by Paul Hina
91
her skirt—bright as
wet paint—drip-drops d
o
w
n the creamy
length of her laughs of legs
92
your little light still breathes,
fades in and out like some dying
star, and your absence casts a shadow
across my heart, makes holes in the
places beneath my sleep, stains my
dreams with smeared kisses and
hovering hands, hiding,
buried in the mud of years, making
mischief with your most elaborate hair,
those lingering licks of legs, leaving lyrics
like puddles of wishes for me to reflect
on when your light breathes brightest and
i can see your shape shine and stutter in
the glittery glow of a memory melting the
sleep off this star
93
her face is small and sweet,
plucked by the fingers of flowers
to smile sweet as a kiss
and the breezes of spring sway me
back to the sound of her breath
before a whisper—teetering over the
edge of almost words—saying nothing,
saying everything
and she touches me with helps of hands,
forgiveness fingers,
hears me with reach-me-arms,
and wipes my face with hesitation hair,
floating—softly down—atop lose-me-lips,
kill-me-kiss,
bang-bang-hips
94
we can’t go back, i know,
and the places we were have
aged, grayed, and wrinkled
with the fog of a somewhere ago
photographs,
but to see it, to see our young faces,
swimming in the light of new love,
to rest in the flesh of this death’s
forgiveness, enter into smaller eternities
with your hands, making whispers ripple
into these waters, brushing away the webs
and showing your face, the light making
angels blush, and your lips—yes, i
remember your lips—taste like the tiniest
truth that grows in a kiss—
but we can’t go back, i know
95
mudslides of hair fall down your shoulders,
and each clumsy wisp whispers—with softest
fingers—secrets to your breasts,
and my breathless hands travel every inch of
this most magnificent mud for relics, treasures
from the clearest swamps of the chocolate flecks
in your eyes,
but no hand can hold your skin’s thinnest warm
vibration,
every intensity, a new reason to try, attempt over
and over again to grab hold of the giant hush of
your hips,
but tasting the ripest strawberries of your kiss does
not exceed the need to hold you,
and—like trapping a butterfly—such cruelty makes
hands fold, and palms crave that hidden hope you
carry when you fly,
and you fly all the time
96
as the day fades away, and the stars appear—
slowly, like pixels opening their eyes—and the
moonlight peppers the atmosphere with the flavors
of the night,
the air is a sleepy gust in your hair
and your body folds so neatly into a perfectly
tired thing, constructing the smallest little boxes
of sleep for me to carry in my dreams, visiting each
contraption in the noise of the night,
and your breathing is a better brilliance than the
bluest moonlight
and your tiny planets are like caramel and milk
pouring into the mouth of a star, stirring the sleep
of a mighty meeting of celestial bodies,
tumbling from one box into another,
closing and opening new ways to wake the waves
of our night's water
97
we are dawdling in the dust of a past diddled
with dream dots that ignite pictures,
a movie where the specks and strings decorate
the amber paradise where water and mud is the
color of your eyes and hair,
the decoration of your body, nothing more than
flesh and hands
—my hands—learning to love you,
like teaching myself a song, and your instrument
never makes the same noise twice,
never sings deeper than drooping into a dream dried
in amber, buried in the mud of your hair, where that
perfume—the smell of our gardens—is still guarded
by your butterflies—brilliant and bright—biding their
time,
tickling the petals with their kisses of wings
98
she teeters on the edge of tomorrow,
her lingering legs swinging carelessly
over space and sky, cooing with the
contriving clouds, conspiring for raindrops
packed with memories of old fingers traipsing
up the bare back,
like little wet whispers sliding down
her neck, as if her hair were long again
and she were younger
and—down yonder—there is a kiss hiding
in the hills and a yesterday opens like a flower
waking to the sunshine
and she presses her face against the scene until
she falls and the drop is a swirl that sinks into
the gut, and is only known in the deepest down
hunger of love
99
your light is latched tight
around my thoughts,
my heart swinging open
like some summer screen door
pounding on a wood frame
and crashing open a memory—
a run, a kiss, the ache of that first embrace,
the greatest ache—
and i rise,
float above the heights of sleep,
touch the tips of dreams with
mouth stained fingers
and sing songs for you,
and the city opens and closes
like a box where lights go to hide
the daylight at night,
until you wake me up again,
with hands full of posies and rain,
sunshine and the softest rain
100
the arc of time slips across our words,
muting their meaning, obscuring their vastness,
and the measure of the heights we reached with
poetry breathing—in the space of our kisses—
is a vacuum filled with wanting and rain,
absence reaching for reflections of sentences,
verses dripping from some old cloud,
in collusion with the gods for splashes and whispers
that rise from the puddle and fall from the
pouring skies, stuttering the heart, waking the words,
shaking the kisses from the wettest leaves,
scattering the scent of mimosa and memory
101
the sky shakes its dark streams
of hair on our hands,
like mist exploding from up above
