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

unhuge between the weight of your

  every hair(that lifts all sentiment to heights until

  now unmeasured)

  so i descend a fall that lies not a little amazed as

  pieces of your magic emerge up from under the

  grass giving spring every uncountable reason to

  raise effortlessly warmth that, like a flower,

  causes the world to imagine its nowhereness

  while still admiring the sun that shines from

  within your curved lips

  and all the new days that approach patiently wait

  to be counted but even the sun knows nothing of

  the future warmth having not met your toes under

  the blankets of our world's bed

  nothing, there can be nothing, that scrapes speechless

  as often as when one, like softly words, fails to

  describe properly

  my love

  rhythmless kisses

  1

  the animals of my hands push me to poems,

  they stretch and reach, these cartoons of fingers,

  flesh pressed flesh remembering sparks, whispering

  softly, breathing like wishes over water, floating on

  a pause, standing on a kiss, tiptoed and tumbling

  across the tides of your eyes, the geography of your

  limbs, my mind making maps to visit you again

  i measure the miles of moonlight that roll over

  the mischief of your thighs at night, i see butterflies

  in your hair and listen for love letters in your laugh,

  i draw lyrical lines the length of your legs, laid out

  like new olympus, quieting me, leaving me blackeyed,

  hit like breath on the surface of a puddle bending the

  length of your light, bouncing like an echo on a breeze

  i will travel the bumps of your body, traverse the

  short hills of your hips, my lips will submerge

  the flesh of scars near and far, and my arms will

  climb the milky miracle of your shoulders ending at

  the mystery of your lips where i will learn over and

  over again that i will never know too much to stop

  journeying you, and that the woman you are will

  always be what measures the man in me

  2

  and when the wind crumbles up and down our bodies

  like the same shiver that shoots all over when the rain whistles

  a sensational drop of liquid warmth from your clever hair

  that recalls every shock of static kiss you have ever poured

  on me with the shock of your sleepy lips tangling from smile

  to frenzy so quick that the brain shakes to forget that dreams

  have come real and that real is better than ever before

  and we will fall our bodies from that kiss our arms like limbs

  so elegantly complicated and suspended by the water that drips

  from the leaf of this tree that we tangle into every time we touch

  and from that tree will fall something so beautiful with little

  loops of laughing in her tiny eyes and smiles so big that she

  will swallow all the rain from this wondrous pool of blue

  painted sky that we have stretched out with our hands to

  conjure miles of music mouths so important that she will

  never lose the lovely of the lake you lay on me with stems

  so soft and petals so puddled that the pastures of my pleasure

  will burst into a magnificent miracle of something alive and

  breathing

  and she is so quiet

  so quietly breathing through the trees

  3

  the patterns of your pulse press against

  me, swim into me, suck my air out with

  the suffocating stupidity of serendipity

  you collapse crazy corpse-like all across

  my rivers, waiting, slaving for forgotten

  kissing—holding my head under the water

  of dreams, drowning in the delusion of

  desire and daisies,

  you smell like coming alive again—new

  and flower-like with your fruit so bursting

  and sour and awe

  4

  i have hid you in holes so deep in the desert of

  my delusion that the sun has fizzled free and full

  of light and burst out on its own legs to walk your

  sweet shine all the way back to me for fire eating

  and when I turn from the flame you fire every time

  your skin shimmers that silver gleam of truth bound

  by hope and future, I surrender my lips from the water

  that has fed my forgetting and let my mouth burn in

  the miracle of that meticulously crafted melody that

  manufactures your body out of music and memory

  and those legs are so tenderly sweet, sliding like sugar

  from the hymns of your hips to drip drops of delightful

  rain causing watershed rainbows to erupt like a river

  were laughing at your lovely, lifting those lily pink

  petals of pouting lips to open wide for a comedy of

