Origami Moonlight: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2009-2012

you,

  holding tight to your tangle of a kiss

  while your hair is hot in my face—

  smells like something summer,

  i sneak a glance down at the neverland

  of your knees,

  slide my eyes down your ankles,

  and you sway just so,

  steal my breath away,

  and we both might as well just swim,

  get lost at sea

  12

  i marvel at your shy discomfort

  with your hands,

  hiding them

  then

  checking them,

  speaking with them and

  through them,

  finding your thigh

  then

  the back of your neck

  —all places i have memorized

  and you calm this nervous

  frenzy of fingers

  by resting them

  against your cheeks

  —a marvelous frame for a face—

  and your eyes gleam

  with natural wetness and

  i think of the years

  of beauty that remain,

  and i try to steal your self-doubt

  with smiles

  and flirtations—

  the telepathy of lips

  and whispers

  13

  her beautifully shaped shoulders

  are begging to be touched,

  she brushes by one,

  pushing her hair away,

  leaves the hand there,

  her fingers tracing the collar

  of the shoulder,

  pressing and playing on the bone,

  her head leans to that side,

  hair hangs down—a curtain for

  the theater of her face—

  and when she smiles at me,

  i snap the picture, frame it,

  pour it—melting hot—into my mind

  for when i am older

  and beauty is something that

  i find harder to reach

  14

  your full head of hair, brown and full

  of life, flush with the scent of flowers,

  is where the birdsongs go at night to

  find the warmest reasons to sing,

  and the landscape of your beautiful face,

  the muddy water that runs from your neck to

  your shoulders, is enough to cast siren

  songs against your bones between waves

  of sinful sensations,

  and to hear your voice, to hear the songs

  you stow in your hair, i would swim through

  any sea, storm any beach just to touch that

  face, that young skin, comb that perfect

  hair with my imperfect fingers, listen to

  the sleep of those softest strings vibrating

  all the stars awake, startled by the brilliance

  of your floating lilts, your hungry hums

  15

  she entered the room, all yellow in

  the summer light, half swallowed up

  by august's brightest fingers,

  and her silhouette was breathing, easing

  in and out of the bright wave of heat that

  caressed her,

  the curves of her body moved here and there

  like beauty molding itself from naked light

  and sun,

  and she—yellow with wonder and

  wake-up wishes—owned the light, smiled for

  every kiss she'd yet to taste,

  and the bright stain of electric lemon(and the

  sweet) from each kiss stuck to her mouth like

  wet paint

  16

  her waves of hair

  move back and forth

  through my fingers,

  the smell of surf and sand

  falls from those fronds,

  unfurling fruit strings

  and filaments of feathers

  to shock the skin

  with the simple thought

  of her kiss—

  like the sounds of birds

  off somewhere admiring

  the song of the sea—

  landing on my mouth

  with the softest feet

  of her lips,

  moving me like water

  moves the moonlight,

  lulling me

  toward dreams of sirens

  and effortless swimming,

  tickled by the tremendous tides

  of her hips and thighs

  17

  i'm careful when i touch her

  skin—so soft, so slippery—

  and when the sun opens up

  her body, limb by limb, from

  the darkness and the gray night

  bleeds into gold, the trees dance

  around her with leaves shimmering

  from shadows to shine,

  and i reach, carefully—not to protect

  her,

  no.

