by Paul Hina
have not found,
a finger or a hand so plush and perfect that
silence knows no sound could interrupt its
rested, rhythmless unsong,
but it is a hiding
touch, a place away, dreaming in the dark places
we don’t look when we kiss, waiting in the
softest regions of the clouds we can’t reach
when we slide our waters into lovemaking
and those creatures that climb the mind,
the muses that pull the flutes from the
worlds you make in me when we search
for the secrets that sex whispers when the
steam rises toward all the unknown stories we tell
in our future sleep, there is still a touch holding
some unspeakable sweetness for me to taste in
the shadow of a clumsy cup of moon
27
the veil of morning lifts the dewy earth awake
for the birds to sing sweeter than sleep and life
is arranging itself carefully for a soft landing
on day
and you are still away somewhere dreaming of
unknown things, and the meticulous mechanizing
of minds won’t let me pull the covers from those
places where sleep hides your secrets or else i
would slide some kiss into your mouthful of moons
and we could be together somewhere never
tethered by couldn’t’s or shouldn’t’s
always morningful, singing
28
the spring can be a sorrowful thing with
the music of the birds dancing in cloud
shadows, the speckled sun receding into
rain and opening yellows again onto
the happier side of the world,
and we are slow to answer this call to
joy, we are quick with hands and feet
and bedroom silences that equal something
greater than seasons can understand, but
when the blooms awake and the eyes of the
flowers see us for the first time, then there
is a dancing that remembers all those warmths
that were forgotten while the skin was hiding
beneath the sleep of winter, and our kiss was
the only light we’d seen
29
she is dressed for poetry hands like some
angels had caressed her body with especially
soft fingers leaking down her dress until
knees are barely exposed, mockingly elegant
with peek-a-boos
and the air between is where mysteries—beneath
the skirt—make minds wander, and the legs
that stretch from the secrets told by her thighs
are only stifles of word sounds trying to assign
some formula to those meaningfuls she makes
in my mind
and heart songs are not nearly as lyrical as her
feet, moving mindfully like her toes were
untouchable things, digits for dancing,
places to start the climb up for finding the
freedom of femininity that men can not describe
without chisels and lines, words or angels
30
it's spring and the soft light that surrounds you here
in these heart places i have formed around those
soft bird-like memories are chirping away at the
clouds for radiances to share with the angels in
your hair with the gods of memory tripping over
the roots of the trees that we have planted in our
bellies for later rainbows, for somewhere silences
where time is forgetful
and we are still young and in love
and kisses fall as effortlessly as the rain
and as delicate as remembering the stillness
of hesitating birds
31
what more can i spend on sunlit dreaminess,
on slightly dripping journeys through the
old vibrations of a kiss and the words that lay
lips on the ears like a blanket on a cloud, soaking
up all the skin’s rain with restlessness and
day-old reminders of tiredness and shadows
playing hands with the children we were, the
children we are when we travel together again
to that place we planted our flower and pretended
to watch it grow. is it blooming? has it survived?
do our dreams themselves dream? do the characters
we play remember to cultivate our memories with
water and wishes and tiptoe kiss-squishing stars,
where our barehanded breathing makes better
buried heads?
32
when you somewhere speak there is an air that
surrounds us like the branches of some remember
tree where the leaves might as well be pages blowing
away the words we once spoke when we were younger and
stupider, but happier hanging onto the brightest starshine
from the kisses floating in our eyes
and what value do we apply to these cloudy comedies of
a kiss where we taste some rain years later, caught—
everything ascending into spring—when we are wise and old
and reflecting on the gauzy wash that memories make when
you count the veins of this tree's leaves with those
slightly dumber fingers touching these tired lips for the
last time—
combing through the sand of words,
counting kisses—
33
you are a bird singing—a song lilting
away the hours with the brutality of a brilliant
heartbreak—in the dreary distance, and that
fading sound is the prettiest of pains, waiting
for uprisings and new deliriums to deliver, like
your lovely body, curving a little repose around
the slowest drips of a dream
and how do you feed me this music after time
has so inelegantly tumbled down those achy
dust traps of memory, tripping on the rusty wires
of the throat, choking on the most forgetfullest
little fingers pressing lips for kisses,
and how do these hums hover like some ghost
of hands brushing away a tickle of your hair?
(and a laugh and a cry falls out of a song and we
watch it dance until the light inside it fades away
into a wonderful wee withering)
34
these fearful fingers fidget and drum this sleepy forgetting
with frustrating turns and tumbles for more sleepless
heartbreaths left to catch in your quiet sleeptaking where
we mix dream wishes and drink great gulps of gooey nostalgia,
like that time our hands—your hand and my hand—touched
a song that slipped out from a memory reflection and lit
life afire with quietly happinesses bursting something like
every and each single sliver of skin
and all those sensational stupid smiles and great gorgeous
giggles we have tucked away for later-keeping are now
hitting a wall of someone else’s silence,
and i reach for diving memories, grasp for clues of kisses,
descend deeper into your dreams, hold onto great heaping
handfuls of my heart, sleeping on the edge of the cliffs of
your castles, grip tight with these tired fingers to the clouds
to catch sight of your old sleep-spinning
35
you are in the street, dancing
in the wet street, dancing
dancing in the wet street,
soaked
to the bone with rain and smiles
and a kiss falls from a yell in my
throat, tries to reach you in the
static of your shake, in the soft
pelting of your hips
a car comes into the street, humming
in the wet street, humming
humming in the wet street, shining
on a dancer with lights and puddles
36
you are a water that whispers—half-awake where
the moonlight makes mischief of hands—like a thing
that lies across a dream, washing the waves from
the slippery stars of sleep, where the birds crawl
across your body, tumble down the tired tides of
your hair,
and i hide in this sleep to watch your rivers,
to hear your cunning current flowing ever so
fully into my throat, cascading like so many
mouthfuls of the rain, like a kiss left for
morning drinking, dripping little wet
remember-puddles to trip on all the dry,
dumb day
37
there is a sunbath
resting on her knees
a shine that swims from light
and shadow in the dappled
colors of white and black that
dance from a tree's breathing
above her
and somewhere there is something
more beautiful than this
somewhere there must be a thing
more mesmerizing than that light
—that knee—
somewhere
38
you are a sputtering, a stuttering starlight
that floats from a dissolve in my heart,
holding tight to a scurry of sleepy feet forgetting,
hiding in the empty holes of a dream scattering
to catch a flurry of lights from this moon,
this girl smiling,
you, shining tiny spatters from shadows,
—one more shush—
and your hair is exactly the way
i remember it(feels like a time,
smells like a place), weightless
in my hands, effortlessly descending
into breathing
39
there is a hollow house in my chest that jumps and dives,
shouts and whispers, when you tilt your head that way you
do when i am looking too close, trying to reach you with
eyes not hands
there are ships that sink in my gut, drown in delirium,
when your legs are curled under your body or shift
into a crossing thing where the greatest aesthetician
would fear to tread
there are stories swimming in my mind, floating and falling
on every curl you have traced with touching fingers, every
kiss you have cut with ache-splitting lips, and you have ignited
these gray mattered walls into a glassful of dreams, great
sipfuls of