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

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