Of Wanting and Rain: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2007-2009

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

  wine lights that leak little sounds and sudden trembles

  across the window of a place i can hardly touch from

  a wish on a reach

  but still she slays me with that smile, even vaguely

  reflected on this frosty glass of my tired eyes, barely

  hearing her whisper something to take with me to that

  grave, a lovelier thing to dance with while i'm dead and

  deeply dreaming

  60

  i try to mimic your shape with the weight of these words,

  attempt to curve your lines with the sound of some silly

  syllables like lying a softer whistle down across your body

  with the sweetest air resembling the lazy whippoorwill, or

  the tumbling of ceramic snow, as loopy and lilywhite as

  the streams of your skin

  and yet all that wakes is the water, the ever-moving wave

  of a moment melting into the mind like the drips of winter

  dreams falling from the skies of a dustier music that makes

  meaning from the memory of the sun pouring around the

  breath of your body, cresting over this kiss

  61

  i grab words with rain soaked hands,

  push clouds away with punctuation

  and celebrate the sun with singing

  because today is spring,

  and the light lays you near me again,

  and i have been waiting all winter

  for the snow to go,

  for darkness to die,

  and for you to shine a little smile on me,

  your hair, yellow like it used to be, once,

  when we were really alive and words

  were not as important as time

  and kisses and.... breathe

  —it's spring and you are so lovely

  in this light,

  a shower of warmth and memory and

  rain-stained words

  62

  this sky holds a thousand star stories, and their

  shine reflects against our dreams like mirrors on

  the water, undisturbed with quiet

  and the lights of these stories, old ones and new ones,

  bend across the back of some beautiful girl i've never

  bothered to forget,

  and the water shakes a little from a breeze

  —the softest reminder of spring—

  and i come out the other side of this sleep

  holding starlights in my hands, waiting

  for a place to let them shine on the heads

  of angels, or on the heels of the dew of

  flowers with color and cool rain,

  making waves like making love on the water

  of a story caught in the shimmering light of

  slippery sky, skating across the lines of her

  dawdles of dawn and the droops of shoulders

  bending to the shore

  63

  you are a house of light in my heart,

  a place where the rain of the world can't

  find me,

  a place where the moon makes puddles

  of blue flame bounce off the walls,

  where, when the sun rises, you are seen

  waiting in the doorway to a bedroom,

  holding the yellowest rose beneath

  your mouth,

  watching a petal fall, and me,

  catching it with kisses and plumes of

  hands, caught in the bright beast of your

  brilliant heat,

  listening to the calm of the rain on the

  roof of my heart

  64

  we walked in the mute moonlight—

  only the sound of our hands coming together

  to keep us company,

  tangling fingers into that pop love makes when

  it breathes that first newest air of folding two

  hearts into a dance of paper red plumes

  and a white wind chases us down the street like

  the lights had come on in all the sleeping houses,

  and a kiss happens, quietly decorated with the

  dabbles of darkness, hiding in the shadow of a new

  spring's arms,

  and the blood runs to our fingers and we fall into

  a folded heart, fumbling into its filaments

  65

  we wrestle the water, kicking wishes

  around with our toes, climbing our limbs

  for breathing through the mist-kisses that

  float around this dream,

  and the shape of a stone angel, smiling

  above us, pouring sex and cold sensational

  rain over our heads, leaving shivers to smile

  and stain the skin of your face, your

  laughing face,

  and you wrap those perfectly clear legs

  around my waist and i slowly—softly

  submerging—sink down, counting the stars

  in your eyes as they delicately fall into

  the shimmering sky of this cool drink

  of most spectacular drowning

  66

  your hair lays lazy on your shoulders,

  muddy streaks dripping from your neck

  like fingers spreading across your back,

  your head tilts far to one side, stretching

  the skin where the melted cream of your

  shoulder creates a valley in that spot

  where the hollow meets the bone

  and you write words across my mind,

  scrawl sentences and sensations with

  your leaning towers of fingers, writing

  love letters to language with the art that

  science has solved with your face: your

  soft features, your lips, those kisses yet

  to be sent, muddy memories yet to be

  caught

  67

  today the pink blooms are

  popping on the stooped trees

  you stand to tiptoe into a clumsy pirouette

  and i bend to drink a cup of rain

  68

  looking up and seeing you smile—

  the sun playing like a halo around

  your head—

  and there was so much happiness dancing

  that day:

 
my head resting on your lap,

  your perfectly long fingers traveling

  the thousand different strings of my hair

  and i know that moments move, the past

  suffers delusions and dream world additions,

  and yet somehow the rules went south that day,

  and that sun 'round your face—that glow of a face,

  a face burned in my memory's movie—has forever

  preserved that slowest, yellowest stillness, sent it

  to another star, where it waits for us, holds its shine—

  until its time

  69

  the water of my hands rushes down

  the hills of your hips, and the fingers

  of these hands are like stones—smooth

  and numerous—skipping across your thighs,

  waiting for the magnificent mind of your

  most feminine flow, where the falls meet

  the stones and i rise, dripping and drowned,

  to your lips and we speak in languages

  silent to the seas and the stars, only echoing

  in the flesh, flashes that stay damp even

  when the rivers have all run dry

  70

  i have ranted and raved all these years,

  raising words, planting poems in honor

  of this thing you are, this truth we told,

  our bodies sharing secrets,

  and minds can’t retain, hardly remember,

  meanings and shapes that hide away in

  dreams, beneath softer songs

  and yet every spring, for a moment, when

  the best of first beauties peel open for sun

  peeking, i hear the words again, faintly, and

  i lean in and feel your breath on my face, brush

  my hand by an echo of your hair and try to

  remember, again, that your kisses are where

  i find all these forgetfuls, all these first flowers

  of fullest love

  71

  the air we share was once so thick

  and full of flirtation that gasps could

  be heard from passers-by

  and there was a dance, a stillness in

  the anticipation, the clutter of the chaos

  of hands and arms,

  and the world slowed a turn, just enough

  to fade into a kiss, closer and closer to

  the absence of language and shapes,

  a place where i can feel your eyes

  and scream your name without

  ever opening my mouth, touch your

  face without catching my breath

  72

  her hair lays lazily across her head,

  her face—seriously beautiful—is

  decorated by naturally reddened

  flesh, like softly roses waiting for

  smiles to rain the petals down to

  blow through a windy laughing

  where lips wait to speak but gasps

  for possibly kisses

  and her hands hide her knees

  —together things—hiding something,

  hushing the voice of secret telling and

  storm selling

  but there is that waist, a place for

  hand-clutching and breath-catching,

  somewhere to hide my wishes, wait

  for her sun to help them bleed and

  grow

  73

  the way she curls inside herself, her body—

  a delicate tangle of limbs—fitting together

  like dreams etched around the shape of her

  sleep

  but she doesn’t know how sweetly she sculpts

  my heart, how her hands teach me silence,

  and her feet, propped up on the wings of the air,

  are songs to fragility,

  and though i am careful with words and clumsy

  with hands, she has softly whispered a breeze,

  a drizzle of electric rain falls on my face

  from the buzz of her breath,

  and as she presses her fingers into her lips she

  makes me know hope, wallow in pictures to

  wake the wishes of her mouth

  —careening on a kiss—

  her sweetest wash of hair sweeping across my

  face like fidgets or shivers slithering against the

  softest snow

  74

  the way her legs cross is

  like some movie opening,

  pictures breathing into life,

  reminders of something

  prettier than ordinary,

  a delicate reminder of a

  something higher than the real,

  a superficial reminder of beauty,

  a nudge toward the truth,

  but the truth is a plundering

  thing too, a leak of words that walk

  knowing that knees and lips are

  where all the world comes together

  and the sun projects a shine on my

  body as i witness a flicker of her

  slightest gestures—

  a girl being the greatest art,

  evidence of better perfections

  75

  as the rain dapples a design

  across this world, we do not

  hide our wet hands, washing

  our bodies like some frenzy

  were alive in our flesh

  and it is no accident that we

  drink these kisses with the

  thirst of desert thieves looking

  for cactus hearts—the way i

  surgically massage your throat,

  rinsing away your floods of hair

  with my fumbling falls of fingers,

  flicking thunderbolts away with

  disdain for competing electricities

  and the world is dark around this

