Of Wanting and Rain: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2007-2009
Paul Hina
Published by Paul Hina
Smashwords Edition
Copyright ©2011 by Paul Hina
1
the spring is awakening something new and
marvelous in the soil of your soul and the
flowers that will rise from the heat will ride
a wave called whispering waters that allows
for drinking thigh smiles all the way to the
heaven of your hive where honey hovers like
a new bulb floating on the stem of a breeze
called breathing kisses where the sun hides
from the sounds of wondrous hums and whistles
called love’s own singing
and a bashful cloud bursts into water waiting to
see the world fall into another paused passion
hiding dreams in the pistils of the saints’ most
sunlit soldiers called sex and pouting petals
all the way down the hips of hoping to catch
another taste of your strategic kiss that kills
another crime like a crying were coming undone
in this magnificent heartache of hot tendrils and
vine wrapping kisses like a christmas mystery
coming uncracked in the dry pollination of a
passionate thing,
a delirious song to sing later when caught by the
flowers in the powerful showers of these laughs
of rain
2
spring is a creature that crawls like a
slightly softer whisper than the breath
of a buzzing in the heart where you float
on the air of knowing that your blood is
warm when hands find your hair like fingers
were standing them up on the end of a
sleepy sensation in the snowy reckoning
of a kissable wing so fragile in the storm
of something bigger than slippery sex or
as jagged as drowning to death in the dance
of your elegant tickling arms making laughs
out of the sporting shine from my soul, which
is a conscious thing waiting to wake you up in
a dream for game playing and secret saying
3
i’ve been telling her i love her like that
in the wind,
blowing kisses and hand butterflies
like a dream slipping through her fingers,
like writing a poem in the sand
4
your voice is a sound caught by child
fingers clutching the lights of fireflies
on summer nights where boundless worlds
reach tiny arms toward the universes of
your speaking
and the stars don’t shine like they used to
when you were tired and yawn-sending
like blowing a dream to the places i hide
where whispering means something slower
than sex but stands as still as a finer rhythm
coming unhinged like a door opening to let
all the light out of your mouth for twilight
kisses
but we try to fly our wings further than
breathing when in the deeper water of
soundless sleeping where boundaries
release, finger by tiny finger, separate
bodies, flesh reaching into flesh for a
house full of dreams and summer
singing like the birds waking up whistling
new kisses, warming up playthings
5
the memory is a busying thing that
revolves around a history of remembering
and forgetting
and i am much too young to lose any of those
movies of people that rotate my brain like a
heart on a leash
and yet someday i’ll be too old to remember
who i forgot
6
the remembering is a touch that falls
on me so dizzying like a blood swirling
down my brain to my bones for a warm
birth of memory waking from simply
unconscious stupidity to those worlds
i fly though in the dreams where my
fingers slide down your hair and the air
is always good for breathing little parades
where all those new kisses march across
your body like the numbing of the mind
might stomp a song that sounds loud enough
to keep the outside light from poking an awakening
hole into this ghost where our bodies float across
old waters and everywhere just happens to be wherever
you are and everything is alive and dancing to the
melody that climbs the skies of our whispering rhythm
7
love is a terrible place to plant your wishes
when the heart is a noisy house and harvesting
a little quiet touching is interrupted by old
blood rinsing out those memorable midnight
imaginings to swim in the new bittersweet
wash of kiss-blowing that paints the walls of this hope
called flower the color of something clean and
unremarkable like a girl balancing her flimsy
feet on a string, waiting for the hands of my heart,
waiting for some seeds of sun to sprinkle a little
starspray on the lips of awakening anew everyday,
listening to little breathing you,
counting the petals of my wishes,
washing them with rain soaked fingers,
caressing them with hope stained hands
8
of all those places you so frequently visit
within me, the afternoon light best reflects
a none too subtle magnificence of memory
with its effortless recklessness to shout a
shine on how bright and beautiful you are
when you make mouth movements like
climbing onto lakes of lips where conundrums
and kaleidoscopes come undone to spill on
some heart-stirring or kiss-making to fall
into love puddles where the sun’s brightest
whiteness will protect our perfectly puzzled
bodies ashine with sparks and silences,
sensations and stupefying sex creations,
stumbling onto the stilted stars,
colliding into the curiosity of clouds
9
she’s got a thing, an elegantly broken thing,
a pose of swirling chaos when she spins a
flight of fingers through her thick hands of hair,
and when the lights lie like a sleeping shush
where drowsy deludes into dreams where those
somber strands fall all down from the open
windows of sky climbing where beds are clouds
and blue is the water we drink in this cool, clumsy