for hours of sunny showers,
rainbows running to chase the children away
for the golden game of sunshine squeezing
and a space is left in the gap of this joyful noise
where i drip these
lips onto a taste of the
strawberries of your mouth,
waking up the thrushes on the vines,
and there is still time before the stars
wash away these splendid sins with
their blue secrets of fingers
102
i celebrate all measures of this madness,
each craziest climb of you i do,
where every flash of flesh,
each flitting filament of finger sets off new storms,
and these dollops of rain,
these buckets of breathlessness,
drown out all the stars at the back of my heart
but one light rises and recedes,
like a shadow chasing the merest hint of moon,
minding your lips,
grasping your sweetest kiss in
the palm of every warm, white dream
103
somewhere the breeze blows your hair
in your face,
and fingers ceremoniously stretch it back
behind your ear,
a gesture that shakes memories from the trees,
and the leaves tumble and toss—in the sway—
the breath of your name,
blowing me back into your wind,
breathless like a falling whisper,
waiting to linger over that most willful
wish where your neck meets your shoulders,
knowing i might be tucked neatly inside
by your fronds of fingers
104
i’ve tied the knots of this dream so tight—
and the night is a scurrilous lover,
untying and measuring the meaning
of the darkness,
unraveling every yesterday’s kiss
into a sensory stream
where the somewhat light washes my hands
from the stain of your skin,
the swim of your smell,
the breath of your hair moves toward the falls
of your shoulders
and i breathe in the nape of your night's sleep,
fidgeting with the endless strings you have
left me,
tying and untying all these old secrets,
all these other skies
105
i will chase you like forever circling
the softest circles of the sun,
those rings burning lights in my eyes,
etching your curves into my memory
with the smell of deepest spring,
knee deep in your flowers, your kisses,
and i will carry your words,
wake them in the winter for
the miraculous immersion
of your melody,
singing in the swim of your sunlight,
warming the snow—a melt to the touch—
like our mouths catching fire again,
our hands building flames on flesh,
fingers climbing across summer's skin
106
the weight of her body on mine.
her hair wishing whispers across those
slides of my shoulders.
those breasts—tender to the touch—
make a shiver when she breathes.
her stomach, that brilliant belly,
heaving—stopping for a scream.
her hips shake suddenly and then twist.
lips are bitten.
her thighs squeeze answers from my
mind like a million yellow birds
concealing the view of the sun.
then her face opens for the light—
the afterglow.
we shine in the shush.
and a brilliant breathing descends
over us.
and all that remains is the quiet hum of
every nerve vibrating.
a song swims over the surface of
our singing skin.
107
i smelled the summer rain yesterday,
breezes blew in from the yard,
patterings sung through the screen
door, and that sound—
the soft heartbeat of june—
sent me back to our summer,
standing outside waiting for you,
peeling poems away like pages of
fallen ink,
like hands chasing kisses in the sand
108
we are alive with dancing and dust,
dreams filled with water and light,
where brilliant breezes of bubbles
wash up your thighs,
and i sleep with kisses cupped
in my hands,
carry them to your water,
shake off the dust before
i dive into this loveliest liquid singing
109
you are a slower dream coming undone
in the sunlight of dying spring,
and most of your tiny features have hidden
away in my sleep,
buried your face in the subconscious fields
where words are whispered and the winds
run our engines anew every night,
leaving smoke trails back to our old kisses,
peeling away every petal of this past pretending
110
when you’ve held beauty in the cups
of your bare hands,
when you’ve caressed a kiss with the
most naked laid down fingers,
when her body has rubbed all the smudges
from my smear of a body
—uncovering the coolest of clarities—
the only thought left is the cruelest collusion
of time tumbling toward absence,
of the loss of this loveliest of lunacies
111
i chased you down—a dapple of red,
on the dull bridge of surrender—
i walked miles, peeked around corners
just to catch hints of your hair,
to hear your sway, to smell your air,
all traces, all ghosts of your legs,
had moved me here, to this place,
to this poem,
and all i can know is that you,
and the prettiest power of your,
maybe,
presence made a life in the world,
this world today,
and i’ll wait for more chases,
trace more ghosts,
following the flow of your reddest trail
112
i’ve watched your body dissolve
into the great sun,
the light breathes a silhouette
into a glare, a glowing
of your loveliest lines,
swallowing light until you burn
away, brightly and beautiful,
bursting like some star into
a spin of softest stardust
113
your poetry has left me again,
drained of words and shapes,
empty of sounds and pictures,
absent from the glow and the music,
and yet i reach into the sky,
cut my hands on the jagged stars,
and watch the stream for your reflection,
never losing hope that somewhere you shine,
no matter where you hide in the world,
there is a ripple you ride on,
a wave that bends like your body, and
wakes up the words
114
where do i find those old flowers,
breathe the breath of those old blooms?
