Karla Bardanza Poems

Ni Una Menos

2020-01-18T22:02:00.000-03:00

This woman is not a woman.
she is a sort of bendable agony,
a maleable victim of the words.

she smiles more than she can bear
and pleases the walking clouds.
she is gentle with the rattle snakes
no matter how close they are.
she believes invisibility and camouflage
are synonyms.

she hasn't changed much
since she became a symptom.
ubiquity is her strength.
she is where silence is law.

it's a pity you can't hear
her heart beating beneath her ragged dreams.
i bet you thought she was dead.
she isn't yet.
i was told you misconfused her
for a piece of furniture.
it is not your fault though.
you can blame those who came
before her if you feel more comfortable.

she may survive eternity
because she has endured the burden
of being a whisper,
a distant wound.

as she marches against everything,
i wonder who can empower her.,
who can understand when
she says she wants to be free,
not brave.

karla bardanza

the immortals

2020-01-18T21:56:00.002-03:00

if you climb silently into my skin
on a cold windy night,
my oceans will not refuse
the silence you carry
when the words are beyond us
and around us, dragging syllables,
sounds, serpents.

it is close to our blood,
to our uniqueness and despair.
we held impossible meanings
in between our teeth
as if we could bleed poetry
every time the ink pen fell
on our white t.shirts.

but we both know poetry
can't save us from the fortune cookies
we were given before
we could even choose
our own pain.

both you and i were made
to be hesitant and incomplete.
sometimes we forgive the rhymes.
sometimes we are the rhymes,
the rhythm, the rare overdelicate clouds
enveloping the innocents.
sometimes.

can't say we are necessary though
because we waste our time
becoming miracles, becoming sentences
crying for the same old baptism suspended
between what we dreamt and are.

we aren't ashamed of that yet.
we still have many years ahead
to be resilient and dwell in our
own murmur and paranoia
because here is where we still
sprout up in darkness
as the moon sews
our satin mouths,
our floating selves.

karla bardanza

Whiteness

2020-01-18T21:50:00.000-03:00

it is just an empty page calling me
and poetry is born from this mistake.

i feel i need to desorganize my insides
to give birth to a new part of me but
there's no hope because
life has no sense when there's nothing
written, when there are no lines
to be completed.
it is the predicable logic of poetry.

some may think there's no beauty
in a blank page but i see a world
hidden beneath it.
a heart pulses, a petal falls,
an egg breaks and poetry is there:
so fragile and intense.

it comforts me to see it waiting
to be wrapped up in sugar and salt.
it is the predicable logic of poetry:
to be lost and found,
to die in us as we live in doubt
but pure.

oh enchantment! let me sink
in your multiple voices,
in your illusion and faith
because this page is part of my uthopy
and it needs me to be perplexing
and infinite.

karla bardanza

Bonds

2016-10-28T00:55:00.001-02:00

We both know what
the black stars hide:
our brainless fears,
our lost encephalic mass,
our forgetful silhouettes.

yesterday i spent some time
staring at an indiferent mirror
in a restaurant as if that
amnesiac face could tell me
what to do.
but there is no goodness
in keeping memories
when one can't remember them.
time is deceitful.

i look at her,
holding the heart of my heart,
forgetting who she was
to see who she is now.
tomorrow is an oblivious man
dressed in white.
tomorrow we will shoot doubts
at him like two soldiers in an execution.
i wonder if he can decipher
the enigmas written in her mind.

if i could for one single moment,
stop the process of being swallowed
by time,
i would be a baby in her ever open arms again:
she made me think i was a butterfly.
she made me think i could be
whoever i wanted to be as long as
i believed.
but i am afraid of praying:
the raw wounds in my knees,
the words i repeat in exile,
the holes in my weird faith.
i know it loves me like
a distracted god.

there is no comfort
in being a bleeding moon
when we become a lovely concept,
an ideal forgotten in the drawers
of a memory.
i am not prepared to accept
and as i weep for both of us,
the clock haunts me more.

against me time, the deaf king runs.

the future is a three-dimensional black image,
an x-ray of our bitten nails
as we wait for Astor Piazzola
to play oblivion again.

i even don't know how to end
this poem.
it is late and all i can do
is to murmur to myself
to be strong,
to be honest,
to not cry
because life is a miracle,
because she still remembers
our love, our ties, our misery.

kala bardanza

Copyright©Karla Bardanza 2016

Within it

2016-10-28T00:49:00.000-02:00

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

Our Eleusian Mysteries

2016-02-16T21:57:00.001-02:00

Demeter blessed my coffee
with another doubt

and i think i can't write
about it.
not now.

she fed me with butterflies
and never allowed me
to think i was mortal as
i became an immoral wonder.
she also respected my feminism
and all my insane "isms"
which i still cultivate
with care.

it is weird
but i fear the untamed hours
whenever her eyes get red
and scattered,
the prison is invisible.
the prison is a membrane
involving yesterday
and tomorrow.