  kisses, and the clowns we are collide when our eyes

  touch the smile of the sky opening wide for god to see

  the true eden splashing spectacular in angel puddles so

  plush and potent that even the clouds breathe and bang

  bashful

  and when the crooks and crannies of reflecting on you

  glows so pretty that i fall again, tumbling down the tornadoes

  of your tongue, twisting winds so brutal that i have built

  myths to hold your mystery, and the resolution can not be

  uncovered, and the passion can not be contained—it can

  only hide in the hot haze of the holes you hug in my heart

  waiting for the water of your way to wash me ragged, weary,

  and awake

  5

  ambling across this dimly lit heaven with only

  the light of her magic(al) shining out like a star

  beneath the skin of palest sky breathing a fragrance

  that floats from her throat like a fury of flowers

  finding new suns on the shores of her damp rivered

  lips

  i try to catch her when she is dark and hiding like

  a memory coming together inside me where

  a music(al) i remember shares a rhythm with

  the weather and i clumsily unlearn that you can’t

  wrestle with the rain

  but she hovers on a pause, plays shadow games

  with her fingers, blows hesitation kisses to send

  me swinging on the air of the feathers in her hair

  bursting from my hands with a bird song opening

  up to blow a breeze into whistles like firing holes

  into falling stars

 

  and this myth minds her magic, careful always

  not to expose secrets or sky whispers where clouds

  climb and collide a commotion to set the starlit

  scenery for a storm where a love(ly) might drip

  to smear the honey down the sugar walls of earth

  like a kiss of fattest rain that smothers delightful

  flowers and plants the seeds for new seasons where

  sun stains will grow more songs when the darkness

  is led to a stupid silence as it succumbs to a weakness

  where all air is lost watching her wipe the dust from

  her hair with the effortless grace of a new snow falling

  breathlessly white, slowly covering my body’s house

  with her whispering

  6

  we catch smiles in lumps and handfuls when we fly

&n
bsp; our dream wings, climbing our sleepy staircase towards

  the sky, twirling a dizzy dive into the cool liquid of the

  maps we have made with the new sensations we have

  blessed with our delicious bliss

  and we have swam in the milky swamp syrup of

  cloudy strands, walked on the whimsy lights of stars

  that spin downstream, hovering behind us, shining to

  silhouette our embrace

  the moon waiting to sing songs to our swimming

  our bodies dance and drip a floating ballet, and we

  surface to breathe the air of contrived clouds, resting

  our tangled limbs on the cotton of this foggy fantasy that

  we frame into a portrait to hold near our beds when we

  are away and waiting for more walks in the wonderland

  of deeper and deeper underwater, when we were collapsing

  into kisses, colliding our bodies, skin clanging elegantly

  making cathedral sounds in our memories like a vibrating

  hymn to shake the spirit from somber, bending the delusion

  into a wonderful wet hide-and-seek where the waterfalls

  in our eyes see the life that flows between us when we

  were praying for the flood, believing in the splashes we

  made sleeping, touching our fingers together, floating

  on a dream

  7

  the touch of you is a rhyming that

  i can’t or won’t hear again the same way

  —when we were young and tired is way

  gone away—kisses were new and full

  of tastes unknown—your eyes saw things

  unseen in me like snow covered lilies breathing

  cloud candied hearts—beating for this “i am”,

  beating for that “you are”

  yet hiding, unfolding itself from the great wide

  mouth, is a mystery holding a newborn kiss that

  opens and closes, twists and turns words, and

  whispers into songs that when heard years after

  will still turn the heart like a turnstile clicking

  one more life ago, playing movies with smells

  wafting into the memory—igniting the soul to

  spurt that picture of you i remember but can

  never seem to touch the same way, standing

  in a crowd of trees full of ripe kisses, unpicked,

  unbreathed—rhythmless kisses waiting for my

  heart to hear your rhyming again

  8

  you are a color on my heart, a purplish puddle

  made so deep to saturate my dreams with

  the truth you made simply by curling your

  hair with clumsy mouth fingers or the scandal

  hidden where the