  frame we are, flickering frenetically

  lights, fireworks in this wettest of

  desert desires

  76

  there falls a drizzle of a dream

  out this window, a veil of rain

  falling as the weight of your body

  decorates my body,

  and your hair tickles my face with

  its fluid fingers and laughter fights

  its way into this dream and we fly

  ourselves out this window,

  a wetness wakes up that sliver of

  sleeping heart where we hide all of

  our truth and we lift the world with

  the loveliness of this lazy lullaby,

  our bodies swaying a song like a

  cello stroke across each string of rain,

  making a vibration that sends a million

  shivers across dreams like waves swallowing

  every cynicism, hiding every horrible

  77

  i watched you stretch your jaws,

  treading tired legs to the shore of our bed,

  those floating feet, stepping

  like softest floors toward a neighboring sleep place

  where you go for private dances,

  quiet lands where you can secretly touch the paint

  of tulips and shower in the waterfalls of

  wondrous planets that

  decorate your head, falling

  on your pillow, sliding

  down your hair,

  and words wither in your mouth because dreams don’t

  speak the way we do, but kisses—yes, kisses—decorate

  the doors of our houses

  78

  i used to part water with my footsteps,

  like some giant who believed in the

  fruits he held in his hands,

  i used to touch paper with fingers

  stained with strawberry words, chocolate

  covered sentences waiting for a girl to

  climb t
he vines of my high house and

  tangle me in webs of candy and shellacked

  with kisses,

  and when she sailed across the sky’s

  deepest water, i split the stream with

  petals of tulips and squeezed the perfume

  from the clouds just to watch her, slowly,

  come together within me, an old idea, a ghost

  of a girl, emerging from sleep's fog holding

  all her merely fantastics in the poems that

  break when her palm meets my face

  79

  the dust that falls on dreams is as

  rich as the rain, as apparent as the

  rings on saturn, and it is in this gauzy

  scene of sleep that you sit, reclining

  against some tree, flowers falling around

  you, white and pink petals peeling away

  like the fattest of warm and silly snowdrops,

  and you read aloud from some brilliant book,

  verses about hands and lips, legs and fingers,

  and all the words are raw,

  and the breath that is perfumed by the paper

  embraces a poem, casts it over its audience,

  a science of shadows measured and weighed,

  poured across your skin, your hair crawling like

  a cooler fire, fumbling up and down your neck,

  a clumsy adolescent learning to drive your heart

  with sentences sliding across your body like

  whispers—night words—quietly falling into

  silently sentences that build rings around your

  prettiest planet, pouring out every petal on

  the paint of this poem

  80

  her wings are delicate things, whispering tiny

  fragments of words in my ears, breathing sounds

  and muse breaths on my neck, tracing old movies

  in my hair with tiny wake-me-hands

  and those hands are building a better beautiful

  within me, making poems move and memories

  metastasize from nothing places and deeper dreams

  that descend from the mist of her mouth

  81

  i can hear your heart(hardly breathing),

  bruised and beaten by the absence of hands,

  by the stillness of snow having laid long on your earth,

  and yet the grass whispers greener,

  like a breeze blowing a warm kiss into your throat,

  stretching jaws (many mouths),

  for bloom singing where whites and pinks,

  yellows and purples, play your body with the fingers of

  finding love again(breathing deeper now), like for the first time,

  learning you all over again,

  every inch of you,

  every great blade of your heart

  82

  your air eases into me as spring awakes again,

  eyes opening on a brighter bulb of blue, a more

  brilliant water than the rain washes the words

  from your mouth, secret words that only birds

  understand,

  and only the breathlessness of winds can translate

  your poems, the songs that fall from your sky, petals

  like some spring snow sprinkle—softly with your most

  playful plumes of fingers—tiny tumbles of scented voices,

  different versions of sounds already sung, kisses

  already plucked, just waiting to taste the rain again,

  to dither in these crumbs of clouds, catch them

  with the clumsy cups of my hands

  83

  there are lines on your body i have not traced,