Demeter said
i will be her memory.
i can't be tough.
i will be too busy crying
for the mythic woman
who initiated me
ino the mysteries of Persephone.

but as Persephone,
i am the only one who
can reveal Demeter's glory
and wrath.
and both have made us
dwell with the gods
and believe in cyclical journeys.

karla bardanza

Tropic of cancer

2016-02-10T00:50:00.000-02:00

her poetry squeaks:

it is hate,

it is fear

leaping faster

to the twilight,

feeling so little,

feeling so low,

waiting for something

to unearth the moon

in her.

you don't know

but she died

in october,

in november

and january.

somebody threw

her pearls overboard

and she has been lingering

on vagueness since then.

it haunts me

to see her rainy volcanoes

as if she were all etcetera.

after crossing equator

with her hands hiding

her poison,

there's nothing

left but two syllables

in one stanza.

if you look close,

you can only feel

ambient noise

in her poems;

nobody can understand

what was lost.

i think she agreed to exist

more

but who will tell her

she's still alive

before her poetry squeaks

again?

karla bardanza

As she protects herself

2016-02-06T18:38:00.001-02:00

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.

gender is a malediction
in silent cultures.
i see her carrying more
than we can all bear
but some want
to behead her though.

the future lies dead
as blind martyrs
and atheistic saints lose
their spirit of revolution
because we can't awake courage
anymore.

spit on her,
stone her,
slice her breasts
and serve them
to the rats.
let your teeth gnash
peacefully.

we have been waiting for a god
not a goddess.
she haunts our phallocentric minds,
our scratched egos and brains.

i am sorry
but i am very young
to agree with you
and very old
to forget where
the cage has always been

karla bardanza

Waiting for a bird to sing

2016-02-06T18:34:00.001-02:00

The leaf waits for me
like a woman in love:
naked, eager, languid.

i am weak:
words are weapons
dooming me to be free.
i crawl listlessly
to poetry, hoping
for a new deviation.
but i lost something:
it is odd to notice
another macula.

there is no adjective
in english to explain
what's happening.
i can only say i feel everything,
i miss everything.

and it aches me
to comprehend the sacredness
of my pain, our pain.
the violence of the moment
makes my leaf curl
and at that point
i bend too rearranging
my heart's bookshelves
crammed with the poetry of life:
the one that has always driven me
to the tenderness of the crisp words.

karla bardanza

Thing

2016-02-06T18:30:00.002-02:00

If you could get out of your own light

for three minutes

and accept the burning words,

the implausible darkness

we all hide and hold,

you would forgive

my postmodern sexuality

and sunlit mind.

i am an articulated sound

travelling fast, an obscure alternative

desintegrating all mathematical symbols

you ride so tragically well.

two plus one is zero and

we both know how fearful

figures are as we avoid syllables

and the possible loosing of

our skin from our muscles

and truths.

we are two brutes swallowing

holes, our aging dreams,

our (in)visibility before

the night.

cook for me, will you?

what kind of man does that?

cook your heart and

serve me.

let me eat your power

and stupid, naive light.

i am this.

your sanctity doesn't

make sense to me.

yes, smoke life,

smoke your fears.

i am in awe:

the grass is so greener

there.

you and your fragile prayers

to a god i can't understand.

you kneeling down,

glorifying me like scared altar boy

again.

(shhhhh...)

your rusty halo, your cross,

your perennial world.

i am sorry if i inhabit

an unfeeling poem.

i am this.

karla bardanza

Exodus

2016-02-06T18:26:00.001-02:00

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.

we are together beyond

any human emotion.

maybe we are a knot.

a symbolic union,

maybe.

she's smashed.

i pick up the pieces,

and try to glue

her dangerous brain.

i can hurt myself:

it's a sharp weapon,

a silenced pistol.

it's her self-flagellation

haunting us.

and as

the uninvited light of the moon

invades the room taking us

hostage, i shout at her,

shivering inside,

vomiting words

i myself don't believe

anymore

because she's my flesh,

my absolute pain,

the face beneath my face.

karla bardanza

for my daughter:the light of my light

Poetry in Love

2015-09-07T23:27:00.003-03:00

I hope you talk in poems,
touching my insides with
words painted in flames.
my sun in the glass,
the crystal of the hours undoning
my grief;
roses picked in small vowels,
the spirit of the letters lightening
my perpendicular urge for more.
i hope

to love with my palms open
as Vaults sing, as our reflexes

sigh on the mirror suspended
between two infinites.

mango trees casting their last shadow,
verbs unbuttoning flamboyant trees,
your eyes announcing my goddess.
our muses whispering incantations.
a poetic spell before we collapse

and as i translate the untranslable,
you speak in tongues
we both need to survive.