daydream,
and she shakes gold from her shoulders like
growing a new glowing where flutes fly like
music mesmerized by the breeze she blows when
she stumbles to snag so simply on a breathing,
and a bird sings somewhere about the
delicate branches of her arms which wrap the
world up like a neat little box called bliss where
she blows bright blind spots all over new painted
nature with the air somewhere far off plotting a
whispering campaign against the colors she
concocts every time she collides with the clues
she provides when she shines so simply with
effortlessly hands concealing eternity like a
smile that hides the mouth from a kiss
10
i can hear her rain
on me with her whispers
of fingers
i can feel the sky streams
dripdropping some melodious
miracles as her hands clutch
deeply—
my hair
and the mayhem left like
mixing milk and flesh is
a crashing so thundered
to open doors to dreams
after a little drowsy diving
into the deep sex of these
downpours
11
what was it in your eyes that sent me diving
into the water of way gone days, like puzzles
coming together in the heart, like blood collecting
pools in the gut for sick-making love
and i knew that i had to steal you with thief-slick
hands from the brilliant light that held you away
from me, like a breeze blowing a butterfly away
from its flower, caught between the shadows of
life and the shine of a thousand rainbows waiting
to glide in some sun-sliding after the rain that wakes
you from a slightly softer whisper than sleep and
finding you fallen from dreaming into my arms
for a little milk of flesh stirring flesh and
honey-dropping-mouth-tastefullys like a kiss
resting on the clumsy continuum of the cascading
curtains of your hair, waiting for me to touch it again
with a tickle to the face, a torch on the spine,
just to breathe its air again,
just to hear it come inside me like a clumsy crook one
more time,
stealing me under water for crimes and soft collisions,
holding my quiet body under the deep, down, and dirty
noise of god
12
and someday you and i will die
and there will be errant pieces of
dreams that float someplace beneath
life's reach and dive toward the us-places
where once worlds fell through the cracks
of sleep, dripped into the drain of the
mind turning us inside out and into the
unconscious water of silvery starlights
and drowning is a desire where wishes
retreat for songs that twirl down-and-all-
around like two dizzy(wonderful) pieces
have come—finally—together for the most
yellow of rests
13
spring is an unclumsy awake hand
that shakes the 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 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 sleep
40
there are pictures i hide, movies that slide like secret
lights when i lie in bed, waiting to sleep, swimming in
and out of the shine of some memory, some mouthful
of a kiss, a word spoken but not heard because voices
—beautiful vibrations of throat waters—are the first to fade
into the distance of years,
and yesterday you were telling me things about tomorrows
and forever, and today you are a quiet movement in my mind,
a spot of silent light fading into a different dream where voices
matter half as much as their mumbled meaning
41
we have made colors, earth shades,
floating into space tendrils,
stars have spoken our names
we have swam in the muck of water that surrounds
the planets we have planted with wishes and
kisses
we have laid down to dance, drowned in the
lazy yellow lights of sex streams to watch the
flowers of the stars tumble into storms
and we massaged blooms from our fingers,
stepped into pasture's paradise with the
stomps of our feet, sinking away in stupefication,
buried in a beautiful bath of black holes
where nothing is hidden
and everything exists
42
you left me with a wing,
a sprightly thing,
to touch and remember
the weight of your face,
the softness of a smile
waiting to be kissed,
a laughing of hands and
a flight of fingers
that takes years to recite
even with poetry piling up
on a man trampling time away
in search of the tiny truth
you hide when you slide your
body out like some cloud succumbing
to the blue that birds drink in the
rarefied air of stretching for the stars,
breathlessly reaching for the wonders
that you reflect in way-away water
43
something i can not touch about you rises and falls,
opens and closes around my heart,
fading in and out of this musical mind i have,
collapsing like a cubist mirror on the river of
memory which washes away old hands for new
touches,
and though it comes and goes—this song—
it can hardly be heard,
(the sound your throat made when it was waking up
my name) and though its mouth speaks and kisses,
it can not feed the heart the same leaping,
the jumps and dives in the gut,
the slips and slides in the chest,
when you used to find your fingers falling somewhere,
anywhere across my body, and though the music
is a meandering watery flow of blurs and shadows,
there is a place you still sing when i stop for a swim
in the silent stream of dreams,
which allows for no time,
no limits on the landscapes we color when we hide
love from this real world,
this weary chase i make,
windburned and running to catch that drink of river
you painted on me with the patience of whispers and
waterfalls,
all flowing back to here—right here
44
who cares about love poems or lollypops?
