Origami Moonlight: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2009-2012

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Origami Moonlight: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2009-2012 Page 5

by Paul Hina

joyful, sleepy rivers

  90

  her hair is as thick as thieves, as

  straight and reckless as a nighttime

  waterfall,

  her mist and her whispers are full

  of daydreams and slithery secrets

  that jump and dive into her cresting

  umbrella of moonlit rain

  and when her song drops, it sounds like

  the muffles from inside a womb, or the

  mind becoming beautifully uncracked

  in the moment before she steals a kiss,

  or like the buzz my mind makes when

  her approaching fingers stretch around

  the back of my black puddles of hair,

  smearing away the rain

  91

  all the white lights of the storm

  blew through night's window,

  projecting her sweet silhouette

  across this dream,

  and her approaching steps are shushes

  of whispers in my ears, something like

  her softest breathing beating its

  wings on the house of this sleep,

  blowing into me her most lovely,

  waiting kisses,

  and the thunder shook all her secrets

  free,

  and we were tangled together,

  spinning in the wet electricity of

  blue lyrics sliding over our flesh

  with the shock of a thousand songs

  being set free

  92

  you glow yellow and white in my

  mind at night,

  your phantom dust floats through my

  dreams like pompoms of dandelion

  seeds,

  and you radiate joy and old whispers

  across my subconscious waters,

  send a current so electric through me

  that memories bolt back to life,

  and our bodies become a song so swimming

  with sleep that we concoct storms where

  stars stir wayward waterfalls

  and flowers fall like snow and stutter across

  our silvery, moonlit lake of skin

  93

  you are the hope on the shore,

  the dreamy mist above the foamy

  waters of memory,

  you are the sounds of the birds

  somewhere circling in the foggy

  distance of dreams,

  you are a kiss of salty wind

  from the ocean's morning, waiting

  for the sun to melt away its meaning,

  to get lost in a flood of summer songs,

  to succumb to the somewhere shadows

  of reverie's birds

  94

  your curls hang down, softly

  bang on your neck, melt over

  your shoulders like lazy mud

  trickling down your chest—

  fingers of fudgy kisses,

  and when you lean to rest your

  cheek on your shoulder, the room

  is arrested, intoxicated by your

  downcast eyes, stuck in the sweet

  muck of your sensational existence,

  your merest movement, your barest

  breath rising you up, sending the

  slightest stutter of exposed skin

  like a blast of warm wind through

  the room—the smell of a coming

  rain about to calm the hot, hot heat

  95

  she's a fading mystery, a misty memory

  falling from nighttime clouds, a fog in the

  morning, the whisper in between the hairs

  on my skin standing on end,

  she is the hole in my heart, the harps i hide,

  the music that slides inside my soul like a secret

  waiting to descend, envelop, and answer her

  absence with the tenderness of raindrop fingers

  feeling for kisses in the songs of this snow

  covered skin, seasons buried by seasons,

  whispers of songs hung from the long

  fallen leaves

  96

  i can't find you in the breeze of spring,

  i can't smell you in the flowers, hear you

  when the birds sing.

  my hands can't pour you out on paper,

  and the art you gave me is only half off

  the ground, still trying to fly.

  my mind can't find you in sleep,

  digging through dreams for a taste

  of your lips, sifting through memory's

  papers for the shape of your hips,

  or the heat of my hand as it floated on

  the small of your back.

  and even your voice is gone, bare as the

  cloudless sky, and blue, so breathtakingly,

  heartbreakingly blue.

  97

  your face is so small and pretty,

  an unbelievably perfect arrangement

  of features, elegantly plucked from the

  artist's fingers and pressed to your smoothest,

  alabaster skin,

  your symmetry makes painter's blush

  and sculptor's surrender their chisels

  just to know your cheekbones with their

  fingers,

  and art is the highest meditation on life,

  and you are the breathtaking venus

  pouring down light from your starlit face,

  like buddha on the mountaintop, holding

  all of heaven's kisses of enlightenment

  from beauty's highest elevations

  98

  you are a plum

  that stings the tongue,

  a kiss so sweet

  that the mind remembers

  your mouth

  with the clarity of a tragedy—

  red burned in the mind

  like watching a murder

  or catching a birth

  with bare hands,

  you are a poem

  so slow

  that i can savor all its juices,

  sink my teeth

  into every word

  and watch them bleed

  onto pages of pain

  that breathe and pulsate,

  dance and sing.