  but to hush the heat of my

  heart

  and she shutters awake, lets the

  dreams out from her hundred leafy

  hands, lifting the light with the brilliance

  of birdsong slicing open the night's

  silence

  18

  her happy, easy smile is barely

  visible through the mist of memory,

  but the sound of her speaking my name

  is like water pouring a better purity on

  a past's reflection,

  and her skin still shines through the

  haze of our history,

  and i breathe, keep the tide of time at a

  distance, push away all the noise, all the

  meaninglessness, embrace the infinity of

  nothingness(the wet clarity that dulls the

  aches of life),

  and i hold tight to the ghost of her, breathe in

  more of her old air, recreate the clarity of her

  wind blown hair in poems on condensation

  glass

  19

  that dreary, dull ache of

  life settles deep in the stomach,

  swimming down, down, down

  into the places dreams go to hide

  when sleep is a distant voice,

  hardly audible in the rain of this

  rancid routine of days,

  and all i do here in this vacuum is

  watch for lights, breathe in, and wait

  for the scent she carries with her—

  the flowers of life she tucks in her

  homes of hair,

  and the birds' breath she shares with

  the kisses in her mouth—the whispers

  and the shivers, the wash and the shores

  of her—is what makes sleep most serene,

  and what makes the days and the waiting

  so deliriously like the dust that shakes

  from dreams is the whimsy of a slow,

  summer rain building to a storm

  20

  i watch your sweet, sleep of a body

  stretch into a yawn,

  your arms reach toward last night's

  water, submerging the memory of

  our stars,

  and your arching back slithers into

  a mesmerizing curve—

  a magnificent Donatello coming

  uncracked

  and the morning muses of birds are

  singing for you

  and to my ears, your songs are popping

  up everywhere for me to pluck with

  these dreaming fingers, to taste every

  drowsy petal as poems shed my lips

  like an easy conversation with the rain

  21

  the symmetry of her face swings

  across my eyes like a swim,

  her tiny wrists l
ead to long fingers,

  married fingers, that lift her chin to

  a consecrated smile—a small curve

  of the lips, long and pinkishly full—

  and there are songs wiped across that

  mouth, melodies of moondrops that

  have grown from the rich night soil

  into sparks of stars arcing in the sky,

  and, as she sighs, and an ember somewhere

  explodes into sleep, i make a wish, a wish

  that permits me to hold the burden of

  something so heartbreaking, something

  as unfathomably soft as what's harnessed

  in her Hellenic hands

  22

  her wonders of legs move her

  across the wind with the elegance

  of wings, each step moving her

  further through the air than the

  birds that float beside her,

  and her breath—cool and white

  in this cold snap of a breeze—

  might as well be a sweet song of

  candy for the leaves, all of them

  falling to catch a hint of her kisser's

  mouth, her meaning,

  and she is the melody that the

  birds dangle by—just close enough

  for deciphers that dwindle into

  disciples of sing-song syllables

  23

  it wasn't her, her bangs falling

  in her face, her thin arms—tiny

  wrists. But it wasn't her. i thought

  i was sure from her profile that

  she was some sort of a unique,

  wonderful thing, and she was, but

  without the shine of the girl with

  heartbreak in her hair, the golden

  knowledge in her bright stare, that girl

  is the meaning of the search, she

  is the truth without words, and, in

  the fall, she is the wonder of

  the world, the color and the wind

  24

  she sits, reading, her white legs like

  cream dripping from her hips, pushing

  deep into the foreground, one leg crosses

  slowly over the other, and makes miracles

  from ordinary lines,

  and she is sweetly unaware of the

  amazing shapes she makes, oblivious

  to the geometry of her beauty, unknowing

  of the math in each meticulous bending of

  life's waves that compliment the softest

  arcs of a woman, young and beautiful

  and innocently glowing with modest

  deflection, leaving white circles burning

  in my eyes, breathing bright to dim and

  back again

  25

  i am dreaming of the spring fondles,

  pausing the world as the petals rain

  down against our flesh—

  fragrant with new life and

  deeper breaths—

  and your lips part and press against

  my fingers, and the trees shake off

  the winter with the warmest arms

  of leaves

  and hair

  and flowers

  26

  fragments of you materialize from

  the soft spatterings of rain,

  and the hard splash on the floor of

  dying leaves reminds me of the lack

  of you,

  the memory of autumns without you

  are prevalent and precious,

  places i remember where poetry breathed

  like great gushes of ghosts appearing to

  whisper your name in my ear,

  a great