Such Deliberate Loveliness: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 1997-2006
Paul Hina
Published by Paul Hina at Smashwords.com
Copyright ©2006 by Paul Hina
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the trilogy of curves
I. little births
1
the day before, or the morning
to no man that listens is the sound
not heard and to no man who knows
god is there not a place for holes
to be buried in when she sends you
for rest and if she’s rubbed your
heart then you, as i, can still hear
the breeze of her movements closing
in and
the breath of her mouth as it swept
by and shook my eyes free of death
with a kiss (a kiss that is lost within
the silence she possesses in my throat)
and as her curling mouth was shutting
me down i sunk with her in sleep and
she turned me over and into her love
leading me with forgotten hands to
fall into the breaking day and as the
day breaks away her lashes wave me
farewell and
the air and i are tiny as she leaves
us behind breathing and listening to
her hair run slightly, unearthly, across
my face whispering birds and
i will remember all the angel’s dust
falling on wings as sweet as the cotton
that blows from a spring child’s mouth
and
i can’t forget the innocence of that
same child’s tear as its softness
nears the ending sky’s eye with the
wind and
can you hear her hair?
2
i reach towards a twinkle as tiny
as my eyes are allowed to imagine
and as large as the ocean’s sun
drenched gleam
for a single moment an infinite
wave curls me into digging deeper
towards the breath of all the
drowning children scraping towards
the sky
and, me, falling under in the
playground of tranquility wishing
upon the yellow light that drips
through the cracks every time i
speak her name
to whom does this star speak or
answer his wishes for (as it hangs
towards the last moment)
grant me the little dances our
legs create swimming near one
another to waltz slowly past a
place we used to swing our hands
and like children gasping for laughter
we’d lose each other’s sorrow in the
holes left inside our smiles
give me this second as i fall away
racing towards heaven
and the light i see shines the soft
hair on her chin as white as a new
snow and as innocent as the night
before the white falls on a time of
trees
3
a blanket of grace her presence
presents me inside is as still
as the air that hangs outside
her
all the wishes that succumb from
within my world tremble from the
view of all those diving horses
as they hiss inside their white
breath
the noise of twilight sits beside
my turn as the cowardly face being
scorned by the steps that she crunches
on the fall
and our love is being joined by a
goodnight kiss that is being smoked
from the spinning fields of my memory’s
impotence
i can’t recollect the texture of her
lips and all the knowing of smoothness
that infected my fingers when i brushed
by her face
and the push of her breath like a dancing
execution on my palm that never ceased
to shut my eyes
if my lids would live then maybe, only
maybe, i could stop trembling
losing the summer of her grace
4
(why if wings spread like fingers
do we squeeze our hands so tightly
around our flightless feet)
so our infinity is disturbed by the
awakened girls shining over moons
of blue light cities and shares a
tendency to scare this young child
who has lost his mother to a storm
of the same caliber
and because she is gone does the
distance mean to swallow every
gulping heartbeat like a paper
song covering the truth and protecting
the threats of making him miss one
more day of trains or noise of softly
smothered spirits
he can never move fast enough for
pictures and his tiny fingers so
full of youth and love are yet to
touch the frailty that was placed
inside the woman’s eyes that once
tucked him inside her womb with a
constant kiss that smelled of hearing
the ocean’s calm
her stare turns him inside the outer
regions of sanity because of the dreams
that smile green like her eyes and
will she ever look at him again?
this night child struggles in his
thinness looking for a larger remnant
of her moon’s closeness to feed his
pale hunger towards a lighter relief
and why if her face is in his head
burning out the night’s silence is
she not less than ash and more than
rain?
how do you whisper death when the sky
she spoke of in fairy tales turns black?