  99

  to reason with the rain, to reach for

  its rhythm, is to make sense of the

  distorted puddles of memory, the wash

  that age gives your mind.

  there are still dreams—youthful and sunny

  with smiles—faint glimpses where bubbles

  pop in the subconscious

  and you are there, standing, clearly, without

  the blur or the noise of time, until the rain,

  that sad music plays its fingers over the

  surface of memory, like a piano whispering

  a sadder song from a cave in the heart,

  echoing,

  echoing

  the sound of your distant breath

  100

  your lazy, yellow hair points toward

  your tangled lips, where fingers twist

  future kisses from the fruits of a dream,

  and these surreal fruits send saccharine

  shivers up your slender arms—arms built

  for swimming in the black muck of night's

  star water—caught in the swirl between

  flying and falling.

  and when you lean your head back, let your

  hair emulate the pointing stars, you let the

  spin of the cosmos twirl you all the way to

  love, bending a hundred rainbows toward

  memory-melts of movies, lilts of old radio

  songs buzzing in your submerged ears

  101

  she doesn't understand how the skin

  of her shoulders is like milk poured

  over the mind—a was
h of cool white

  light glowing with hope

  she doesn't understand how her leg

  under her body, her hand draped

  lazily across her naked ankle, makes

  men ache to learn the rhythm of that

  pulse, feel it like music breathing

  against their bodies

  she doesn't understand how her mouth

  —lips curled in half-smiles, eyes cast

  down(surrounded by dark lashes)—

  sends a shiver of joy that bends

  mouths, pours caramel kisses over

  shoulders, dripping down backs,

  leaving little licks of wishes stained

  on phantom flesh

  102

  when you smile and spin that hair to fall

  over your shoulder, there is a sudden

  rhythm to the world, a meaning that your

  fingers(practiced) stretch through your

  tresses, leaving chocolate strands to smear

  the flesh of your neck,

  and your face is even sweeter, a more perfect

  art than any mother Mary pose,

  and music follows your footsteps wherever

  those long melodies of legs take you—even

  if away from me—

  a slow song dancing in the distance of memory's

  slow, withering delirium

  103

  all of those spring muses have

  matriculated with the clouds,

  gone swimming with the raindrops,

  forgotten all the poems,

  forgotten all those puddle-reflected kisses—

  the shudder up the spine when fingers

  intertwine—

  they've slept in the sky's softness

  long enough to lose the words,

  the poems become sloven and blurry

  like a thing you're sure you used to touch

  but can't quite remember its shape,

  its dizzying curves

  104

  your grace is quiet, doesn't wake 

  the air around you when you move.

  your steps are soft and you glide 

  across a room as if the earth pulled 

  your long legs through a wall of whispers.

  and when you speak, secrets—like songbirds— 

  drip from your every word,

  painting poems on the surface of my skin—

  shivers shaking sonnets from goosebumps

  105

  my mind moves miles and miles around the 

  landscape of your shape, traverses the bumps 

  and the dips, sightsees for hips and shoulders, 

  stretches credulity to perfectly trace the small of 

  your back, or the rush of a whisper that wraps 

  around your thigh, 

  and i can hear movements of music born around 

  your naked shoulders, taste kisses on the lines 

  that built your lips, 

  and you travel, leaving only maps behind—shapes

  and curves obscured by dust on paper— 

  and i sail away on fantasies of your flesh, 

  poems floating behind me like snowflakes caught in 

  your breath

  106

  when we're together, in the wind,

  there is a wreck of hands, a chaos

  of touches that fall over us like thickest

  rain,

  your kisses are like the snow

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