by Paul Hina
dust from the heart
with a burst of rain that pours forth
wishes and daydreams like sleep
was an always thing blooming inside
the heart, spreading those rose petal walls to
drink its birdsong up like kissing a
girl for the first time, nervous in the
dark just before the light comes up on
a little love shaking on those lovely limbs
of uncertain leaves
and the newborn bounce begins to breathe
shivers and burstbellybutterflies up and
down all those delicate pieces of flower
that she plays—finger by fumbling finger—
counting each new word like a secret was
whispering her name in that wind that splashes
the face like shining water climbing across a
smile for a stuttering sparkling of stars teetering
on a stillness deep on the inside of sky
dreams and sleepy stems of cotton seeds
caught for later lay down days when the
rain dries on lips and mouths drown in the
dust of no new rhyming love to peel those
places in the heart where wings are birds
and whisperings are only echoes of
remembering first time touches and
startling kid kisses
14
sometimes i hear you coming with whatnot
words,
feel you with neednot hands,
succumb to your trembling with nevernot kissings
while water spills out flesh on flowerbeds where there
is no desire like a love on fire
and there is no hour when
passion shatters all these impossibly pieces, splattering
alwayses like two bodies coming unfolded in the puddles
of our flowerfired air blowing brilliant billowing
breathe-nots at our wonderfully wasted wantnots
15
you are a breeze that burns me when i breathe
a memory or a moment blown by like a brittle
song reminding the trees of little whispers we
used to ease out of one another with kisses that
cause deep down lurches in the lungs like a spark
wrapping its beautiful blue glow around the tongue
and those touchings that fall and fumble from the
meanings of hands like something were defining the
lights of the heavenly stars to brighten up this old
city of me where alone waits for dreams, prays for
forgetting that hollow ache you carve within me
every time i see your blown hair caught in
effortlessly happy lips, your fingers pulling it out
like some silky song were buzzing in my brain, contriving
brutal pieces to press against me before sleep washes
over me with new wishes, new winds whistling where
words won’t go
16
your hands part the waters of my memory
like carving miracles into soggy sand and the
waves that leave broken pictures of your eyes
shine ethereal echoes, like momentarily melodies,
where new puddles lay like lazy drops of orange
dreams to rain down your deliciously drooping lips
where there is only one thing that whispers louder
than well intended kiss-wishes and it speaks in
audible ebbs of ecstatic inflatable breathing, over
and over again, with the rhythm of the water washing
wake-ups from the periphery of this drenched, and sun
dappled daydream like a slow loop of some simply
serious song were singing:
i can’t get you off my mind
i can’t get you off my mind
17
you stretch those legs out like pulling flutes
from underneath a low sung lullaby where
a chorus of mother hands collapses on my
head with playfully fingers drizzling yesterdays
and dewdreams to confuse the color of incredible
quietly opening up a pouring frenzy of thighs pressing
into hips where rhythm meets the secrets of your song’s
vibration and the heart meets the bleeding scream of
the rain when the brain breathes a little bang-up delusion
draining from the body like a moving were shining inside
me spreading out like a symphony of a sunshine tsunami
crashing into strawberry-lips seething under the surface of
this sweet storming somewhere sound that like mist eases
weightless water on me
18
it was cold,
waiting for you,
a piano plays—somewhere
—like a vibration that massaged
me in a manic fray of slurred dew,
where dreams lie on top
of misery like a melody
coming alive inside the heart
—like a rhythm were
absent from the memory
—like a dream were
coming undone before you ever
spent it on sleep
(where do they go—
these dreams we sell to sleep?)
19
she whispers loudest as the languishing seasons
sink into change, when the air swirls new directions
like gusts of guesses, her voice slides by my flesh
with secrets and name-breaths, and there is no voice
like a remembered voice when love was new and ever-
changing, like flower-rising, like leaf-falling, like snow-
descending, like the soothing of cool water from the shuffling
of hot sands
she is a question constantly unanswerable and a place i can
never fully reach with my hands, but she tells me love stories
in my sleep, and there are trees still standing somewhere that
hold our roots in its lovely unraveling fingers—all of our love—
and it holds it there for us, quietly, for remembering, careful not
to disturb the hair's breath of the birds
20
you hide in heaps of consciousness caves
where the darkness drives delusions of yesterday
kisses and shines lights from the tiniest touch of
your tired eyes,
the shine of a smile that still quiets
all the turmoil inside this tangle of time like a bloom
were to find some warmth in the slowly fingers of your
nowhere hands,
and you still soothe my body even in this
dying, even with somewhere memories, you still hold my
heart above the mediocrity of morbidity, keep my soul
afloat in the absent air of godlessness
21
what do i know about roses?
but the mind makes softness from
the red light of your hands, like
petals anywhere descending onto
a drip of a dream
like tendrils tumbling in the pouring
rain
what do i know of your water?
but that it tastes like the rain
when the summer slumbers into
fall and the color of the world
changes into a song made thirsty
by your sweetest orange absence
22
there is a lonely thread waiting to be pulled,
hanging loosely like a softly snowdrop descending—
a slower shadow than shimmering moonlight—on my
metaphor of heart,
just a little love waiting to pull the pieces of our pastness
fastly away, carrying strings miles to better beginnings of
/>
flowers and kissbreaths on less lost light of morning—
bitter in the maze of rain—
and will you travel to tie a heart string around your finger
for a playful remembering of those stuttering starlights?
a purplish plum of a finger to press against my lips
looping—
looping away—
into foreverland
23
places, unsimply.
once during someday dreams so dizzy that mazes fell
like mind-drops, my thoughts drew momentary
circles of those places i might live inside you
these pictures have been hiding eternally across my
memory with mirrors of meanings that move these
immeasurable makeshift movies into being when you are
near
and those me-places that you embody like the muses of
some miraculous poems come undone long enough for me
to touch those myths with mindful hands
and those places cast a frosty moonlight that falls on her breath
like the cosmos were making snowdrops from the startling
kisses she spreads across my mouth laying lulls and lightly
hands over the stars to shut their bright eyes with shushsongs
descending into the softest sides of sleep that mostly children
know and other stars only shine to remember in dreams where
the sound of her most passionate kissbreaths lay me softly down
in this stuttering snow that falls like an angel shaking a child
from the stars,
descending into the dust of deeper countries, diving into
deliverance
24
places, unsimply?
once during someday dreams so dizzy with mind-drops
that the heart stops to wonder: where are those places that
i live inside you?
do they cast a frosty moonlight that falls from your breath
like the cosmos were concocting snowdrops from the startling
kisses you slip over my mouth
laying lulls and lightly
hands over the stars to shut their bright eyes with shushsongs
descending into the softer sides of sleep that mostly children
know and stars only shine to remember in dreams?
are these the places where the sound of her most passionate
kissbreaths lay me softly down in this stuttering snow that
falls like an angel shaking a child from the stars,
descending into the dust of deeper countries,
diving into deliverance,
waiting to touch the you-places that live inside me?
25
places, simply
there must be places where i live inside you,
lost, directionless worlds that(yes, dizzy)
can’t wait to touch
the you-places that live inside me
26
there is a touch somewhere i