(letting go and learning to fly)
5
a tragedy that is standing looking by
hushing for less breath than is her face
is moving in her smile that sprinkles
words of candles surrounding baths of
fingers and flesh
his chest swollen by her dancing and his
eyes paralyzed inside kisses of timelessness
that fall from his drinking glass of her
shade (slightly less pink than her movement)
she glides pulling up her dress to reveal
her feet and he knew if only in a dream
that nothing as precise as her feet (not
even death) could approach standing still
in their delicately placed cases entrapped
by toes to move nothing but slow
her steps softly whispered in the air of
the doorway’s darkness and he sat rubbing
tears from his fingertips dwelling far
beyond the untouched
and he stands waiting in her vast country
counting snow as it calms the cool ground
in the key of a traditional waterfall
6
weightless in sleep reaching
for a lucid face in the
interior of midnight’s sister
her kiss removes
a gleam from my
eye like spiders with
crawlers
deeply stretching
throughout this america
i swim in sanctity of once myself
in mind will echo through pages
of graffiti on her neon walls
and my death will smile
upon her moon by
stars
that now are eyes
but i can not harm
the lady
for even my feet
when embedded in her
greyest of sands
still float
farther than any imagination
and because even her pools
are more than
all of me
and deeper than all dreams
7
there is a tunnel some song travels
through taking me towards the holy
ground that was our church where we
worshipped inside each other’s eyes
and got lost in the inflection of “i
love you”
and your reflection in the window is
still sticking to the glass unstained
by your smile and even though the
pictures of you i’ve developed have
begun losing color from too much
recollection it is still clear that
all i ever knew about life dwells
inside that smile
and even though the words you spoke
inside our story are fading from a
thousand fingers turning pages for
every crying eye your voice is still
prominent in my sleep
and i relax on the walls of an apparition
and kiss her at the top of my lungs
stirring another lump in my throat sugar
coated from all those tiny breaths that
caused me to drown in her mouth
and so i fall like water collecting
puddles of little pieces that are her
steps brushing away like a criminal’s foot
and she can’t blow kisses that taste
like the life i knew beyond her skin
and so i pray
has anyone written a song that travels
deeper than tunnels?
8
there was a window i saw you
through being wrapped knees
inside arms and eyes inside
sleep with face slightly
falling form neck to shoulder
and i watched for forever to
disappear before i thought of
allowing myself to blink
because an image of sleep is
slower dying than a picture
of something smaller that falls
sooner than rain
so a picture that is a space
being filled with time will
someday grow inside this moment
where a promise was forgotten
by a girl that awakes inside
a life smile that is as tiny
as tomorrow
9
sleep is not for every man who
staggers throughout hours of the
her and me that now only arrives
inside rest that is larger than
somewhere in my imagination
but a dream is never so far as
her whimsical light that seems
afraid of this dark
and the moon is so small that i
can’t find that light of some
rain that has fallen to remind
me of a belief that sits beside
our forever half sleeping
all the while i had been lying
on a sound that is a dead flower
scattering away a thousand pieces
of memory inside my heavy hand
but if i clasp fingers to palm
and believe in roses i will feel
her charms lying on me with a
disease that will stretch my
flesh so as to find the nerves
that feel, as always, the existence
of mortality in the shape of
love’s last hour and wounds my
already burning bed with its
clothes of preservation
but she is there anointing me with
the rhapsody of her words and even
if my blindness, that dwells inside
this half sleep, were to last past
heaven i would rest a finger across
her throat so that i might feel a
voice as quick as my blood would
know a journey to a heart of all
sounds
and if i were to touch her lips or
even hover beside her breath i could
allow my thoughts to falter throughout
this infinity of restless harm
but i can’t promise not to open my
eyes in dreams and for all roses know
a piece of life is only as slender
as a ghost resting her head on my
chest listening for unity
and awake is fighting short breaths
to not fall behind the perfume that
is of herself so that i might sleep
and even as i sink through rooms of
us i fear i’ll never smell roses
again
so i just lie alive and wait for the
sun to grow through a disease
10
lying so tiny she breathes quickly
being born under blankets of a city’s
ceiling but it is not enough to cover
what she is or means to a man who
watches her quietly being beautiful
and although darkness forbids him to
see all of her body’s silence there
is a star growing from a window seeing
only her face
her hair is reaching towards the tip
of her nose and half covers an eye
which he suspects, like the other, is
sunk behind lids kissing rest and her
mouth is barely open to catch what air
is in dreams and her lips must know
how to glow when a light tries to find
them
and the light on her face made me feel
like being under water when a sunbeam
moves into you and warmth is known
and so i watched and thought of oceans
i thought of the largeness and the
depth
i thought of the color and the life
and i knew that she surely must be
an ocean inside of me and my body
aches to be a part of what is drowning
because there is no such thing as dying