do i dare journey the length of your hair,
wipe the wisps away with my most naked hand
—burnt to the wrist with inspiration—
waiting for a kiss to blow me away again
into the flowers,
into the breath of birds,
where your hair—as wings—has smeared flumes
into my floral fingers
115
she skates in,
flowers on her feet,
carrying her heart on her sleeve,
and wishing me wakeful kisses with
her breath buzzing in her hands
—closing and opening for little verbal
butterflies to float across her flowers—
and fingers rise and fall,
fumbling across my face,
finding something that sounds like a
—softly now—‘remember’,
like a voice resembling home,
the place your mind plants you when
your dreams have warmed in the spring
of this slowest touch,
the trace of sunlight i make on your lips,
tasting nothing other than the remarkable
rush of impending rain
116
you are a wish wading through a song,
a sweeter sound that opens near the snow,
a touch that tickles the tendrils of my hair,
tugs a little tighter at the strings of my heart,
raging against the waters of wakefulness,
a taste that kisses the delightful lips of dreams’
sounds, opens the mouth of a memory, and places
your instrument to hum down the throat of a thrush,
sliding down the wing of a secret, whispering into
the water where sleep spills into hands and fingers—
feeling for your most fierce fruits—finding your face,
your eyes, and diving into the blue music for more
meaning, more melts of your melody
117
for joe
the light enters the room,
envelops us in its warmest yellows
and whites,
stumbling over shadows of
older seasons
but i listen to the birds(for you)
and hear the flowers(with you),
and all the great colors of
waiting wreaths
sing songs to my memories
of you,
songs to lay to the ground,
softly,
like birds' feet traipsing over
the puddles that once reflected
our dreams,
a shine across the sky that
shushes our minds to sleep
for good
for better
118
she is a garden of hair and lips,
of kisses that trip down those long,
dark strands to shoulders—whiter
than waiting snow, whispering
downdown that softest skin, splashing-
splashing like some old echo of rain
holding tight to the soil of her mouth,
planting wishes where rainbows wait
for that butterfly taste of tumultuous
tongues to return, thrashing away at the
secrets on her flowering thighs
119
your tilted face, the curving cup
of your jaw, is a wreckless moon
waning away at your narrowing neck,
floating away like a flawlessly
feminine balloon, a pink puff of air
pressing against the skies for prettier
pastures
120
your sad smile curves away from
the water of your mouth like feet
chasing the sand away from the
wettest edge, but the splash meets
the skin and the kiss collides to
curl puddles against the reflection
of the stars that tangle around the moon
that mends those blue specks in your
eyes into threads of currents waiting
to connive more mysteries in the waves
of your sway, the tides of your breath,
rising, resting on your breasts with the
salt that tangles on tongues and tumbles
into the night pools and pulls at your lovely
licks of lips and twirls the stars into a rain
of kisses
121
you are a gesture of softest jazz, your long
frail fingers feeling for traces of my breath,
secret smudges from my lips, searching
the trails of your hair, laying them down near your
neck to touch my air, the breath i left against
the blackest night of those sweeter strings of
marvelous music you keep, making violins
chase the curves of you, leaning against a
memory of me tasting your silken skin, pulled
tight by this youth, and you have grown out of
yes puddles—in your eyes—and a compassionate
glow falls against your expression, sliding your
head into a lady madonna pose, and i surprise you,
my hands hovering over your hips for that sleight
of hand that slides into you for sin-making
122
she doesn't feel the flowers on her flesh,
doesn't see the buzz of the bees
in her hair—
collecting saccharine and the
sweet secrets she hides near her
mouth.
she doesn't taste the fruit that falls
when she floats down,
like feathers easing against the
air—
forming a kiss around my hands
with the buttercups on her
breasts, the soil of her hips.
123
your fingers are fidgets on the pages,
folding the paper like stems against the
palm, and you pry the pieces of your
wrist away for hair spreading—the
combs of the hands open and unfurl
across the almost gossamer streaks of
waiting whispers of hair, and who knows
the despair of the absence of that smell,
that air?
—so rarefied that the birds sing songs of the
memory
—flowers reach for the stars they'll
never snag
124
long fingers,
tracing your hair behind
your ears—
such an unconscious grace
and the birds around us
twirling in the trees,
wobbling on a whistle—
wait for your wings,
wait for those flights of
fingers
125
your brilliant body is a house
built atop two of the truest sticks,
curves of legs that tangle the mind
to consider them in your absence,
but when you are near, the unconscious
travels every hill, every crevice, minds
the miles for later mapping,