by Paul Hina
old dreams
of fingers and mouths, clumsy feet beneath
the water, nightswimming with all the snakes
of the moonlight slithering across the willowy
water that races up our skin
154
she's a slow motion mover while i'm
watching, time bends backwards to
show me the muscles in her hands
as she moves those fingers from her
ear to her neck, stretching them across
her shoulder like some splendid, fleshy
spider,
and when she lifts that lovely head
and her icy blue eyes shock me with
their frenzy of a freeze, time speeds
up and i'm dizzy with dithers and hums,
speechless, clutching at the air to stop
the world from spinning, shutting the
whole damn clock down, keeping her
just as she is—remarkable and young
—startled by the stillness of the stars
stuck in her daydream eyes
155
the yellow ruffles of her blouse—soft as
meringue—are a cool drink on a sweltering
day,
and the cream of her shoulders are scoops
enough of vanilla flesh, waiting for spoons
of passionate fingers,
and the flimsy white fabric of her skirt
reminds me of snow forever falling,
descending down her thighs as fingers
trace each snowdrop's descent from the
skies of wintry dreams—the kind that
fall on the eve of christmas, making a
million angels sparkle in the crystalline
glass of her eyes
156
she's the shape of
the darkness, the sound
in the silence.
i can taste her when
drifting through thinner air,
and i can touch her through
the numb of almost sleep.
and when i fall
through the veil,
i fall for her,
into her,
deep in the waters
of a dream world she's
shaped for me
from those pretender hands
of hers
—so soft and stained by
my sleepy kisses.
157
i've got all these wishes left,
hiding in the clouds of my head,
growing and grumbling, waiting
to rain.
and one day, even if it's dark and
my days are numbered,
i will open up every cloud like uncracking
the lightning and just let the wishes pour
all over my fading flesh—your fingers
on my face, the showers of your kisses,
the curtains of your hair falling over my head,
feeling for more rainy wishes to feed
the unquenchable lips of a love at last
gasp
158
there are images i've collected,
vast piles of mental pictures i
flip through everyday, looking
for the right curve, that splendid
smile, to find that time a kiss was
caught on the serrated edge of
her criminal hair—when she stole
my breath away, hid it in that sun
drenched golden drapery of hers
and behind those drapes of wind
blown hair is a show, a never ending
performance of our hands reaching
for each other in the dark, voices
crying out for a touch, a touch a
picture can't replace
159
when you touch me,
it's as sweet as sucrose
in my veins,
and a rushing of that sweetest
blood throbs like a buzz in my
head and swims with the stutters
of the syllables that are scattered
in the wake of all your dizzying
kisses,
spinning me into the depth of a
dance only poets and pirouettes
have plumbed
160
her hair is swept to the side
by the wild hands of the wind,
her smile holds the secrets of
what pushes the flowers from
the dirt in spring,
what gives hope to the deep waters
on despairing days,
and what gives art to those that
reach for it,
but those eyes carry something
so soft and untouchable
to other human hands,
even the stars inside those
dark drapes of lashes
don't know what air is there
in the space between every wish
and no tomorrows at all
161
the way she stretches one perfect leg
over another perfect leg's knee is neither
labored or conscious, just happens like
some vine, over time, taking over some
tender tree,
and her face, the memory of her voice,
unconsciously grows around my heart,
pulling me closer to the magical mud
beneath life's feet, the same pattering
i hear under the dirt of sleep—soft and
feminine, the frolics of her footfalls as
she runs back to me
162
there are curves on her body that
turn my thoughts to hieroglyphs,
there are words that evaporate
on my tongue when she touches
my lips,
and every kiss is an explosion of
poems yet to be written, paintings
that will never be painted but in her
eyes—all that art is lost, only caught
in fragments like subconscious
glimpses of maybe-ghosts,
and when i look out into the world
and see the night snow falling into
chaos and confusion, i catch a shiver
like her fingers were descending from
my neck to my chest, tracing the sound
of the song she's left in my heart
163
her face is as soft as the dust that
dances in the light that surrounds
it.
she's a ghost outside the memory
machine, playing old movies with
every move she makes.
and there's something slow and
sensuous about the strobing rhythm
of her limbs coming alive.
and her shine is as warm as looking out
from a home into snow,
or remembering—confused reality
—a kiss, projected close, like a
hand pressing into a warm thigh.
164
i've been so hungry to see you, to
find your face in a crowd of other
faces, to feel your fingers on days
of rain, to hear your voice as i drift
away to dream
but you will not feed me, your face is
as distant as the most distant star, your
fingers are only ghosts in the sounds of
a storm, and your voice is only a mirage
as i travel into these sleepy nighttime
deserts, searching for you over every
dune, through the haze of heat and
hallucination whispers
165
if you were gone,
i'd make a god to scold,
i'd draw pictures of you endlessly
—in words and in lines—<
br />
make maps for me to find you
in my sleep,
and if there's no heaven,
if the afterlife is dark with silence,
my unrequited electricity will light
the way back to you and
build a place for us to play
166
she's a miracle of measurements,
a beautiful chaos of artful lines,
a soft structure of the sweetest curves,
and every inch would take hours to
explore—to uncover all her music,
her intricate architecture,
but she's full of rooms,
deep spaces full of stars and wishes,
planets of hope peopled with love
and tears and kisses,
her skin is made from a thousand
silken walls of hands reaching out,
endless fronds full of fingers waiting to
grab the heart,
hold it with the most delicate touch,
let it travel her country,
let it run through her beautiful borders
of lush, living colors dappled everywhere
like some impressionistic playground
167
your little hand and thin wrist
rest weightlessly on my hip,
sex has shocked us,
evaporated all our energy into the
air we breathe,
and all that lovely air is scented by
something delicate growing around
our flesh,
a floral planet we must care for,
and so i grab the flower of your hand,
raise it to my mouth,
kiss the petals of every finger,
and swim across your skin
with my skin,
winding and unwinding
around every last scented secret
168
her elegance comes and goes,
rises and falls as i age,
sometimes the clarity of her
shape, the perfect timbre of
her voice startles me from sleep
and i lie in the starkness of
the truth of her,
and then she's a wisp floating
away, a tiny cotton filament of
a dandelion wish,
and i can't find her,
or hear her,
or catch her,
but i'll happily ride the hope
of that wish through the waste
of another wicked, white winter
169
she moves with the deliberateness
of sentient water, flowing from here
to there with effortless grace
like wind dancing over the trees,
she tickles leaves into autumn songs,
and all you can do is watch, admire
her dance, hope that, as she flows away,
the beautiful spring tides will return her,
or at least the rain will dapple her
—someday—
like a dance across the memory, a tickle
that wakes the autumn music written on
the feet of spring's dewiness
170
she drapes a purple flower
over her hips,
petals droop
down her thighs
and float
just above the skin
of her storms,
and the air between
the petals and the flesh
is the air
where truth is crafted,
where wishes
and new flowers
are born
171
she's a marvelous mania of long limbs,
a chaos of movement that manifests
mental maps so clear that i could easily
trace my way back to her, calm her cubist
nature with meditation hands giving way
to soft brushed kisses, paint on her all my
my wishes of rhythms, and watch her slide
back into her sensual mania, memorize the
shape of her from the long flash of her shine,
like holding a shadow in a daguerreotype