while you watch an ocean sleep and,
when opened, nothing but life flows
from those eyes
and now fallen down(unclosed by her
cleansing) some love drips from a
nowhere hanging hand towards a taste
of finally learning how to swim
11
i've got all these little births
in my pocket that sing wishes like
sounds of dropping coins for hope
and they all move towards a life in
a hole that holds a place for every
kiss that will come from a person
who will fill them with more holes
and though you let every tiny truth
slide from your hands you know that
everything now born is running for
death
and you watch each hole swallow every
newly born dream but maybe once you'll
see a wish get away from the night
being somewhere else making dust
and a situation will occur called
crashing moons and will now be
referred to as broken stars
12
shaking form under her hands
there is a man being quietly
away who has dropped his wings
and who can’t give anything
to a woman that speaks so softly
to all the snow that falls
around him
and he tries everything to forget
the smell of fire but this man
can only stand as still as flames
when his eyes see this woman
turning beautiful
and as her mouth swallows him dead
he understands how soft the rain
must feel when it falls into snow
and if moments froze like flowers
kissing frost then we would all
know the beauty of dying in the
hands of warmth
13
across from nothing there is me
and a window of fall only being
distant from a spring ago
she was where nothing is now
drawing a picture of me being in
love by a window of spring that
lit a reflection of us on a book
i was reading but can’t remember
and though now she is nothing
more than a somewhere ago i
know she is here among many pages
that are too tired not to fall
but if finding her were to mean
a different color of love i
would be afraid to harm the
spring’s reason for
a fall
there is now not enough light
for pictures of pages that now
fall from trees i can’t remember
reading when she drew a picture
of me being born in spring
and though many seasons
will continue to die i’ll always remember
knowing more love than nothing
14
a voice of always may be forever
dying like the one sleep interrupts
hoping to not be seeing those things
that knew you then
and where is a how when you can’t or
won’t even arrive into hearing often
one more night and less a day me
thinking you and you being then
and a what makes another noise that
can’t or won’t hear me grow no more
15
in the middle of evening a storm is
being crafted with care by some force
beyond this thought
the rain falls slow into static and rushes
on my overhead like miracles in chaos
and rushing from my view i see all these
lonely victims colliding into one another
for a shared moment
all of them running safely hopping above
collected windows and ignoring reflections
of childhood tongues catching tiny visions
that from smiles grow laughter
standing inside i think of myself not
being older than fear or younger than
storms so i search spinning the world
for some light to shine newer than now
and there abandoned by use is an umbrella
holding up a woman that stands politely still
with head up and one hand out catching youth
her eyes fall to me and a smile is becoming
everything across her face and she laughs
with hair clinging in front of her eyes
streaming magic down her new hope
and i laugh like someone who knows
the name of rain and run into a wall of
wet that stops me from being anything
but alive
she comes to me and finds her hand
behind my neck and her eyes are so
familiar to a life that had forgotten that
even wet fingers aren’t cold when they
love
and her umbrella falls from her and
she drips inside all of my loneliness
and kisses me with all her storm and
a flood falls across all the rainy children
laughing at rolling umbrellas
and i remember i love her
16
a reaction covers all the composure
that was you before she doused you
with herself gracefully moving like
a cloud slightly glazing blue heaven
and you would know home to be a
place where she exists past here and
beyond now into your admiration
that would cause even angels to burn
joyfully in her light
shivering like candlelight in the
darkness she drips silently away
with a smile that makes your whole
self quake and quiver victorious
and your eyes fill up with tears
blurring every image of the world
around her and wrecks your very
core with the clarity of watching it
happen
and knowing it could again
17
and it is her
moving in slow motion towards
me being toppled over end to
end suddenly spinning inside
a rainbow dream summertime
morning
and it is her
smiling as the sun wraps the
sky and swallows every blue
with the brightness of a million
shooting stars rushing like bullets
hitting one right after the other
tastefully melting over my flesh
whispering memories of cold
mornings wrapped in blankets
wishing for her warm fingered arms
to tangle me into a frenzied excitement
and it is her
numbing me with a downpour of
falling ecstasy pouring a heavy harmony
in an uncontrolled throw of mighty
stares that drip rings that echo over and
over caressing the silent pools in our eyes
and it is her
making every breath gasp back into the
depths of my heart beating my air like
abandoned window shutters sending my
blood to boil inside my sinking stomach
and it is her
wanting to touch my skin with the gentleness
of the outside breeze that softly whistles a
chill across our lips as i give her my last
deep brown butterfly kiss and fly away
with eyes tightly concealing an unnoticed
scream
18
fear
a particular warmth is felt quietly
by my face trying hard not to see the
day go by longly without the night
flowing over a sky mirror reflecting
