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

ghosts of felt

  flowers

  145

  you are a warmer body, a liedown

  flower with petals strewn here and there,

  decorating the room with your light

  like shimmering water reflecting the

  stars of my heart, and you plant rain

  in my mouth where the blooms go to

  dance with delightful delirium, a dripping

  echo of a song that slithers its softest

  silhouette onto the dome of your silks of

  skin on sky

  146

  i watched your hair, i saw it lay

  in the shine of the sun, gleaming

  with gold light, probably warm to

  the touch, hot on hopes of hands,

  like fire on unfurled fingers conniving

  into combs,

  but the breeze, a baby's breath dabbling,

  dribbling across your head like some

  ballet coming unbent for the scent of

  spring's marriage to magnolias

  and a thick strain of that light slithers over

  your eye and you push it away with careless

  elegance—a gesture so soft and fragile that

  the wind laughs, begs you for another

  147

  you lean in for interest,

  sweetness tazed on your tongue,

  your eyes dewy from the rising of

  passion's shivering shores,

  and as a smile spreads across your face,

  some rain falls on this paper,

  wiping off all these worthless words, while

  my lips wipe your smile into a kiss

  sweeter than the cotton candy wisping

  away at the blue skies,

  bending dreams across your bluer eyes

  148

  you don't know your eyes like i've

  known them—from this side, wondering

  how pristine the world might look standing

  inside those bluest planets

  you don't know your mouth like i've

  known your mouth—the shape and

  pout of the lips before words, between

  breaths, and the smile that turns your

  face from breath-taking to radiate

  something like the sweetest stutter of

  suffocation

  and your legs, when you move to

  cross those singular sensations, and

  you lean your head to stroke your hair—

  it breaks me to know that you don't

  know like i know all the springs i'd trade,

  all the years i'd squander...

