Of Wanting and Rain: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2007-2009

by Paul Hina

have not found,

  a finger or a hand so plush and perfect that

  silence knows no sound could interrupt its

  rested, rhythmless unsong,

  but it is a hiding

  touch, a place away, dreaming in the dark places

  we don’t look when we kiss, waiting in the

  softest regions of the clouds we can’t reach

  when we slide our waters into lovemaking

  and those creatures that climb the mind,

  the muses that pull the flutes from the

  worlds you make in me when we search

  for the secrets that sex whispers when the

  steam rises toward all the unknown stories we tell

  in our future sleep, there is still a touch holding

  some unspeakable sweetness for me to taste in

  the shadow of a clumsy cup of moon

  27

  the veil of morning lifts the dewy earth awake

  for the birds to sing sweeter than sleep and life

  is arranging itself carefully for a soft landing

  on day

  and you are still away somewhere dreaming of

  unknown things, and the meticulous mechanizing

  of minds won’t let me pull the covers from those

  places where sleep hides your secrets or else i

  would slide some kiss into your mouthful of moons

  and we could be together somewhere never

  tethered by couldn’t’s or shouldn’t’s

  always morningful, singing

  28

  the spring can be a sorrowful thing with

  the music of the birds dancing in cloud

  shadows, the speckled sun receding into

  rain and opening yellows again onto

  the happier side of the world,

  and we are slow to answer this call to

  joy, we are quick with hands and feet

  and bedroom silences that equal something

  greater than seasons can understand, but

  when the blooms awake and the eyes of the

  flowers see us for the first time, then there

  is a dancing that remembers all those warmths

  that were forgotten while the skin was hiding

  beneath the sleep of winter, and our kiss was

  the only light we’d seen

  29

  she is dressed for poetry hands like some

  angels had caressed her body with especially

  soft fingers leaking down her dress until

  knees are barely exposed, mockingly elegant

  with peek-a-boos

  and the air between is where mysteries—beneath

  the skirt—make minds wander, and the legs

  that stretch from the secrets told by her thighs

  are only stifles of word sounds trying to assign

  some formula to those meaningfuls she makes

  in my mind

  and heart songs are not nearly as lyrical as her

  feet, moving mindfully like her toes were

  untouchable things, digits for dancing,

  places to start the climb up for finding the

  freedom of femininity that men can not describe

  without chisels and lines, words or angels

  30

  it's spring and the soft light that surrounds you here

  in these heart places i have formed around those

  soft bird-like memories are chirping away at the

  clouds for radiances to share with the angels in

  your hair with the gods of memory tripping over

  the roots of the trees that we have planted in our

  bellies for later rainbows, for somewhere silences

  where time is forgetful

  and we are still young and in love

  and kisses fall as effortlessly as the rain

  and as delicate as remembering the stillness

  of hesitating birds

  31

  what more can i spend on sunlit dreaminess,

  on slightly dripping journeys through the

  old vibrations of a kiss and the words that lay

  lips on the ears like a blanket on a cloud, soaking

  up all the skin’s rain with restlessness and

  day-old reminders of tiredness and shadows

  playing hands with the children we were, the

  children we are when we travel together again

  to that place we planted our flower and pretended

  to watch it grow. is it blooming? has it survived?

  do our dreams themselves dream? do the characters

  we play remember to cultivate our memories with

  water and wishes and tiptoe kiss-squishing stars,

  where our barehanded breathing makes better

  buried heads?