her way
a day is past watching me fall
forward clumsily fighting for one
more peek through her hair which
is held apart from her eyes with
her perfectly long fingers
i can still hear the sound
my mind made when her foot
found mine under the table
quickly caressing my passion
like our bodies had lain together
mightily swimming in a sea of
the naked flesh of our new
tastes
and when she reached out
to my hand for forgiveness
i pulled tinily inside myself
and my hand fisted as my
head shamefully laid me down
19
her pretty knows answers to every
unspoken melody that chimes within
this softly hiding universe underneath
all these walls of solitude
that voice always finds me, touching
me with tucking sounds of swollen
breath and cool rememberings of the
last supper with her song
she speaks unseen and unknown to
these waiting eyes that sweep through
the darkness that answers me with
the knowing of one more day’s life
in a nowhere living love
i survive tumbling through this heaven
searching for her planet finding gate
after gate of no one’s angel
i soar with the help of her wind and
try to find where mouths echo these
little suns that keep covering me with
their collapsing holes of deep shining
forever
i am alive peeling layer upon layer of
stars tasting the bright night of all her
vast sensations
i am alone and only her pretty knows
20
when worlds collide like dust finding
home, the heart encloses upon a new
blood of every moment spoken in silence
that lives in an instant that grows
louder landing naked on a sweet morning
sound that is all your forgotten miracles
and when miracles remember that you
forgot me they create a free flowing
pulse of a true unslept life that makes
silence louder listening to your earth
lying by my dangling waiting passion
of forever skin that just keeps revealing
more worlds where sweet mornings
collide into silence and you remember
home
21
an american woman
below this hole of a bruised
night stands an american woman
holding all the glory of her
own tragic song where every
finger sings its softest hair
to cry small splashes of skin
that clutch another harmonious
moment where a community of
feeling sprouts from me little
fires that wash themselves in
her endless pools further
sinking inside every moving
picture she creates
and as the night falls deeper
upon us like the light writhing
its reflection on the cleanest
puddle of sky there is a newest
pleasure of now visiting the
end of yesterdays and tomorrows
and though she bursts like a
rainbreath every time i try and
look behind her gentlest cloud
of dying i always find a sun
that kills the lights that
protect her stars from the
most silent storm growing
into god
and heaven is held as close
away from us as the night
healing itself with the color
of the newest day painting a
form that will become a constellation
of gigantic lovers being an eternal
cancer for all the world to rest
under
22
i find myself buried in the golden
wash of the spring’s most fertile
landscape with her lying beside me
breathing her quiet laughing life
into me with the message of her
head to my chest listening to the
rhythm of her possession
i had forgotten how close i had
come to feeling silent with her
beside me and that was the only
time my eyes could have ever really
held tight to sleep but i made
certain that they held nothing but
this fullest vision of certainty
and though i know that memories
i hold of us will only become a
myth that is somewhere farther
than dreaming will ever allow me
to go i believe in a place where
a seed of silent sleep was planted
from which a leaf of new life will
grow into finally allowing me to
close my eyes on anything certain
23
closer to god
her and i glow like a cotton dream inside
the flicker of an old movie projected on
my reverie where we danced illuminated
on top of a sea of black and white stemmed
pianos that fed every note a better reason
to keep falling further into the grace of our
trembling bodies counting every melodic
moment
and we explored each key with our barefooted
knowledge that no song can be arranged to
grow eternally over the entrance of our
fruitless eden
and watching her body sway presses so deep
into my chest where i learn the enormous
paleness of an untouched heart that displays
the hollow beat of a barely breathing man’s
dance as a constant reminder of the lonely
film flapping its noisy finished sound of
ending
and this person i was when i knew to wrap
my arms so tightly around her world of life
has nothing left in him but a dying scent of
opening christmas and the dust that ages the
taste of her deepest kiss
and sometimes i can still feel her dancing just
behind my emptiness filling me with light as
she guides her footsteps so tenderly into this
heaven she gave me in her most beautiful way
of flowing through the thick walls of music
that follow her
and here i am watching her song lead me into
another perfect silence where i will ask myself
for eternity what more could this man desire
but to be left with a silent image of divine music
that dances closer to god
II. pretending water
24
my every morning breath exhales the joy
that stumbles over our last night’s discussion
where we touched with fat beautiful words
spoken in our thin quiet voices to calm the
ache that stains our forever that can’t chase
the miles from in between us
the distance has caged our hearts from
even the sight of one another’s eyes and
that alone swallows me wholly into this
stubborn earth’s cruelest stretching mouth
to pry me so slowly away from your voice
and throws me to slide down its dead sound
throat to await falling on my empty impact
that will spill my constantly flowing words