Karla bardanza

A rose i say

2015-09-06T13:28:00.001-03:00

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.

a river closed my eyes
long before i could see
the spirit of things
and the future is invariant.
ignore our weightless moment.
we are too old to believe
in a new order, in success
and development.
yes, we are now.

it is with much pain
i see that something is missing.
we dreamed about replaceable possibilities.
but what happened
as matter of fact?
this growl in our throats;
send me an antidote
against disappointment.
i know anger is your language.
things lost and damned:
history doesn't exist for us.
history never existed in this land.

here is a careful chaos
and i can try to write
but will you read after
all those years of pure preparation
and mistakes?

let me tell you
one simple truth:
our messy passion deceived us
and we still lie naked in the space
between my breast, weaving words,
speeches,and distant unknown idioms
for those like us.
what we have now is just a rose
in our hands.
face it like a weapon,like a poem
disarming the enemy.

Karla bardanza

Post-Colonial Studies on her

2015-09-06T13:24:00.001-03:00

Ladies and gentlemen,
here she comes.
a big round of applause, please.
she cooks, sweeps, does the ironing
and the washing-up.
(nah!she's not chained home!
she works out most of times too.)
she sews, mends and serves everybody
as if she was paid for that.
(but she isn't...oh!!!)

her husband beats her now and then
(he needs to remind her
who wears the trousers at home (sic))
the authorities despises her:
fifteen women are killed evey day here.
(gender-based violence!Who cares huh!)
the media exploits her beauty:
you should come here
and have a "romance" with her (sic)
her own family ignores her:
"you are married now!"
life has been an odd lapse
since childhood.
(but she is too tired to think
about anything but the bills
in the pressure cook)

she was taught to be a saint.
she was taught to be a good.
yes, she walks the paradox
with pride and faith
and never falls from the tight rope.
-god bless!-

she has to be always beautiful:
people are not prepared yet
to understand that growing old
is part of the game.
(dye your hair,
be slim,
be tasty,
seduce
wrinkles...oh no!)

c'mon ladies and gentlemen,
a stand ovation, please.

however, the best is yet to come.
are you prepared?
well,well,well...
she is usually paid less than a man too.
(i know it's not your fault, sir!)

(play the fanfares now, please)
(dam dam dam)
the climax:
her culture still justify rapes:
"she was wearing a short dress"
or some other excuse
you shouldn't pay mind
because it will make you vomit.
("that's life"...people sigh.)

yes, she is a heroine.
she is a woman from south america.
she is a third world dame.

(may the gods have mercy on us!)

applause, please.

karla bardanza

Love Poem

2015-09-06T13:17:00.001-03:00

Draw me again
to nameless things
because they are the soft ones.
simple as a stone
simple as yesterday.

selves made of cotton,
your mouth close to the universe.
poems falling from chrysanthemums
and sunflowers.
a shelter beneath your smile.

gentle words, pink sweet images,
kind metaphors between my breasts.
your hands turning my rhymes
upside down slowly,
slowly.

we - tangled in hopes,
we - playing games
after dawn, after dark.

we - living this
as if we truly care.

karla bardanza

What if the storm ends?

2015-09-06T13:14:00.001-03:00

She was lying in bed, half sick,
feeling, just feeling the song
eating her morning in a crescendo
she couldn't bear.
her pain spiraling downwards,
conjured her black heart,
to explode in accords
never heard before,
slowly,
slowly.

yes,his voice put sugar
in her mouth and
took her hostage
again
because she knew the answer,
because she knew the question.

something in that song
always made her let another storm in.
she rained. she rained
searching for another sky,
another lightening strike,
another flood.

half dead, she turned the volume up
to listen to Snow Patrol
and as the minutes walked beyond
her sadness,
she could only feel
she would never see him.

karla bardanza

As we leave Cuba

2015-09-06T13:08:00.002-03:00

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.

yes,
august will cheat on us
with the cheapest prostitute.
but we will throw stones, shout, cry.
our fists bleeding again,
our paper hearts expressing
the silence of life.
we - the broken idols,
the the tongue-tied saints.