  149

  you tease me with your timid tendrils

  of arms, hiding that body like a flower

  waiting for the sun, but your roots of

  legs are smoothly splendid, delicately

  desiring more dirt, and my hands shine

  for you, touch you, open you up, plant

  seeds in your marvelous mouth like

  tasting the fruit of all fruition with the

  exhilaration of eternity balancing over

  bigger black holes, petals falling into

  the abyss of what gardens our bodies

  make, messing up the magic, making

  a mockery of mediocrity

  150

  you are a fire that burns, a spark that

  blew up into a million little flames,

  making the heart wild and the skin

  jump,

  your burn has frayed these nerves,

  singed the words on my tongue,

  and the kisses we made were splayed

  across all the water we'd ever need

  until our embers breathe out and

  away

  and as the quieter gasps of our last orange

  ashes of bone and wind blown love turns

  the sky black, we slowly fade away

  into a single, white, infinitesimal glow

  of a star

  a shine that still burns

  151

  your black dress—resting on your cool

  shoulders, dappled by sundrops and the

  blacker mists of leafy shadows—rests

  against your breasts with gasps of

  unsuccessful nonchalance,

  and from this view, the shadow across

  your knees mesmerizes all meaning,

  a warmth of flesh beneath the

  charcoal breath of light's slightest

  absence,

  and the hem of that whisper of a skirt

  dances across your thighs like a thousand

  angels traipsing down the edge of a pin,

  sprinkling the greyest girl petals onto

  your miraculously shaped ankles, as if

  god took special care to shape them with

  his most careful, quiet hands

  and that slope that slips down your ankle

  means something better than breathlessness

  and wanting, something that flickers in and

  out of a boys most dewy daydreams

  and those legs carry the light you are all

  around my head like some float of a song,

  hardly disturbing the world around you,

  just demanding that it look,

  daring it to stop

  152

  the sun is coming

  to make highlights in your hair,

  to gold-light your showy shoulders,

  to lie across the air of your arms,

  to wait for you,

  the sun is coming

  to rub its hands across your shine,

  to ask you to lean up in that way you do—

  that tilt—leaving the neck for a

  little yellow taste of summer's secrets,

  leaving the distant taste of lemons

  dancing on the tongue,

  mesmerizing the mouth with

  the care of your color,

  the shiver of your shape

  153

  i can smell the oceans in your hair,

  feel the dance of the waves in the

  sway of your hips,

  lose my balance on the swell of your

  back,

  forget all senses,

  get them garbled and mixed when my

  fingers find your chest, slide like trickles

  of wet sand across your breasts,

  and when i melt into your mouth,

  sink into your flesh,

  i'll either drown or become part of

  your water,

  taking tumbles of breath from your hair,

  making meaning from your air,

  absorbing truth from the quiet crush of

  your giant, wet kills of kisses

  154

  you are at your most beautiful

  before you speak,

  the words wait—holding imagined

  poetrys in your mouth—

  your eyes tell stories of storms

  before you blink,

  and you are a dream of the most

  colors before you breathe

  your almost words are an always

  kiss that fills my pages with

  wings and rainstorms,

  possibles and maybes.

  155

  i've watched you with wants of eyes,

  drawn your shape with my fingers in

  the darkness of my daydreams, felt

  your hair on my chest while asleep

  at night, and imagined the burst in

  your kiss, the flavor on you lips.

  i have wondered about the softness,

  the smoothness of your inner thigh,

  what it must feel like to have those

  lyrics of legs sing songs around my

  body, to hear the breathing and the

  gasps and high-pitched exhalations

  to angels and demons and the moon'
s

  meaning pouring down around us like

  snow or the dust of the sweetest

  swooning stars colliding

  156

  a packed room, blurred faces tilted

  down, contorted by turns of heads

  and conversations, and there is one dot

  of cool clarity,

  your face is a brilliant light, a perfect

  puzzle put together by better hands

  than mine,

  and you are apart from the crowd,

  shining, singing like you own the room—

  own the audience—bedevil them with

  your icy eyes, your daydreams of kisses

  and laydown lullabies of sin mixed with

  the miraculous mumbles of the mush of a

  mind made dumb by the most milky

  secrets you carry in your heart

  157

  i've seen you move—infinitesimally

  small breaths—

  i've watched you swim in your sleep,

  i've swam to you,

  decorated your body with wettest kisses,

  traced slithering showers of secrets across

  your skin,

  and dived so deep into your dreams that i

  lose myself in that mumble where the

  unconscious meets the consciousness

  of hands,

  and the echo of the mind melts into a

  whisper

  and those tiny shards of breath i have

  felt you blow like sweetest air into my

  drips of dreams,

  eases me to stare at this sleep,

  waist-deep in you

  158

  glimpses of your ghost—those gorgeous

  hints of your smile, your hourglass

  silhouette—burn away at my hours,

  these pieces of you, the prettiest petals

  of spring, are forever etched in stone,

  buried in the caramel amber of your hair,

  flaxen and, like a breath from your mouth

  —milky after a kiss—your spirit will slide

  with me staining every tomorrow with the

  startled silence of a sensational rain that

  suddenly stops after some storm, sacred

  and waiting with hurt huddled over the

  clouds and these lips, whispering waves

  on the blood of this beaten heart

  159

  it's the comfort in the way you move,

  the fluidity of your arms, the pristine,

  feminine motion of your legs, easing into

  a cross with effortless grace, like the natural

  currents of waters matriculating down the

  hills of your hips

  and when those lips part for kiss-making,

  all words dive into a mumbled meaninglessness

  and all life washes over me

  and the world outside these stars is startled,

  waiting for the shiver of raw nerves to settle

  and grind into the teeth of my gut where love

  goes to grow and feed the hands of this heart

  to touch your lips, to taste the meaning in your

  mouth

  160

  all the pretty girls have gone

  away,

  the summer is rising and the

  spring has fallen

  and

  i am left looking for a place to

  wallow while the willows of

  her hair hang on someone