by Paul Hina
unhuge between the weight of your
every hair(that lifts all sentiment to heights until
now unmeasured)
so i descend a fall that lies not a little amazed as
pieces of your magic emerge up from under the
grass giving spring every uncountable reason to
raise effortlessly warmth that, like a flower,
causes the world to imagine its nowhereness
while still admiring the sun that shines from
within your curved lips
and all the new days that approach patiently wait
to be counted but even the sun knows nothing of
the future warmth having not met your toes under
the blankets of our world's bed
nothing, there can be nothing, that scrapes speechless
as often as when one, like softly words, fails to
describe properly
my love
rhythmless kisses
1
the animals of my hands push me to poems,
they stretch and reach, these cartoons of fingers,
flesh pressed flesh remembering sparks, whispering
softly, breathing like wishes over water, floating on
a pause, standing on a kiss, tiptoed and tumbling
across the tides of your eyes, the geography of your
limbs, my mind making maps to visit you again
i measure the miles of moonlight that roll over
the mischief of your thighs at night, i see butterflies
in your hair and listen for love letters in your laugh,
i draw lyrical lines the length of your legs, laid out
like new olympus, quieting me, leaving me blackeyed,
hit like breath on the surface of a puddle bending the
length of your light, bouncing like an echo on a breeze
i will travel the bumps of your body, traverse the
short hills of your hips, my lips will submerge
the flesh of scars near and far, and my arms will
climb the milky miracle of your shoulders ending at
the mystery of your lips where i will learn over and
over again that i will never know too much to stop
journeying you, and that the woman you are will
always be what measures the man in me
2
and when the wind crumbles up and down our bodies
like the same shiver that shoots all over when the rain whistles
a sensational drop of liquid warmth from your clever hair
that recalls every shock of static kiss you have ever poured
on me with the shock of your sleepy lips tangling from smile
to frenzy so quick that the brain shakes to forget that dreams
have come real and that real is better than ever before
and we will fall our bodies from that kiss our arms like limbs
so elegantly complicated and suspended by the water that drips
from the leaf of this tree that we tangle into every time we touch
and from that tree will fall something so beautiful with little
loops of laughing in her tiny eyes and smiles so big that she
will swallow all the rain from this wondrous pool of blue
painted sky that we have stretched out with our hands to
conjure miles of music mouths so important that she will
never lose the lovely of the lake you lay on me with stems
so soft and petals so puddled that the pastures of my pleasure
will burst into a magnificent miracle of something alive and
breathing
and she is so quiet
so quietly breathing through the trees
3
the patterns of your pulse press against
me, swim into me, suck my air out with
the suffocating stupidity of serendipity
you collapse crazy corpse-like all across
my rivers, waiting, slaving for forgotten
kissing—holding my head under the water
of dreams, drowning in the delusion of
desire and daisies,
you smell like coming alive again—new
and flower-like with your fruit so bursting
and sour and awe
4
i have hid you in holes so deep in the desert of
my delusion that the sun has fizzled free and full
of light and burst out on its own legs to walk your
sweet shine all the way back to me for fire eating
and when I turn from the flame you fire every time
your skin shimmers that silver gleam of truth bound
by hope and future, I surrender my lips from the water
that has fed my forgetting and let my mouth burn in
the miracle of that meticulously crafted melody that
manufactures your body out of music and memory
and those legs are so tenderly sweet, sliding like sugar
from the hymns of your hips to drip drops of delightful
rain causing watershed rainbows to erupt like a river
were laughing at your lovely, lifting those lily pink
petals of pouting lips to open wide for a comedy of
kisses, and the clowns we are collide when our eyes
touch the smile of the sky opening wide for god to see
the true eden splashing spectacular in angel puddles so
plush and potent that even the clouds breathe and bang
bashful
and when the crooks and crannies of reflecting on you
glows so pretty that i fall again, tumbling down the tornadoes
of your tongue, twisting winds so brutal that i have built
myths to hold your mystery, and the resolution can not be
uncovered, and the passion can not be contained—it can
only hide in the hot haze of the holes you hug in my heart
waiting for the water of your way to wash me ragged, weary,
and awake
5
ambling across this dimly lit heaven with only
the light of her magic(al) shining out like a star
beneath the skin of palest sky breathing a fragrance
that floats from her throat like a fury of flowers
finding new suns on the shores of her damp rivered
lips
i try to catch her when she is dark and hiding like
a memory coming together inside me where
a music(al) i remember shares a rhythm with
the weather and i clumsily unlearn that you can’t
wrestle with the rain
but she hovers on a pause, plays shadow games
with her fingers, blows hesitation kisses to send
me swinging on the air of the feathers in her hair
bursting from my hands with a bird song opening
up to blow a breeze into whistles like firing holes
into falling stars
and this myth minds her magic, careful always
not to expose secrets or sky whispers where clouds
climb and collide a commotion to set the starlit
scenery for a storm where a love(ly) might drip
to smear the honey down the sugar walls of earth
like a kiss of fattest rain that smothers delightful
flowers and plants the seeds for new seasons where
sun stains will grow more songs when the darkness
is led to a stupid silence as it succumbs to a weakness
where all air is lost watching her wipe the dust from
her hair with the effortless grace of a new snow falling
breathlessly white, slowly covering my body’s house
with her whispering
6
we catch smiles in lumps and handfuls when we fly
&n
bsp; our dream wings, climbing our sleepy staircase towards
the sky, twirling a dizzy dive into the cool liquid of the
maps we have made with the new sensations we have
blessed with our delicious bliss
and we have swam in the milky swamp syrup of
cloudy strands, walked on the whimsy lights of stars
that spin downstream, hovering behind us, shining to
silhouette our embrace
the moon waiting to sing songs to our swimming
our bodies dance and drip a floating ballet, and we
surface to breathe the air of contrived clouds, resting
our tangled limbs on the cotton of this foggy fantasy that
we frame into a portrait to hold near our beds when we
are away and waiting for more walks in the wonderland
of deeper and deeper underwater, when we were collapsing
into kisses, colliding our bodies, skin clanging elegantly
making cathedral sounds in our memories like a vibrating
hymn to shake the spirit from somber, bending the delusion
into a wonderful wet hide-and-seek where the waterfalls
in our eyes see the life that flows between us when we
were praying for the flood, believing in the splashes we
made sleeping, touching our fingers together, floating
on a dream
7
the touch of you is a rhyming that
i can’t or won’t hear again the same way
—when we were young and tired is way
gone away—kisses were new and full
of tastes unknown—your eyes saw things
unseen in me like snow covered lilies breathing
cloud candied hearts—beating for this “i am”,
beating for that “you are”
yet hiding, unfolding itself from the great wide
mouth, is a mystery holding a newborn kiss that
opens and closes, twists and turns words, and
whispers into songs that when heard years after
will still turn the heart like a turnstile clicking
one more life ago, playing movies with smells
wafting into the memory—igniting the soul to
spurt that picture of you i remember but can
never seem to touch the same way, standing
in a crowd of trees full of ripe kisses, unpicked,
unbreathed—rhythmless kisses waiting for my
heart to hear your rhyming again
8
you are a color on my heart, a purplish puddle
made so deep to saturate my dreams with
the truth you made simply by curling your
hair with clumsy mouth fingers or the scandal
hidden where the
