Such Deliberate Loveliness: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 1997-2006

that closes and opens

  with the rhythm of reckless royalty

  7

  let us live the simple life where loving

  is intense and our bodies are fragile,

  but where the snow is always beautiful

  and white

  let us see the world through regular

  windows to watch the many people

  who wish to know the colors we know

  here in our house of spinning flowers

  spurting paint puddles on the walls of

  a planet we have imagined where we

  pick up pennies and the rain is cold but

  romantic

  but when i leave behind such rich portraits

  of you breathing on the windows of our

  world the place i see is anything but regular

  and i swear that you embody the snow,

  warm it up with your whiteness, and the

  months of marigolds you hold in the magic

  of your mouth need the colors from the rain

  we make when we forget the cold and

  remember the romance of a world people

  still wish for but can never have

  no matter how many pennies they pick up

  8

  sarah songs asleeping #2

  in each lullaby that i have written with

  these ignorant fingers trying to locate

  the right words to convey all that you

  are in a song so softly moving closer

  to those million measures of music you

  make while breathing a little sleep at

  night

  in all those late night songs there stumbles

  some sleep dust that floats through the

  stars like the electric rain running the miles

  of your mind on the blue feet of dream

  chasers to catch all the sounds you misplace

  every time you move the moon with your

  rhythmic rest

  and there is little time to collect the air of

  your singing with the care of creatures

  crumbling from the huge humming strings

  lighting up the stars that slide down the

  drizzle of a dream to come alive like the

  noise the sun makes when the morning

  meets the miracles you move in me each

  time you shake the dust from the drowsy

  droops of your eyes

  9

  of all the words i know i have

  heard none so crisp and artistic

  as the worlds you utter with the air

  you breathe in me like a voice were

  stained on the heart of a drying silence

  speaking names with lips as softly a

  sound of sea spray or a hunger

  somewhere filled with fruit

  and you scrape in me worlds carved

  from dreams so out of reach that

  only your hands have the depth to

  dig as far as to find them hesitating my

  breath long enough to die in the

  cool dancing light that reflects from

  the liquid you feed me when i am

  breathless inside the planets you

  pour on me

  10

  i have seen her hide under the surface

  of the sky's layer of softest blue but her

  shine is all the shimmer that bends over

  summer pools

  and her glow is every light we see at

  night in those pokes of sky called stars-

  and though i try and talk words as beautiful

  as her body lights up but the letters are lost

  when explaining how soft her fragile hands

  seem when i touch them

  or how her hair falls like freshly flowers

  flowing into shoulders so clean that the

  lillies that lie there melt milk all the way

  down her dangerous dangling arms-

  sometimes i hear songs or saxophones that

  sway stars like breath white in the cold where

  smoke appears to form some small sense of

  the stories her body tells when something as

  simple as that glide she displays walks with

  those fine awkward feet to fall on the air she

  flies through when she speaks short spurts of

  storms and sentences

  or you might hear a bird that flick whistles a

  wing on the wind of a breeze so spring that it

  smells something like her mouth when i bend

  to kiss it

  and it smells like a fresh rain trying to find her

  from the clouds she carries when she floats

  through the lake of the sky

  waking up the stars

  shaking off the shimmers

  11

  there are soft branches of elegant ice

  that fall from your freedom fingers

  to play thrills of sparks like a million

  chills up and down my mind when i try

  to think of something quite as perfect

  as the miraculous moonlights you can

  shine in your eyes or the layers of

  laughter you carry in your hair

  and crystal picture snowflakes spread

  their turbulent tendrils on the white light

  glass of cold world reminding me always

  to love your unique blueness that falls

  from the fantasy of a perfect girl to

  settle into you, an imperfect, but unique

  maze of woman that stems into a hundred

  hands when you touch me

  and fantastic worlds are nowhere when

  you lay your winter lips over me

  laughing through the air of your hair,

  blinded by the miles of moons you make

  when those bluelight showers shine a little

  frost from your fingers and freezes in me

  a memory of forever flowers frozen over

  you

  12

  this poem is for you when you are

  lying alone and i am away somewhere

  doing the things i do which is always

  me trying to come back to you wherever

  you are wherever you go that you can't

  hear me tell you those things i say when

  we are alone and whispering

  like softly words

  1

  i spend my solitary moments

  spreading the daylight sky out

  to expose the lights of hidden

  cloud called misty world for

  chances of exploding into a

  fit of rain that possibly could

  attempt, impossibly match, the

  taste as reckless and wet a

  place as your lips like a wind

  whipping the body with the

  voice of birds and lights flickering

  a summer buzz that drips into

  ecstatic water every time i

  remember you are mine,

  and it always rains when i

  catch your kiss

  a kiss that pours

  2

  your body is such a thing of mystery when

  it bends around for warmth letting or for

  my flimsy shape to perform something like

  cupping flowers under a wing of relentless

  softenings such as every fine little hair

  that like brilliant dust sparkles on your

  body like a wish watching heaven fade into

  the clumsy sun

  and if my arms can ever truly hold such a

  beautiful swallow of angel flesh then let me

  find one more time those eyes, as lazy a blue

  could be, so that sleep may find me happy as

  a glowing freedom to dream something as

  keenly miraculous as those rising lines

  rolling down the curves of these miles you


  call form

  3

  the holes in this house have no windows

  and these holes have their silence in the

  windy rustling of world that keeps blowing

  open new holes for me and you to sit by

  while together we discover each other again

  like a nearest beginning story so colorfully

  needing rebuilt

  and while the world outside those holes

  waits for us to rebuild our house we will

  fill those holes with all the colors we

  need and the air will always be perfect

  when we breathe it together like a clearest

  wind blowing kisses at the heart of this home

  4

  when my mouth has been absent

  from you for a time, a dry like folding

  paper flowers in the throat lies all

  around my taste having the effect of

  remembering a kiss so drunk the way

  a grape scatters juice when collapsed

  upon its fleshy soul while all around

  the tongue juices dance those crazy

  flavors on the tongue just for being

  once so gloriously alive within your

  lips so colorfully aged into that perfect

  shape of pink ideal that i so happily

  have drunk from

  5

  wedding poem

  today there is a light here in the center of

  us, an enduring light, a new shine, where we

  will pull the truth we tell from our hearts and

  push it all one into the other to combine our

  hearts with a kiss, and our light will shine

  brighter than everywhere white as the sky

  hangs us up again holding to the edges of

  our star

  and as we dangle this forever glowing life

  we are from heaven we will fall always

  further in a kiss, and more often in a touch,

  than any other star could ever imagine

  and as the rest of those lights fall storming

  all around us making wishes race to catch

  something like our love in the noise of the

  pouring rain, which is the only place that

  feels as wonderfully right as when we let

  our light out to play, i will be wishing only

  to hang by you

  to shine for you

  6

  i have stared hours into days as the

  companion of the sky shaping my nonsense

  hands to try and catch a cloud that knows

  the softness of, and unspeakably throughout,

  your body as day falls like a perfectly

  clothing around me whenever i think of us

  meeting at night

  and only never can i remember a vision so

  blue an eye that god has so gracefully given

  the world two as the ones that touch me with

  the embrace equivalent to a star's hugging

  that always midnight blur so quickly blushing

  for the kiss of a morning wrapped around your

  waist

  all the life i am and all the world i be is in need

  of as much mercy as a weakness can be waiting

  for you to give me that part of world that hides

  so modestly