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.

I look around

while everything sleeps.

still wearing you,

i get up and go to the window

just to be sure

of myself.

the universe is so generous:

it leaves me here a little longer

just to witness that

life goes on.

i wait silently

as time soothes the hours

because your Poetry still reminds me

of whom i still am.

and with eyes closed,

i make a great effort

to remember

how to be happy.

Karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2015

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

Am i wrong when i seek your darkness,

writing my delirium across your frightened mathematics

as if you were ready to be free

like me

(like me)

am i wrong when i break you in two:

ego and id eating fast your insides 

as if you were ready to be free

like me

(like me)

am i wrong when my words surround you

with verbs that expand and catch fire

as if you were ready to be free

like me

(like me)

am i wrong when our eyes see what

we can't, holding small truths with our tongues

as if you were ready to be free

like me

(like me)

am i wrong when i want what

you can't give because it hurts to be

free like me

(oh! you like me)

(oh! you lick me)

am i wrong to be free

if you hide two,

if we are three

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

The color of her skin holds untold stories of black stars
and as she passes by barefoot and in white, 
blessing earth, they kneel down:
she is sacred like a spider weaving a new web,
like an eagle removing its own beak to be reborn.

her beaded necklaces belong to The Orishas.
"Ileke" they call. 
she wears as many as i can see and
each one of them is a mystery of nature,
nobody can touch them,
neither me

when the voices cry, 
when the conga drums call the Orishas,
she dances alone in the circle
and she is more beautiful
because her body is not hers anymore
because she belongs to something
you have to see if you want to understand.

yes, she is sacred and i didn't know
she would be chosen to walk their path.
she was taken suddenly.
"it is her mission" they say.
"it is inherited" they whispered
as we cried.

when i look at her,
there is a strange force
pulling us to the invisible unknown,
to the arms of Mother Yemanja
and deep in my heart,
i can only feel gratitude.

karla bardanza

Orishas - gods and goddesses in the African diaspora.

Yemanja - She is a goddess, she is the ocean, the essence of motherhood, and a fierce protector of children. Yemanja is the mother of all Orishas.

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2014

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

Made of wounds we are

and nobody ever tried to save

us even when we prayed

and hoped for what we didn't know.

you are where i will never be

and our merciful amnesia 

separated us forever.

we need another incarnation

to live what was lost

and gone even before

we discover each other's hand.

this is our incredible love story.

yes i miss what we've never had.

there is a word in my language

for my inexplicable weird longing;

saudade.

love the sibilant and the dental consonants here.

they explode in my mouth

as i bend, covering my face

because i can't stand witnessing

my own pain.

but tomorrow, maybe tomorrow

i might be half civilized

and know how to kneel down

when i pray for us.

can you hear me, god?

can you hear me, my love?

karla bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2014

I choose another artifice
to wrap you up in my inhabited planet,
thinking less than i should
because i want to know nothing.

we are inventions of a possible tomorrow,
a strange transparency of a spell:
where are your blue eyes?
where is the east coast and
my treasured lies?
if you could catch my meteorites,
if you could be a tree, a flower, a word.

there is you, impossible as a rock,
light, strong, perfect, licking my fingers,
disintegrating magic, singing my song
when i am disheveled, intense, pure.

and we are close to a cultural disaster,
to shakespeare and graciliano ramos, to ungrateful scars;
mars save me.i am venus after a storm,
a spoil of a war. take me where the goddesses are
because I know the song and my virginity whispers
new incantations softly as the moon sinks between
my legs.

my hands remember you;
i listen to lana del rey and
we are larger than the sea,
we are the song, the potion,
the poison.

everything is transient.
let us mask poems, feelings, desire.
the witch will ride another broom.

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2014