onto all that we will lose inside our love’s
prison
and if not for your tongue baptizing my
nights from their occasion to wander into
my chaotic solitude i would forget the certainly
of your lips pressing heavenly closed around
my flesh resurrecting my spirit to part my
soul from its sea to flow with less turbulence
into the pulse of your white life
and i will awake again in this glorious morning’s
prison knowing that the voice of truth is never
too far to hear me escape into you
25
the then i was passed the us we
were on the way to becoming the
now i can be
but before now becomes a can
be and you become a was i would
like to slowly forget what we
meant to us then
so beautiful were the clowns they uncovered
every moment a newly discovered dream where
sleep was just… when
now i become
26
tracing steps to those lips
from where you released that
mouth to just squeak almost
into laughlines bursting the
balloon shaped flesh i brushed
past outside your throat
straddling a kiss onto your
thickest region of leg so
whitely scented of fingers to
veil collapsed across my naked
face covering silent moments
with your eastern oval eyes
dancing five legged palms
clutching quietly pressing
those pink breasts to savor
flavors floating into the act
of salting great lakes into
goosebumps
leaning against narrowly
sinking hips revealing rich
hand spread soil where a
crimson night rose laid star
to ground falling deep as
whale songs in your thornless
garden
27
she yawns for poets
twilight stretches precisely
the jaws of my muse like flutes
to allow for sleep wanting
a yawn that she sends tends to
articulate my intoxication
where breaths of musical air
pass lazily into this infinitesimal
moment that flies by me getting
caught in her wings
and if thorns stuck like tulips
to my cheeks i would understand
how an arm so slender as to rest
subtlety across my gardens of heat
leaves that peel away another
exaggerated palpitation could
slip me into that faintest place
of mouth corners colliding like
two metallic silvers opening
natural springs from which pours
forth little breeze whistles
that fall across these awkward
words to touch lips like barely
breathing birds coming uncracked
all these gifts enclosed in her
throat like christmas strawberries
in the mud
28
spring as an obtrusive warm green
hour pokes gentle so ever waking
me from this tender rest to inhale
visions of your naked shoulder
peeking just past this painting
we’ve created with our little last
night whispers submerging the thickest
of morning air
the hand i am trickles mist in your
hair like water that spreads from
my eldest fountain finger chasing
age from where your hip used to raise
and lie under my brush for new colors
to surpass your flesh so pale like
life had escaped this framed world
to leave nothing but dreams to blanket
the absence from my cool retrospect
in searching limited boundaries of
portraits we once lied onto i have
certainly twisted every flower winding
the stems to uproot all the love-me-nots
tasting the kiss of the throat lipped
petals to savor the flavor of your most
delicate inspiration
but the mouth of every blooming seed
tends to dry frozen on thinlet sprouts
of streams being as heavy not to flow
in the direction that once ran where
tears couldn’t dry like the paint killing
your mouth so eternally farther than
kisses could reach into the art your
sleep portrays on mornings of spring
and as sky minute walls fall heavy as
tongues of misery rain infinitely placing
your heavenly body on wet paint pillows
of our flesh slipping untouched into the
eternal undone our too proud nature of
want brushes our perfect tremendous away
29
to examine the slightest gesture
that causes your arms to twirl
as you walk
is to me the very lightest color
surrounding me with spirits of
the more glimmering bells of
cathedrals
to fight your hand that struggles
through that dream that falls and
dies at every turn of your head
is to lie afloat on an almost
unsubmergable body of not giving
into the world that forms as
another flighty beat of heart
could always drown my floor
to caress that ankle so thin that
my whole mouth only might taste
the truth on your tenderfoot
is to lie awake every night until
seeing you is again
and even then you are so every new
that i can only comprehend you to
be too much love to imagine me being
anything more than drunk by your
image of god touch not touching
anything
30
there was a certain elation in
witnessing the distant swagger
that becomes so fragile as to
break every curling flower from
the scent of the stem it was
placed upon
and to watch every unworthy glare
drizzle the alert as she leans
and melts every living eye closed
so that a little wondering can
dance dangerously close to the
flame she is
and the thought of how delicate
a single touch could strip me to
barely jump with a swollen vein
to die and gulp another bloody
reaction to her butterfly dance
strolling through god’s least
miracle step swaying before the
great noise of every slight
movement so as to attempt a
heroic motion of the internal
feminine light folding every mind
chamber into coughing sugar and
sucking dead candy petals as
she kneels before me
and the sweet fire she is flickers
an old movie delusion that is so
lonely in the hot permanence of
her breath
and like movement with flower candy
she soon withers away haunting me
with hands and heartbeats vaguely
turning me into the chalk outlined
disturbance of stillness
and so she is gone dancing with
tendrils and butterflies as i am
left confronting silent movies
31
at the great intricate leg of a
trembling foot is born a simply
magic ghost of timeless wine flowing
atop my shin rubbing that drunk
