Tatiana Rodeiro

the more i enter into the dance, the more i begin to see human beings as permeable rivers of flowing malleable energies, carrying the seeds of all potentialities, rather than fixed definable dense objects . . . .
and when i use this word "I", God only knows the depths of what I mean, as i am still questioning the great mystery of what i am; thus, any referral to this " i " is simply utilizing an agreed social creation as a limited function of common language in a failing attempt to be in communion with the whole, by separating apart from it, in order to create a voice behind which to speak through, so as to try and reach you. so excuse me for any confusion here, as i am just as confused and in awe and dumbfounded as anyone who has ever looked up into the infinity of the night's sky and tried to swallow the light of every star and the rippling dark eminence encompassing them, while every synapse of your mind lights up in trillions of question marks, mirroring the truth of Radiance's presence above, shaking and stripping this illusive " i " of all thought. . . . /
and if you are a human being, you will turn your gaze away towards the street of your home where you will close your weary eyes and try to fall back asleep, and if you are an artist or an underdomesticated lunatic, you will fling your arms up into the heavens, like ecstatic omniscient branches asking, "if trees are expressions of the earth's longing, --- then what are we?" and you will run wild after your heart, as it bursts forth from your hollowed chest, a songbird released from a ribcage too small to contain it, and the fulfillment of your existence becomes the delight of chasing after it, like a naked child with a glass mason jar in an enormous field of fireflies.

I would like to endlessly stroke the entire experience of existence
just look at the eminence of your glorious living fingertips
the trace of ancient tree rings sketched subtly across the tender shores of flesh
that have been dipping every day of your life into the honey of an excruciating unspeakable grace that means too much to us to even acknowledge the fully unmasked presence
of what it is to touch and be touched
the taste of every poem kneels here begging, crushed under the magnitude of all it was carrying that i will spend a lifetime failing to bridge with words
but it is cooing inside the pulsing river of your body as you drift into and out of sleep, deliriously searching for that which was always behind you,
above you, and below you, laughing obviously before you, breathing through you
too close to separate from to see clearly
as you sigh in oblivion alongside a weary entrenched humanity
with a blue coal miner’s canary lodged in your throat
bottlenecked by the swallowed scream of ecstasy’s unheard indignation and love’s anguished promise
that birthed you from the crescendo of all voices that ever were and ever will be
this scream that is greater then i
keeps me awake in the night
longing to touch you with my tongue and press this aching hollowed encapsulation up close against the secret holder of the universe
i dance from the depths of an impenetrable solitude
searching for a hidden pathway out
believing the ocean of all phenomena consists of tidal rhythms pushing towards and receding from you
trusting behind every thread of this interwoven lila there streams a syllable from a story tracing around the source of you, composed of your borrowed light
how the languid stirrings of a finger blurring the moon’s reflection upon the earth’s lotus-rimmed mirrors
is instantaneously scattering the fecund sphere of her hallowed face across a thousand rippling wavelets
creating you
we are layers upon layers deep within one light’s proliferating refraction
and when the master descends
before the flower garland of each poignant question, each earnest plea unanswered
strung through your soul
blossoming in echoes across eons of existence’s reverberating amnesia

resurrection from the snares of a lifelong incessant thirst,
from the dark labyrinth of civilization’s blind discontent
that turns the forest and imprint of her memories into concrete deserts strewn with the void pillages of a vulgar boxed-in consolation prize.
all it takes is one sidelong glimpse of the master’s unfolding
like the scent of rose oil rising from the hem of the true dervish
like the breeze from jasmine-drenched branches that comes to serenade the sweat dripping from the crown of a devotional flame,
impregnating her with the will to go on dancing, though her body is being burned alive,
stripped and filleted by an uncompromising demand for the annihilation born of absolute nudity

all it takes is one glimpse of the master’s unfolding
to light up from within a dawning renaissance of all that is being offered through your existence,
incarnate in the exalted perfection asking; Who can hold this? Who can hold this? Who can uphold this?
who can hold this?

emptiness is a doorway
a portal from which to pull through
what is too great to fit inside the aperture of a human
the void that can never be filled by stuffing something from outside over top,
though lifetimes have passed, swallowed in the fruitlessness of such frenetic endeavors,
the void, for which i am merely an adornment, will only be brought to fullness from the inside out
calling to be reached through, the breadth of such unfathomable vastness within
to pull out a piece of the presence from beyond
that fills the hollows and bursts the frame of identity
pushing and pounding up against any before-set boundary
swelling, turning inside out, rupturing you
until you finally see how this emptiness you have been avoiding
has given birth to you and lives you,
waiting, while you run around elaborate labyrinth structures of absurdity
mistaking a series of distractions for your life

meaning is unfurling in silence from the axial center of all centers
while you, in your centrifugal stumbling, demanding answers that cannot come through words,
lay down your questions and petty concerns like arbitrary band aids over the precipice of who you really are
as peeping hidden constellations continue to speak and drip from the mouth of an elephant

there is something surging up through the stretched fingertips of the forest,
snaking through the pulsing rootweb beneath the pores of your encapsulation,
threading moonbeams through rivers that pour reverently upon the crown of the ocean
at whose feet, mulling over the reverberations of ancient whale songs, in the clamped bowels of oysters,
where the last trace of gathered light is rolled and woven into pearls that only reveal their submerged existence
through the infinity of gazing into the mirror of your own eyes held within the luminous prisms of pupils the beloved is dawning,
seeing both out from behind you and looking in through you,
as the ring of interbeing wraps around you, in which each becomes neither and all,
disrobing one another of the bright story of a distinct self
with the same eloquence as voluptuous cinnamon bodies, secreting spiced pheromone-infused ghee,
unwrap childbearing ceramic waterjugs of hips and softened mango breasts
from the bindings of an ancient sari in the lush secrecy of the cumulative sigh of evening
while off in the distance someone is ringing a bell to call their god home
and the muezzin is wailing a canopy of prayer above the rooftops
and street cows graze innocently upon fields of plastic
and an owl oversees the turning of celestial spheres from his seat of majestic stillness upon which he is perched
amid the humidity of dark branches
and the communion of plants’ dreaming
chanting fragrances that unearth seeds from the sealed recesses of my mind
to be planted inside of these premature words
that hold the promise of a long-awaited beauty that’s to come blossoming through us in any unguarded moment
beginning, even now, to stir