by Paul Hina
if the time ever comes for an
end to lullabies
then let all the long nights
softly lay me down on the whispering
good night horses of merry-go-rounds
singing like children loving in a
never growing garden waltzing in
darkness as we forever rest on
aging beds
innocently
34
as slow as death is intertwined
with love is stuck a man like an
unshakable tower with tired black
rimmed eyes sketching portraits
with a pen just to reach the woman
he adores
sometime during this process of
almost praying a song seeps into
his ears to clarify a bleeding life
to paper that creates a moment
that at least happens in the singular
mind of his heart’s broken image
waking from dream
like violins every word a symbolic
melancholy scraping across a tentative
touching of speed for that single invention
of a moment’s happiness
silent as his voice hesitates and screams
the highest note that writes a single
stroke of that thin veiny part of hand
caressing her cheek feeling centuries
pass replacing time into increments
of solid warm red flesh only speaking
for the deep sinking rush of the cello
as strings are tied somewhere with
copper wire fingers of his mind
approaching her hair
and words collapse like a thunder
drum as the cello strays back and
forth deeply strumming soldiers as
the brass marches in like a seizure
creating stoic caves to echo the
distress of the flute whistling
her not being near
and he will never create a song so
strong that he could hear it from
her ears
but still he tries
35
i have taken to long night walks
counting every frail star that hangs
as low as snow might make them melt
if i pretended to touch their walls
of every night growing softer thinking
of your eyes
and if i dare to ask your stars’
vision to dim there would be no
sound of earth to crush the perfectly
intricate whispering of your lips
unfolding like they had always been
stored by your mouth’s dangling
silence like a stillness
but no stars would dare to shine
deeper than the sky in your eyes
and as the clouds part like your
body had suddenly stretched the city
to become thinly aware of its
insignificance i see the skyline
of every majestic metropolis could
not hope to match the architecture
of your divinely arranged waist that
tears away the feeling from my fingertips
that so quickly, vaguely, drip from
hip to thigh in a single motion that
bends time into a multitude of
illusions that fade, slightly dreaming,
into sleep
and as the night ages into a cold morning
wind there is a shiver where all the
inspirations that writhe from your
body drive me to follow closely behind
every massive second until a capsulized
version of your image almost breathes
into me with that steam that sweats your
scent so precious in its every grand
pushing wave of crashing water that kills
me complete
36
just a thing as simple as walking
the way you do could easily cause
me a severe bleeding attack of heart
as your merciful hips hide your body
behind corners of many never understood
stories of love that blankets streets
like rain
and to lose those hands that tangle
correctly winding my skin with your
sliding tickle of touch could steal
my better judgment of view to miss
you smile your last tender face
though i was only able to breathe
your hair successfully on a one
night occasion of accidental ecstasy
i would surely scream incessantly
for you to roll me from the other
side of the earth
and please know that i could've held
you with the splinters of my arm's
tree never cutting the fragile little
intense heart in your chest where i
know that blood flowed like milk into
the swans that fly from your mouth
when you sing
and exhilarated as my suffocating
will appear as you turn the corners
of world behind me i will forever
wonder where rooms are for prayer
without such hands as yours pressing
death to air like an angel's wing
had cut the very church of your
throat
because there is no air as holy as
your hair and angels know nothing
of how hot blood becomes when your
legs fit like a perfect strategy
around my kiss
and where are your swans when i need
the milk of your song to move me from
this dry deaf alone
37
taking to measure desperately the
length in rhythms of pulse skipping
walks on your far too still eyes
crossing journeys past death trying
to find broken self pieces to connect
your puzzle to mine
with eternity falling as silent as
destiny scurries throughout these
two half soul lives we pull our
distant corners inside out to fulfill
the wayward fashions of imaginations
peeling worlds to barely brush by
our enclosing circles so tightly
spinning into pirouettes
and though circles tend to spin dizzy
distant scents of almost loving that
lady so close a fate like a bubble
drags approaching minds from the
thought of an almost severe touch
38
how absurd are those little collections
of carefully visited memory that keep
me waiting shamefully near the edge of
an incredible empty fatigue that threatens
new romances with the certain crumbling of
universes that barely move as a too sweet
rendezvous stands on her misty face on
the affair of a fountain flower plunging
into the sparkling waters of random
circumstance
and then a piece of always terrible almost
extends no particular push of certainty
with its terribly soft petaled features
remembering her way of fitting into the
grooves of my flesh like her remarkable
breath had been forever sleeping beside
me
and the brighter forgotten i fall dwindles