heat so skillfully chilling me with
your almost beautiful clumsy toes
and if only inches move to kill a
motion that faints like my reminiscent
ride through the most splendid dream
i may believe an illusion before my
eyes like child lips tasting great
arches of moon shoes
to struggle to know nothing but
the broken fragments of sprawled
flesh only silences me with the scent
of this girl's sleeping breath blowing
another paused death
and every portion of skin glows from
lighted windows to allow an examined
pleasant whisper like a breeze falling
to fields swaying a clean wash of
thread lightly winding silk to lie on
pretending water
to say very little of the million
elaborate hairs sweeping the exposed
waiting head of innocent white numb
drops that experience every slow
hand never cutting a dull heart deeper
than smooth impressions of unique you
32
there has been arranged leaves of
such honorable portions of sliced
sustenance falling over me in the
shade where words of the sweet
spontaneous rearrange tastes of
that asleep tongue so dreadfully
curling under me for the preparation
of growing silent windy reminders
pulling such new breath breezes in
the direction of your harmonious
prisons being shadows hiding me
ever so close to crime
and the bite of sinking teeth to
contemplate the beginning fruit’s
sweet juice of satisfying leaking
lips all over that fantastic broken
reassurance of embracing limbs
across your tangy only kiss
every thought untouched and hanging
like newborn kindred colors of strange
angels holding heavy water above the
thirsty mouth of wait being as quietly
patient for that distant voice to crease
the clenched singled drop of nectar rain
to crash suddenly into today’s miserable
tree of empty hands
and a piece of simply sun sets a
warm guide beside me that leads
cracked hearts from old loves to
new leaves blowing freedom from
the confinement of shadows
33
music box
if ever those radiant trembling
jewels of your eyes peer into
a drowsy loneliness that clouds
your glorious mystery that so
endlessly allows my light to
shine
then please let those star
creatures sigh in their natural
glimmering pools to slide you
comfortably close to that old
tin music machine where gardens
blaze symphonies of our laughing
children hiding behind their
enormous smiling hunger
if ever allows you to find our
rosy cheeked creations feeding
on the want of bursting all the
walls that hold us inside this
dreaming playground
then dance once with me behind
our last favorite wall standing
on its feet of tendril and vine
waltzing us like little boxes
of sleep bells opening for your
last gasping yawn of legs gliding
into toys
if the miserable time has come
for you to shut the door on our
house of sleeping music where i
will patiently descend the stairs
of this dark castle with only the
candle of your last touch to
guide me to our empty yards
alone
then don’t forbid me to dream
of every upcoming moment that
will be opened to play our most
gentle furious passion to lie
atop burning gardens of play as
we slowly sink into mouths of
wax
and if the time ever comes for an
end to lullabies
then let all the long nights
softly lay me down on the whispering
good night horses of merry-go-rounds
singing like children loving in a
never growing garden waltzing in
darkness as we forever rest on
aging beds
innocently
34
as slow as death is intertwined
with love is stuck a man like an
unshakable tower with tired black
rimmed eyes sketching portraits
with a pen just to reach the woman
he adores
sometime during this process of
almost praying a song seeps into
his ears to clarify a bleeding life
to paper that creates a moment
that at least happens in the singular
mind of his heart’s broken image
waking from dream
like violins every word a symbolic
melancholy scraping across a tentative
touching of speed for that single invention
of a moment’s happiness
silent as his voice hesitates and screams
the highest note that writes a single
stroke of that thin veiny part of hand
caressing her cheek feeling centuries
pass replacing time into increments
of solid warm red flesh only speaking
for the deep sinking rush of the cello
as strings are tied somewhere with
copper wire fingers of his mind
approaching her hair
and words collapse like a thunder
drum as the cello strays back and
forth deeply strumming soldiers as
the brass marches in like a seizure
creating stoic caves to echo the
distress of the flute whistling
her not being near
and he will never create a song so
strong that he could hear it from
her ears
but still he tries
35
i have taken to long night walks
counting every frail star that hangs
as low as snow might make them melt
if i pretended to touch their walls
of every night growing softer thinking
of your eyes
and if i dare to ask your stars’
vision to dim there would be no
sound of earth to crush the perfectly
intricate whispering of your lips
unfolding like they had always been
stored by your mouth’s dangling
silence like a stillness
but no stars would dare to shine
deeper than the sky in your eyes
and as the clouds part like your
body had suddenly stretched the city
to become thinly aware of its
insignificance i see the skyline
of every majestic metropolis could
not hope to match the architecture
of your divinely arranged waist that
tears away the feeling from my fingertips
that so quickly, vaguely, drip from
hip to thigh in a single motion that
bends time into a multitude of
illusions that fade, slightly dreaming,
into sleep
and as the night ages into a cold morning
wind there is a shiver where all the
inspirations that writhe from your
body drive me to follow closely behind
every massive second until a capsulized