  borders around your shape i have not crossed,

  lovely lyrics are tucked in the corners of your

  thighs, secrets hiding beneath your knees,

  there are words you have not spoken, lovely voices

  stretching skies in your throat like new breathing—

  air from new, undiscovered planets within you

  i have not touched these worlds, orbited their meaning,

  waited by their vastness, surrendered to the gravity—that

  sweet pull of body against body—to make us meet and

  make moons to watch at night when we are hovering

  together and tugging at the distant stars

  84

  you are a poem i have touched, ran my fingers through

  like water,

  or your hair,

  and i have counted the words,

  measured the weight of the meaning and the shape of

  your body,

  built books from your breath,

  the sound of your voice

  like a softer chirping,

  a song that see-saws my heart,

  climbs into new verses

  like flowers growing in a garden, abundant

  and as radiant as your face after i shine a little light

  to catch your almost slurred sentences,

  slowly opening for the light,

  for the rain i have touched,

  the stains of your hair on my hands,

  your kiss smeared like a sonnet across my lips

  85

  you hold the cup against your face

  —as hands—

  warming your cheek for remembers of kisses,

  or dreams of what kisses could have been,

  and i stretch to reach,

  but these fingers don’t remember something

  as wonderfully rainy as your hair,

  and hands can't stretch to reach the depth

  of the harmony in your heart

  —brand new with billows of meaning, beating—

  my fists full of the cloudy ghosts of your

  whitest flowers, singing

  86

  you twist your hair with fidgets of fingers—tumble

  the time away with the brilliance of bitten lips,

  and you are a mystery that only softest songs can solve,

  that only the whitest kiss can capture with a mouth

  so lazy that there is time to taste only one

  —just one—

  before the gauze of this moment shakes away,

  as petals pouring down like lost possibles, kisses

  tumbling away like fingers falling from all the

  hows answered in your hair

  87

  i have plundered the darkest nights,

  stretched the stars atop the highest

  hills, and the echo of the vast sky

  is blackest when sleep is absent and

  dreams are wakeful things where i

  build characters from pastnesses,

  shapes of words and kisses form

  where clouds might be, and somehow’s

  become maybe-again’s and from those

  heavy almost sleepy strolls through the

  oldest touch, the most tender breath you

  are finds me, a mist forms around the

  world and i fade away into something

  like the swirl of milk and water we are,

  spinning myself into making you again,

  easing this somewhat world into the softness

  of sleep, sifting through smiles and the sighs

  of stars

  88

  their heads poke up like a hundred little suns,

  blinking near the dew of our mist,

  and our mornings are windows where birds

  whistle and beep and the earliest cars putter by,

  bleary-eyes and coffee stained faces decorate the world,

  but you are crisp—face on-point—

  ready with eyes and nearly kisses soaked through with night,

  the dreams we trip over on our way to this day, these arms,

  this spring beginning

  89

  y
ou came to my last night,

  unaware of the rules of dreams,

  with tulips in your teeth and the hope

  that flows when the light drips down your hair just right—

  quietly rolling—

  and you were smaller slightly, leaning on a surprise,

  pushing through the pools of the moon,

  shoving and swimming with the greatest arches of arms,

  arcs made to spark the heart,

  trying to catch me before the release,

  but i have held funerals for your face,

  sent eulogies from my hands,

  i have wrapped my tendrils on someone else’s name,

  carried their kisses to the streams of sleep

  90

  i watch her mouth and mix words up like

  winds were to wake up these laydown lips,

  i see kisses fall from some ripe tree, and she

  says things with the startle of any moment sex,

  her voice always halted, scared in the wait,

  stopped in the rolling pleasure she presses

  into her thighs with her forgetful fingers,

  shifting her weight to one side, wishing for

  him to whisper, just to feel his breath on her

  ear, a wind crawling down her neck,

  but, oh, those lips know no lonely like the absence

  of his hands, holding a kiss like a flower he opens

  with his fights of fingers,

  closes with the lips of his

  punch-drunk palms