into that tight trembling strike of the
eternal falling sound of lips resembling
a listening light that speaks through the
detailed puddles of finally looking laughter
that her perfectly embraceable shaped
silhouette spr
ays through me
and so i will fall silently above that
proud shape of her shoulders softly wading
in that kiss of beautiful echoed heart
where skin covered mouth throats quiver
into a redemption where i will understand
how untils fly into the pure rapture of
children
and so we play swimmingly in fountains of
flowers
39
there has never been a darker night
that covered me so completely with
dreams than the moons i spent inside
your sleepy hair
and the honey that surely drops from
your mouth to mine is sweeter than
every morning mist singing as thick
flying rhythmically into the sounds
of birds
and if you were in that mist shyly
holding that sound with your hands
(carved directly from the breath
of god)then i would stand as still
as a frozen flower hungering the sun
of your releasing that angelic spectral
rain
but when you hide there happens a
cry where every breeze freezes motion
until it melts into the scar that shows
the very wounded nature of not witnessing
the world of joy that blooms when you
appear
but when you open your hands even
if only to allow them to brush by your
hair the night meets the day and hours
of birds fly into the deep tranquil sun
of your face as songs seep into the
ears of a perfect world
40
a fool has fallen again like a
feather into the emitted breeze
of mouths from the same old remains
of eyes i remember blowing me into
that always dizzy memory where every
fragment of flesh held to your hands
like a slightly drifting smile
and those smiling lips have become
a hole so big that feathers may fall
forever twisting trying to catch any
smell of air besides the sudden
plunging you've caused in the music
of me
there is no easy reminder as soft
as pillows to catch my overflowing
pastures of veins from diving into
that always easy death of your many
lost kisses that swim through me
like a perfectly thin ice
so there was that defining moment
where you blew my equilibrium
throwing it from its axis and the
space that was made let me fall
through you never catching
and i knew
i just knew
41
hanging on for the rain where
every near goodbye i try pours
from the lungs of each empty
flying cloud storming dry to drink
one more breath of you
and if you breathe a drop in that
very small talking throat of yours
i know that a voice will overflow
with kisses filling already good
days with always better reasons
for your whole sound to dwell
inside my limbs to reassure this
shivering boy of your immense
warm breeze
and i won't fall hard enough until
you shake the leaves from this
tree of tired life where we could
have built houses from the growing
arms of our quiet embrace screaming
one body silently to the heavens we
might have encountered if the world
had remembered rain
but if in the winter of life i can
still rise and stand with a cold face
towards heaven i will ask for that
last hum of perfect wind to whisper
your voice as you almost hold my
hand with those deep rooted fingers
of a world descending into snow
then i will blind my eyes from
world's sky and allow its once
black rain to cover time as finally
happens to experience the white
everywhere of your kiss
42
as small as a man can become
is me feeling that necessary air
of breathing someone else's paradise
as an explanation chokes a reason
to hold tight to this huge everything
that has lost grip on our lives as
long as our lives ever allowed us
together gripping anything but the
death of what could have become
of forever
now as all those places of hiding
begin to hide themselves from my
longest finger of hope it looks like
a world might regain the consciousness
of always spinning to increase that
dizzy pain of how big nothing is
when we believe it
and the features of the very mirror
we become will finally glare at
something besides a piece of
relocated happiness as a light comes
on to enlighten the heart to feed
itself from the blood that flows from
your veins into my waiting life
and being simply anything as close
to you was like briefly tasting somewhere
a planet being born from what memory
produces in the ultimate misery of
eventually sleeping outside of your
dreams where i will never feel as
completely me as when you held
something so smally important as my
hand
43
it is strange dreaming like a poetry
where standing still makes like collapse
into little nothings that keep the mind
balance simply from awakening
worlds of wonder bounce across the
resting eye where an unquestionable
immediate translation flickers just a
little to postpone those many other
aching disturbances from growing
near as cold to the frozen touch of
revealing another personal injustice
and the mathematics of language
don't believe in poets or will ever
know how a word has no meaning
in the logical version of living that
caresses the hands of many cosmic
lovers breathing emotional medicine
like the air was words collecting form
on the page of a predestined symphony
but life is not a poetry and poetry is
nothing more than life(never standing)
with the bottom fell out
44
so tightly my fingers clenched to your
hand with as much strength that can
crumble from the muscles of an
unmendable heart broken all the way
to nerves of fantasy where this man
believed that folding his thoughts tightly