----------------------------------

alexandra is pregnant.
there is an oceanic feeling
in her eyes.
who will ever know we existed
behind those walls?
our smiling masked faces,
our semi weird doubts,
fears and precious attempts
to save loveless brains?
who will accuse us
of being who we are?
we - the broken idols,
the tongue-tied saints.
we - the walking past.

------------------------------------

i would't be ashamed
of lowering myself
to contemplate
the new seeds in the garden
before we leave for good.
Cuba is here.
Cuba will always be here.

karla bardanza

Until it hurts

2015-09-06T12:58:00.000-03:00

our painful pleasure
always climbs my mossy walls
and it is sweet
to make me suffer
with so much care.

can you see the leather stars
masking another metaphor?
can you see what is beneath
our abrupt black hearts?

love is bleeding
and i can drink this pain again.
look at us:
we are the same creative strangers
writing new rules, following old codes
after all these tied years.

what you owe, i owe too,
the servant is always master:
i am you.

boundaries dissolving,
our gods dancing.
we are beyond time.
we are beyond our own misery
and damnation
because
our poetics is made of self-denial
and symbiosis.
because
we love the way
we hurt each other.

karla bardanza

Connecting the dots

2015-09-06T12:55:00.000-03:00

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.

after the magic and the music,
we are all the same.
it's time to intoxicate myself.
it's time to turn my blood
into madness because
i refuse to give in,
because i want to choose
my own chaos.

and if you can,
help me to carry myself
as the bullets fall.
and if you can,
help me to break my heart again
but don't complain if it doesn't open.
blame the inflation, the new changes,
the politics, the system, the strikes.
i am afraid. i am still afraid
of being who i was.
if you see me as i see myself,
shhhhh...
let me use my sorrow to justify
my mystery.
i feel everything and it's horrible.
i hate the voices inside my head.
i hate to be close to the window:
flying is so inviting.
here we are crawling, crawling
into nothingness.
and i hate to be where we are.
and i hate this life suffocating me
in shifts.
i'd like to tell you
i have come too far
to come back.

karla bardanza

Invisible moon

2015-09-06T12:52:00.002-03:00

There she goes

ripped apart

bleeding poetry

as somebody thrusts another love-knife

deeper and deeper.

she.

who is she?

(nobody,

nobody)

she,

the invisible doubt

desguised in woman,

the silence beneath the silence

refusing acceptance,

the dominated slave whipping

the master.

the impossible her

ruled by two suns.

you can make

and remake her,

you can break

and destroy her.

she is invisible.

she is nothing.

she is a poet.

karla bardanza

Singular

2015-09-06T12:50:00.001-03:00

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.

it was a reliquary

to see her tears.

flooding the room,

irrigating my pain

because it is not easy

to watch her summoning

dragons, climbing paper stairs,

being herself.

strange things happen

when she menaces my certanties

and she has no right

to be less than she is.

but her tears shaped my heart

and nothing can be more beautiful

than what she did to me.

karla bardanza

Liquid poetry

2015-09-06T12:48:00.000-03:00

I have nothing

but the sea

and it dies in me

like liquid poetry,

like foam and beauty.

and as i contemplate

what is behind,

i see ophelia calling me

to see her rues

floating in the sea.

i see virginia

crossing the river of memories

carrying my mossy heart,

my stony doubts.

they are in my life

like an imagined truth,

like mission and possibility.

don't think

i haven't tried.

i only know this way

to paradise.

( i only know what you fear)

come what may

never forget what i have told you.

the sirens will protect you.

karla bardanza

Um amor infinito

2015-09-06T12:45:00.001-03:00

I am going to pick shadows

before it ends.

you never told me

about this silence sitting

between us.

you never said i would have

to wait a whole reincarnation

to see what is memorable.

yes, i miss something

i can't name and yet

and i know i lost it long ago

not because i chose to lose

but because i had to.

here i am paying for my crimes

as i read another stupid message

on my phone.

here i am ready to watch the night,

feeling less, feeling less.

the day has cursed me.

my shoulder aches,

my breast aches.

but no pain is like the one

i inherited from heavens.

it is a burden, a dead word

written across my eyes.

Ireland is unreachable

for a mortal like me.

everything is unreacheable

and divine.

everything is here and gone.

you never told me

life would be this:

a refined lament

and i wasn't prepared

to listen to Madredeus

singing Um Amor Infinito

again.

but i don't believe my ears.

but i don't believe my heart.

karla bardanza

Wearing you

2015-09-06T12:41:00.002-03:00

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

I'm living, come back later

2015-09-06T12:38:00.001-03:00

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.