who knows anything about the mystery of her hips?
or the breath of god?
but when the lights go down and i lie with the
summer sweating all around me,
i skate across those winter skies—
those twinkles of eyes like sparks fighting for shine—
and, from the air, a cool, foggy breath shakes my heart
awake, and my pulse stutters and
there is something like a snowy vibration
that sends a smile like a race up my spine
who cares about metaphors or daffodils?
who knows anything about the shape of her shoulder?
or the depths of death?
but when i trip about on the winter lights tonight
i wake up the stairs of stars, climbing
the dreams of songs that slip through the fingers
of her hair,
and i hang on until
there is a rush of blood swarming in my sleep
that leaves a trail of snow angels leaping in my
throat, flying in the drink of a wintery kiss
45
the wild strawberries of your kiss still visit me
on days when the sun is full of steam and the body
moves with the slow deliberateness of lips opening
and closing for unconscious kissing,
and the sound of your breathing is a further
articulation of the lazy curl of your hips swaying to
a rhythm of the only dance that matters, our bodies
swinging and sliding down the miles of moons we
have imagined with make-believe hands
(and there are still secrets i carry with me to bed at
night),
but your voice is a place i have lost when it
is quiet and the world teeters on the buzz of wanting
to stack a string of wonderfuls on the stubborn stars
of this slightest swim of sleep,
and the mind waits for better birds to fly with
weightless wings, floating on the feathers of long
done days where every whisper was a meditation
on touching, where the lights were languid and
lying loosely on a dream, unwilling to fade, eventually
going quietly away and distant from reaching with
ripe fingers feeling for stolen strawberries, as sweet
and sad as the summer rain
46
asked about inspiration, i take a muse breath—
leave little replies all over the air as if crystals of lazy,
streaming snowflakes were sliding streaks of girl
silhouettes all over the strands of these skies—
instead of stuttering some stupid statement colored
by mumbled metaphors and missed kisses
as i walk away from questions, i wonder, even myself,
why your hands hold all the pretty flowers, their curves
and their colors, their fragility?
what do the stars say that make me hear your name at night?
and why is it that the better beauty of the beasts we are
bubbles, always, back to you, inviting friends and fingers
over for poems, lovely lie-down lullabies that decorate my
heart with meaningful metaphors and bluer moondrops
that shine for paper birds, waking up words full of wanderlust
wings and willow trees?
47
was your love thing a more alive thing than my love thing?
or was your thing a lesser, simpler thing perched delicately
atop floors of flowers, superficially swimming in a slush of
sparkles, a delusion of sweet spots tossed with tired kisses?
and was my thing a reckless, scared thing twisting in
the trickery of whispers on webs, sick with heart stains,
tumbling through the vertigo of violence in your hair,
trying to catch a better balance from the lovely brutality
of our thing?
and my thing wanted to grow more things,
and your thing was a dull thing, a playing thing, like
something that melts quickly on the tongue,
but your thing was as sweet and soft a thing as my thing
and i still carry my thing, kept quietly alive, tied to the
head of my heart
48
i've watched you run through flowers,
your hair on fire from the sun, your mouth
hiding a laugh from a kiss, and the face of your
heart turns in for sunny smiling, tucks a picture
of this—this piece of us—in a pocket you hide away
for later dreaming,
and the world leaks something like a meaning in
the moment(immeasurable) between your hand
and my hand,
and a touch happens, breathes with the echoes
of eternity water and calmly pours somewhere rain,
burying our bodies in the dirt for mud dancing,
pushing delightful daisies all the way to the top of
death, as delicious and sweet as your lips, dappled
that day with sunshine and slowness
49
she has spilled secrets like stormbursts on this paper,
hidden sentences like kisses that phrases have forgotten,
and the sounds of these secrets sail on subconscious waters,
sing through the sands of this dream, constructing mythic
castles from the quiet carnal whisperings of the water,
asking the night to count how many seasons have past
since last your fingers found my face,
and i have searched the days, page after page, but the
dumbness of everydays are not somedays and the truth
knows no hair like the strings i have erased from your
face,
and love letters get lost in the lazy sound of a larger lullaby,
a melodic pause where a pleasure pierces—carefully, precisely—
some small sound that makes silences from words i never
spoke, but have never stopped uttering
50
i remember laughing in the water with you,
our clothes sticking to our bodies, wet and warm
with laughter, your hair stuck to your face, and
a memory streams across my mind's window
like a dream of your fingers, clasping my hand
as you lean in for a kiss,
—and it is true that kisses are always softest after
the rain
and i can taste salt now, flavors that trace the
shape of the heart,
—and the heart is a hardest thing to recreate,
but i chase that vision, still, quietly, and when
no one else is listening, i reach with hands washed
by whispers to wish the wisps away from your lips,
—and, yes, kisses and rain are a truest thing
51
you are still the sweetest stain, suffocating my heart
with your old singing, bouncing breath sounds and
word strings across all my useless dreams and
finally you are somewhere other than an echo
crossing my mind with lay-me-down lips or find-me
fingers, but
eventually these mouths, mindful of missed kisses,
might chew some new stardust, make a softer song,
steal a smaller singing from the music of your moons,
but
you are still a quiet that even thieves can't know,
and you hold a hunger in your hands that feeds endlessly
reveries,
and i can not stop your stillness, or escape the simplest,
most basic beautifuls you are, hiding again, always, a stain
of an echo in my heart(soft as death's slowest hand, as white
and perfect as where life might have been bent)
52
what is the poetry in a distance,
the colors and the shapes of your
hours? how does time count your
petals away, measure the meaning
hidden up and down the length
of your legs?