version of your image almost breathes
into me with that steam that sweats your
scent so precious in its every grand
pushing wave of crashing water that kills
me complete
36
just a thing as simple as walking
the way you do could easily cause
me a severe bleeding attack of heart
as your merciful hips hide your body
behind corners of many never understood
stories of love that blankets streets
like rain
and to lose those hands that tangle
correctly winding my skin with your
sliding tickle of touch could steal
my better judgment of view to miss
you smile your last tender face
though i was only able to breathe
your hair successfully on a one
night occasion of accidental ecstasy
i would surely scream incessantly
for you to roll me from the other
side of the earth
and please know that i could've held
you with the splinters of my arm's
tree never cutting the fragile little
intense heart in your chest where i
know that blood flowed like milk into
the swans that fly from your mouth
when you sing
and exhilarated as my suffocating
will appear as you turn the corners
of world behind me i will forever
wonder where rooms are for prayer
without such hands as yours pressing
death to air like an angel's wing
had cut the very church of your
throat
because there is no air as holy as
your hair and angels know nothing
of how hot blood becomes when your
legs fit like a perfect strategy
around my kiss
and where are your swans when i need
the milk of your song to move me from
this dry deaf alone
37
taking to measure desperately the
length in rhythms of pulse skipping
walks on your far too still eyes
crossing journeys past death trying
to find broken self pieces to connect
your puzzle to mine
with eternity falling as silent as
destiny scurries throughout these
two half soul lives we pull our
distant corners inside out to fulfill
the wayward fashions of imaginations
peeling worlds to barely brush by
our enclosing circles so tightly
spinning into pirouettes
and though circles tend to spin dizzy
distant scents of almost loving that
lady so close a fate like a bubble
drags approaching minds from the
thought of an almost severe touch
38
how absurd are those little collections
of carefully visited memory that keep
me waiting shamefully near the edge of
an incredible empty fatigue that threatens
new romances with the certain crumbling of
universes that barely move as a too sweet
rendezvous stands on her misty face on
the affair of a fountain flower plunging
into the sparkling waters of random
circumstance
and then a piece of always terrible almost
extends no particular push of certainty
with its terribly soft petaled features
remembering her way of fitting into the
grooves of my flesh like her remarkable
breath had been forever sleeping beside
me
and the brighter forgotten i fall dwindles
into that tight trembling strike of the
eternal falling sound of lips resembling
a listening light that speaks through the
detailed puddles of finally looking laughter
that her perfectly embraceable shaped
silhouette sprays through me
and so i will fall silently above that
proud shape of her shoulders softly wading
in that kiss of beautiful echoed heart
where skin covered mouth throats quiver
into a redemption where i will understand
how untils fly into the pure rapture of
children
and so we play swimmingly in fountains of
flowers
39
there has never been a darker night
that covered me so completely with
dreams than the moons i spent inside
your sleepy hair
and the honey that surely drops from
your mouth to mine is sweeter than
every morning mist singing as thick
flying rhythmically into the sounds
of birds
and if you were in that mist shyly
holding that sound with your hands
(carved directly from the breath
of god)then i would stand as still
as a frozen flower hungering the sun
of your releasing that angelic spectral
rain
but when you hide there happens a
cry where every breeze freezes motion
until it melts into the scar that shows
the very wounded nature of not witnessing
the world of joy that blooms when you
appear
but when you open your hands even
if only to allow them to brush by your
hair the night meets the day and hours
of birds fly into the deep tranquil sun
of your face as songs seep into the
ears of a perfect world
40
a fool has fallen again like a
feather into the emitted breeze
of mouths from the same old remains
of eyes i remember blowing me into
that always dizzy memory where every
fragment of flesh held to your hands
like a slightly drifting smile
and those smiling lips have become
a hole so big that feathers may fall
forever twisting trying to catch any
smell of air besides the sudden
plunging you've caused in the music
of me
there is no easy reminder as soft
as pillows to catch my overflowing
pastures of veins from diving into
that always easy death of your many
lost kisses that swim through me
like a perfectly thin ice
so there was that defining moment
where you blew my equilibrium
throwing it from its axis and the
space that was made let me fall
through you never catching
and i knew
i just knew
41
hanging on for the rain where
every near goodbye i try pours
from the lungs of each empty
flying cloud storming dry to drink
one more breath of you
and if you breathe a drop in that
very small talking throat of yours
i know that a voice will overflow
with kisses filling already good
days with always better reasons
for your whole sound to dwell
inside my limbs to reassure this
shivering boy of your immense
warm breeze
and i won't fall hard enough until
you shake the leaves from this
tree of tired life where we could
have built houses from the growing
arms of our quiet embrace screaming
