to be loved..

I put love in my mouth

and I ate it:

I am enlightened now.

Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2011

Find the way

for me.

Seek it in my crossroads

or in my echoing dune,

decorate the cloudy walls.

and see if Venus is applying

to a conjunction with Mars in my chart.

Do your part in my

tired story cramped with

delayed responses.

Bring the sky

to live at home

and sew a pair of wings on my back.

Do these meaningless things to please me.

I don’t know

what is this in me.

I don’t know

what can set me free from time

and from my private earthquake.

Look for the exit,

the window fire escape

and my hidden face.

Please

find my life

out there.

Karla Bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2011

After the storm,
I lulled her, licking
her bruises, healing
her wounds, whispering
words unheard and unseen.

Her untamed eyes didn't open
and for fifteen minutes the cloudless
sky wept.
We stayed there ritualizing the moment,
knitting the stars, counting the waves,
thinking about the future when the future
couldn't think of us.

Oh! This love was painted with tints of eternity:
a masterpiece in my heart of stone.

For some time I couldn't write,
I couldn't feel and right now
I wonder how long it will take us
to heal.

And the answers are silent and simple:
What is love but this immesurable
intensity binding us to pleausre
and pain?
What is love Yasmim but to raise
from the dead again?



Karla Bardanza

For my daughter.

It was already late

when the clouds began to burn

and a wild wind destroyed the flowers.

The blue of the sky fell over me

and your face was all my heart

could see.

It was so late when my trembling

hands searched for the past and

found you eating sugar beneath

my skin.

It was so late.

Your complicated beautiful eyes

still gaze at me, eating my doubts,

piercing my night, blessing my poems

as I sit here and cry for my precious memories.

Your indefinite words still render me eternity.

I am lost without you. I am drowning in waters of awe

and passion.

Love is a maze of lilies where I forgot myself

when I knew all the questions.

You were my answer. You were my shield.

You were…You were…

With faith, with madness, I stepped outside,

I reached my arms toward you, I dreamt.

Now I try to observe unobservable mysteries

as I lay dying every single day, thinking of promises

and secrets, sewing my pieces in this momentary

quest for the future.

What is happiness?

I guess it slipped through my fingers.

Maybe I was happy. Was I? WAS I?

I DON’T KNOW.

I only feel this pain: real and intense,

natural and illogical when I read your words,

when I am blind, when I see your photos,

when I hate myself more.

The silky door is closed.

Something in me is a silent lake and you know my depths

and dangers as you cross your fields of sorrow, thinking

of me and tomorrow, lying to the stars, falling in your caustic

abyss of solitude and despair, missing my beauty and the flowers

I used to put in your hair.

And now it is too late. I can’t save our arms or the roses from the thorns.

The wounds are forever, the journey is over. We still bleed.

Karla Bardanza