there are answers in your art, but
shhh-shadows cover all your kisses
that might, maybe, lay lazily across
your face for teasing the lights with
possibly perfect sex smiles and
sneers
and the slow recognition of the
softest lines bent and sprayed by
your silhouette are something as
quiet and deliberate as a breath
pushing a whisper from a secret
but there are theories that travel
the distance of the heart and the
mysteries you make are as white
and perfect as the hope i hang
on this poem
53
sometimes i taste a memory of your kiss,
or breathe the air that surrounds you while
standing next to moonbeams—bathing in melted
blue light—
but even these pieces are only shadows
of the heartlights that used to reflect from your eyes
when you looked in my direction
like every time was the first time
and that life was an echo where the full moons of
your eyes would always lay its lazy pale waters on
me, carrying the air of my breath across the ripples
that forever shine, one light rolling after another,
over the brilliance of your body
54
the air is hungry for your kiss,
and i have tasted other loves,
eaten my way through daydreams
and measured all the miles
of moonlight that have been
shining since your muse has
met me
but even as i make mischief
from the recipe of your touch,
you are still the only and every
real thing i have ever touched,
and you are the only most tiny
and delicate wish that i have ever
wanted to hold,
and, though you can’t be held,
you have left stains on my fingers,
whispers on my palm, that will never
let me touch another without hearing
your name,
seeing your colors in every sex breath
that sails back to all those meanings we
made when we were all the music and
none of the noise
55
the fingertips of your kiss,
the stain in your song remains,
drips across my dreams where
i search for language and meaning,
sunshine and warmth
like sex or
your teeth caught in some stupid smile,
like a joke catching you by surprise, or
a chill told you a story about love or
like something i said rung a bell inside
you
56
the light of your legs tangles up and down me for moon
drinking, and the slippery splendor of all those specks
of starlight that lazily float in your eyes are like a slowest
memory were coming unhung from a dream to drop tiny
remnants of rain across my hair for gush drops and
gasp breaths waiting for another kiss, another taste of
the mush of your mouth
and the shape of your shine is swimming like some silly
string that flies around my fingers when i lay hands, like
some softly blown prayer being answered, on the flesh of
your waist and run my palms—warm and weathered by old
hopes—up and down that curve where all meaning is measured
and every thought chases thighs to fingertips and the lips drop—
droopily dripping kiss-wishes, waking up the waves, mixing all
the milk of the moon
57
the saddest song of rain washes out the old heart places
where you walk,
steps steeped so thick in the muddy rhythm of the rhyme
of this rain and the sound of its loveliest consequence opens
an eye,
waits for the wash to walk you away again,
and the gut grabs the heart,
tugs and pulls out all the wires and the weeds
and presses on a pause for the wonder of your rain,
falls like the first time—a cloud on full pour
58
her hands like the softest hammers on the heart are
the masks of all those make believe touches gesturing
to a kiss that fades into some song being whispered by
the faintest flute fluttering her wings of legs to tie a knot
around my memory of her mouth, the shape and color of
her pinkest pours of lips
and some soundless warm thing, as precise and ecstatic
as the whitest snow, crawls into my ears and somewhere a
star of sweetest silence has touched the end of the blackest,
most beautiful infinity with the calm fingers of her lips
clasping a kiss like a petal to a palm
59
to rest a hand on her hip is like slipping time through
a kiss, the breath of my name on her lips like a glass
of rain spilling on my heart,
and yet her fingers are far away, and her taste is
something i remember on nights lit by moons and