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by Tara Carreon
Out, in; out, in; in,
out.
Or maybe side to side; side to side; side to side.
No -- Up, down; up, down; up, down.
I'm quickly disoriented.
So what's up?
Are you inside or outside,
yin or yang, zero or one?
First you roll, then you become a powerful swing,
You are droplets of nectar in free fall.
Keeping an eye on you
from everywhere,
you tighten then relax.
You're a swirl of mist.
A ghostly dust devil in the wind.
A galactic fish.
Constricted or relaxed,
you are just space,
always new, always moving,
never being anything.
You are transformation
punctuated by burps.
Nose breath, mouth breath, holding my breath,
sighing, yawning, long out-breath, short out-breath,
restful breath, excited breath, big mouth-gulping breath,
swallow in the middle of a breath,
sniffle breath, cough breath,
Always new, always floating in space.
Ascending a ladder
breath,
graduated staccato breath,
remember a dream in the middle of a breath.
Breath like a rose unfolding.
Swallow your snot breath.
Breath like a big zeppelin,
bloated and floating
in the blue hot sky.
If I don't watch you
carefully,
will you run away?
Looking at a thought of you,
you disappear.
To see you, I must look directly at you,
move with you.
You don't exist in frozen
time.
You're a peristaltic wave.
Are you cut in half or are you whole?
You're in my chest and in
my stomach
You smell the smoke in the air.
Where are you anchored?
Are you the same as a sneeze or different?
You're a string of falling stars.
Where is your boundary?
Where is your heart?
You present sets of everything:
outside/inside; up/down;
good/bad; black/white; yin/yang.
Are you puffed up with
air?
If I stick a pin in you will you explode?
Are you the clock of time?
Losing your separate
place for a moment,
everything becomes you.
Are you an illusion?
A space ship floating in the void?
Are you emptiness or form?
Or both?
You're a fire burning in the desert.
Are you scared like a
shaking white rabbit
with a wriggling pink nose?
What is it that struggles
to get oriented
and see breath at a distance?
You're a white shark in a tidal pool.
A dark submarine in the black ocean.
An automobile on the vast highway of my mind.
You never get hungry.
You're the throbbing pulse of desire.
Red hot blood pulsing through my veins.
You're a simple heartbeat.
You're the bellows of my body.
I can see straight through you.
You're a hundred iceburgs
floating in an ice cold sea.
I start to lose
perspective,
but without grasping where do I go?
Without struggle, what is the landscape?
Struggle to organize, but you're just
a transparent butterfly's wing.
Seeing you through rose
colored glass,
you're not there.
What are you really?
A bulbous cocoon?
But what's inside?
Relax down into it.
Don't fight it.
It's a long way to the ground.
Don't try to make sense of it.
Get inside it.
Ribs heaving.
Blood pumping.
Am I whole, or hole?
If I am in and out,
can I be male as well as female?
Looking for the ultimate
let-go,
I fart a big one.
Nasty little dragon.
In one end and out the other.
There are two places for breath to go!
Another duality.
Looking for rest,
I sink down, down, down,
transforming into a great white stupa
resting on the holy ground.
copyright Tara Carreon,
at Boudhanath, Nepal,
birthplace of American Buddha
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