one body silently to the heavens we
might have encountered if the world
had remembered rain
but if in the winter of life i can
still rise and stand with a cold face
towards heaven i will ask for that
last hum of perfect wind to whisper
your voice as you almost hold my
hand with those deep rooted fingers
of a world descending into snow
then i will blind my eyes from
world's sky and allow its once
black rain to cover time as finally
happens to experience the white
everywhere of your kiss
42
as small as a man can become
is me feeling that necessary air
of breathing someone else's paradise
as an explanation chokes a reason
to hold tight to this huge everything
that has lost grip on our lives as
long as our lives ever allowed us
together gripping anything but the
death of what could have become
of forever
now as all those places of hiding
begin to hide themselves from my
longest finger of hope it looks like
a world might regain the consciousness
of always spinning to increase that
dizzy pain of how big nothing is
when we believe it
and the features of the very mirror
we become will finally glare at
something besides a piece of
relocated happiness as a light comes
on to enlighten the heart to feed
itself from the blood that flows from
your veins into my waiting life
and being simply anything as close
to you was like briefly tasting somewhere
a planet being born from what memory
produces in the ultimate misery of
eventually sleeping outside of your
dreams where i will never feel as
completely me as when you held
something so smally important as my
hand
43
it is strange dreaming like a poetry
where standing still makes like collapse
into little nothings that keep the mind
balance simply from awakening
worlds of wonder bounce across the
resting eye where an unquestionable
immediate translation flickers just a
little to postpone those many other
aching disturbances from growing
near as cold to the frozen touch of
revealing another personal injustice
and the mathematics of language
don't believe in poets or will ever
know how a word has no meaning
in the logical version of living that
caresses the hands of many cosmic
lovers breathing emotional medicine
like the air was words collecting form
on the page of a predestined symphony
but life is not a poetry and poetry is
nothing more than life(never standing)
with the bottom fell out
44
so tightly my fingers clenched to your
hand with as much strength that can
crumble from the muscles of an
unmendable heart broken all the way
to nerves of fantasy where this man
believed that folding his thoughts tightly
away from the woman he loves would
allow another to lie beside his soul never
really filling her place so prevalent a part
in me as those thoughts unfold and grow
abundant gardens around my mind that
only one can color into life
not saying much for hope which led
me as far to hear that voice so crisply
silver in my ears like an autumn fire had
blown a burn clear across this universe
i am inflicted with to allow for another
planet where i could have tried to live
in the falling waters of your tender mouth
catching some breath as you spill a
little verbal ballet all over me with the
feet of a million drunken birds dabbling
drink
but there is no place to hide from the
harmony of her that destiny has placed
on my house where all the fogging
windows will someday be wiped clean
by a finally hand unclenched by her eyes
so highly held with arms of elsewhere
skies where this universe will sparkle
everywhere spotlights as the delicate
teeth of an undying love will pour us
together down a cloudy throat covered
with heavenly blue water draining into a
star
45
i really can't stand from losing
all balance when her face like
cream melts into tears that for
many eternal moons had hidden
themselves in the bravado shine
of a forever dim sky dying to
hang proudly with all the many
stars where real smiles turn to
easy cries as the sun allows for
them no shame in pain
and if thoughts were energy in
that caressing her of my mind
then a possible something called
love might fry her numb skin so
severely scarred from feeling the
starlight of living in the barely
glimpsed truth you see when she
tries to open those hands to fly
but there is no touch to cure
her never shining hands that
only flew when they appeared
to be hurting little lovely things
like her heart when she was white
enough to touch something as
beautiful as herself
there is no nothing as near as
when an angel can't see that her
eyes are every freedom trying to
look inside her soul as she
suffocates on her own air squirming
for clearer skies
46
there were days in rooms that rose red
with flowers and bled sweat like heat
on fire
nothing would have ever prepared better
renderings of pain pulling at either side
of my mind like a romantic tendency flying
into a bad connection with the slightest
flavor of fuzz
windows have froze under the usual touch
melt of fingers to a face's reflection
too old to forget love and too young to
forgive her evolution
she has met wines with the twists of
fruit dancing with the seductive kiss
of that pretty mirror
and i'll spend forever looking up to
that picture of you that never ages
while i smolder at the edge of this
frozen border body never burning down
III. making sleep
47
only the madness of this whole
splendid levity keeps me back
behind a confused wall stretching
our final confrontation into waiting
for the first time your eyes might learn
the light that so purely is true
in my heart when everywhere you
move happens on to stumbling
slowly into eternity
so patience is a gift for sometimes
angels who never look for that
connecting flight to new lights like