  32

  when you somewhere speak there is an air that

  surrounds us like the branches of some remember

  tree where the leaves might as well be pages blowing

  away the words we once spoke when we were younger and

  stupider, but happier hanging onto the brightest starshine

  from the kisses floating in our eyes

  and what value do we apply to these cloudy comedies of

  a kiss where we taste some rain years later, caught—

  everything ascending into spring—when we are wise and old

  and reflecting on the gauzy wash that memories make when

  you count the veins of this tree's leaves with those

  slightly dumber fingers touching these tired lips for the

  last time—

  combing through the sand of words,

  counting kisses—

  33

  you are a bird singing—a song lilting

  away the hours with the brutality of a brilliant

  heartbreak—in the dreary distance, and that

  fading sound is the prettiest of pains, waiting

  for uprisings and new deliriums to deliver, like

  your lovely body, curving a little repose around

  the slowest drips of a dream

  and how do you feed me this music after time

  has so inelegantly tumbled down those achy

  dust traps of memory, tripping on the rusty wires

  of the throat, choking on the most forgetfullest

  little fingers pressing lips for kisses,

  and how do these hums hover like some ghost

  of hands brushing away a tickle of your hair?

  (and a laugh and a cry falls out of a song and we

  watch it dance until the light inside it fades away

  into a wonderful wee withering)

  34

  these fearful fingers fidget and drum this sleepy forgetting

  with frustrating turns and tumbles for more sleepless

  heartbreaths left to catch in your quiet sleeptaking where

  we mix dream wishes and drink great gulps of gooey nostalgia,

  like that time our hands—your hand and my hand—touched

  a song that slipped out from a memory reflection and lit

  life afire with quietly happinesses bursting something like

  every and each single sliver of skin

  and all those sensational stupid smiles and great gorgeous

  giggles we have tucked away for later-keeping are now

  hitting a wall of someone else’s silence,

  and i reach for diving memories, grasp for clues of kisses,

  descend deeper into your dreams, hold onto great heaping

  handfuls of my heart, sleeping on the edge of the cliffs of

  your castles, grip tight with these tired fingers to the clouds

  to catch sight of your old sleep-spinning

  35

  you are in the street, dancing

  in the wet street, dancing

  dancing in the wet street,
soaked

  to the bone with rain and smiles

  and a kiss falls from a yell in my

  throat, tries to reach you in the

  static of your shake, in the soft

  pelting of your hips

  a car comes into the street, humming

  in the wet street, humming

  humming in the wet street, shining

  on a dancer with lights and puddles

  36

  you are a water that whispers—half-awake where

  the moonlight makes mischief of hands—like a thing

  that lies across a dream, washing the waves from

  the slippery stars of sleep, where the birds crawl

  across your body, tumble down the tired tides of

  your hair,

  and i hide in this sleep to watch your rivers,

  to hear your cunning current flowing ever so

  fully into my throat, cascading like so many

  mouthfuls of the rain, like a kiss left for

  morning drinking, dripping little wet

  remember-puddles to trip on all the dry,

  dumb day

  37

  there is a sunbath

  resting on her knees

  a shine that swims from light

  and shadow in the dappled

  colors of white and black that

  dance from a tree's breathing

  above her

  and somewhere there is something

  more beautiful than this

  somewhere there must be a thing

  more mesmerizing than that light

  —that knee—

  somewhere

  38

  you are a sputtering, a stuttering starlight

  that floats from a dissolve in my heart,

  holding tight to a scurry of sleepy feet forgetting,

  hiding in the empty holes of a dream scattering

  to catch a flurry of lights from this moon,

  this girl smiling,

  you, shining tiny spatters from shadows,

  —one more shush—

  and your hair is exactly the way

  i remember it(feels like a time,

  smells like a place), weightless

  in my hands, effortlessly descending

  into breathing

  39

  there is a hollow house in my chest that jumps and dives,

  shouts and whispers, when you tilt your head that way you

  do when i am looking too close, trying to reach you with

  eyes not hands

  there are ships that sink in my gut, drown in delirium,

  when your legs are curled under your body or shift

  into a crossing thing where the greatest aesthetician

  would fear to tread

  there are stories swimming in my mind, floating and falling

  on every curl you have traced with touching fingers, every

  kiss you have cut with ache-splitting lips, and you have ignited

  these gray mattered walls into a glassful of dreams, great

  sipfuls of