away from the woman he loves would
allow another to lie beside his soul never
really filling her place so prevalent a part
in me as those thoughts unfold and grow
abundant gardens around my mind that
only one can color into life
not saying much for hope which led
me as far to hear that voice so crisply
silver in my ears like an autumn fire had
blown a burn clear across this universe
i am inflicted with to allow for another
planet where i c
ould have tried to live
in the falling waters of your tender mouth
catching some breath as you spill a
little verbal ballet all over me with the
feet of a million drunken birds dabbling
drink
but there is no place to hide from the
harmony of her that destiny has placed
on my house where all the fogging
windows will someday be wiped clean
by a finally hand unclenched by her eyes
so highly held with arms of elsewhere
skies where this universe will sparkle
everywhere spotlights as the delicate
teeth of an undying love will pour us
together down a cloudy throat covered
with heavenly blue water draining into a
star
45
i really can't stand from losing
all balance when her face like
cream melts into tears that for
many eternal moons had hidden
themselves in the bravado shine
of a forever dim sky dying to
hang proudly with all the many
stars where real smiles turn to
easy cries as the sun allows for
them no shame in pain
and if thoughts were energy in
that caressing her of my mind
then a possible something called
love might fry her numb skin so
severely scarred from feeling the
starlight of living in the barely
glimpsed truth you see when she
tries to open those hands to fly
but there is no touch to cure
her never shining hands that
only flew when they appeared
to be hurting little lovely things
like her heart when she was white
enough to touch something as
beautiful as herself
there is no nothing as near as
when an angel can't see that her
eyes are every freedom trying to
look inside her soul as she
suffocates on her own air squirming
for clearer skies
46
there were days in rooms that rose red
with flowers and bled sweat like heat
on fire
nothing would have ever prepared better
renderings of pain pulling at either side
of my mind like a romantic tendency flying
into a bad connection with the slightest
flavor of fuzz
windows have froze under the usual touch
melt of fingers to a face's reflection
too old to forget love and too young to
forgive her evolution
she has met wines with the twists of
fruit dancing with the seductive kiss
of that pretty mirror
and i'll spend forever looking up to
that picture of you that never ages
while i smolder at the edge of this
frozen border body never burning down
III. making sleep
47
only the madness of this whole
splendid levity keeps me back
behind a confused wall stretching
our final confrontation into waiting
for the first time your eyes might learn
the light that so purely is true
in my heart when everywhere you
move happens on to stumbling
slowly into eternity
so patience is a gift for sometimes
angels who never look for that
connecting flight to new lights like
the christmas shower that smells as
clean as fleshly painted dream on the
grey side of morning
and i will bust and bang while sending
horses straight out of that place where
your mind just stretches out these dull
places curling down every smiling
dimension of world i uncovered before
i ran through them all like houses of
paint splashing correct as my hair flies up
like an angel who discovers new tongues
to kiss with after tasting the shape of your
beautiful wings
48
a mouth larger than any rage sounds
strangely golden with truth rising
forth like solid death wrestling
itself to the water of the immersible
everything for an escape from losing
every lucky listen your voice ever
gave me
but even in life with worlds breaking
like hearts aimed at the sun there is
a little dried blood on the bullet of
love's gun waiting to be shot into
fireworks emulating your fingers burning
me happy almost making the smoke a fantasy
where distance smelled beautiful
but now with no belief that your well
rehearsed fingers will ever attack my
back where shoulders grow crazy with
head to neck kisses there is no smile
holding back laughter but a closed face
to tangle the language of this enormous
aging scream
and please be far when i pour that last
piled hurt from my voice just to race
one more time the distance from my hands
to heaven, where you surely must be, with
the sky shining everywhere your eyes as
silent bells ring a whisper to comfort
my lips with the pristine gesture of an
eyelash piano
49
something inside me moves when my
thoughts return to you wondering
always wherever you are if there
is something about me that moves
inside of you
50
of the many colors that make myself
out of all the people that tumble
on these pictures of places making
like sporadic happenings
my favorite color is the one you left
me
i have tried to recreate or even find
someone with that same shade of wonderful
that was passed to me through your
breathing body
but there is no such thing as wonderful
with you away
so the sun has smiled its last light a
long day ago and the clocks have rung their
final golden bell with the street lamps
moving perpetually like dominoes to light
the way towards darkness as if they had been
pulled playfully by a string somewhere with
someone laughing while holding an abundance
of your color in their hands
and motion