Origami Moonlight: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2009-2012 Read online

origami moonlight: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2009-2012

  Paul Hina

  Copyright ©2015 by Paul Hina

  Table of Contents

  Poems 1-10

  Poems 11-20

  Poems 21-30

  Poems 31-40

  Poems 41-50

  Poems 51-60

  Poems 61-70

  Poems 71-80

  Poems 81-90

  Poems 91-100

  Poems 101-110

  Poems 111-120

  Poems 121-130

  Poems 131-140

  Poems 141-150

  Poems 151-160

  Poems 161-171

  1

  the summer girls smell sweeter

  than spring with strawberry stains

  smeared across their lips, sun

  streaks sliding down the silk of

  their candy-sweet hair

  and the soft soil of their skin

  shivers with thoughts of hands

  hanging hearts like lanterns over

  their bated bodies where sexual

  shadows will swing, cutting the

  humid air of long, hot nights soaked

  in silence and sweat and secrets

  that startle a star-scarred sky

  into the sweetest seizure of

  lemon bursts that mar the

  moonlight with the most sour

  sensations of a body smothered

  in wild strawberries

  2

  the way you tuck one leg under your

  body,

  the way your melancholy lips mouth

  the words you read,

  the way your eyes sparkle with both

  absorption and sadness,

  the shape of your knees,

  the beating heart breathing beneath

  the flesh of your ankles,

  your hair,

  clumsily tied behind your

  head like it had been combed out by

  flippant fingers,

  and, as your hands touch the tips

  of your toes in a heartbreakingly feminine

  tilt of the body,

  i lose my balance,

  and when you look up,

  you catch my fall by placing your fingers

  on your lips,

  then i lose my breath,

  caught on the cusp of your countless

  riddles of kisses

  3

  to kiss her on the lips would

  be to drink from some perfect fountain

  of sweetest wine,

  and i would get too easily drunk on her

  juice,

  all abuzz from the weight of her tender,

  fermented kisses,

  to hear her hair whisper things against

  my face would be like the wispiest fingers

  carefully mapping out my flesh,

  and i might grow dizzy from those tender

  tendrils of tickles,

  uncertain of the direction my fingers will

  take to travel the distance of her thighs

  to feel her hands plucking at my heart would

  be like vibrations of harp strings softly singing

  her all my secrets,

  and i would happily hand her every hidden

  breath,

  be ecstatically breathless from the many trips

  we've taken inside one another

  4

  she chews her words with lips

  frantically built for kissing,

  she hums songs of secrets inside

  her beautiful head, waiting to sing

  them softly in his somewhere ears,

  her flesh anticipates his flesh, crawls

  with shivers of waiting sensations, like

  snow were always descending around

  her, never quite reaching her hungry

  skin,

  and she sleeps in these wintery beds

  she makes, waiting for his strong, warm

  hands to devour her with the sweet, sunny

  orangeness he slips over her skin when

  she dreams

  5

  he has poetry on his mind, stained

  like strawberries to a kiss,

  her lips are red and her cheeks are ablush

  with joy and laughter,

  and when she tries to settle the child

  within her with startles of seriousness,

  she coyly crosses her legs,

  and he pours poetry on her like warmest

  chocolate,

  and he devours all those thick drips of words,

  unwrecks a wish before it wanes into some

  shape of normalcy,

  or falls into a plethora of pedestrian questions,

  names and pasts

  (heartaches hovering over honey and wine)

  and he plunders the depths of her with mouthfuls

  of strawberries and sentences,

  coyly uncrosses her legs

  6

  the light surrounds me, warms my body,

  but blackens her silhouette—swallows

  her edges and curves with its bright brilliance,

  and the distance between us—like some

  elegantly dimming star that i'll strive to

  remember—makes me grasp tight to her

  body's slender shape, and i'll hang a shine

  on the tenderness i've learned simply

  by being near her,

  and at night, though i reach to touch her

  brilliant yellow surround, or to taste its

  tantalizing arcs of sparks, i can only know

  its echoing sound, its delusion of temperature,

  its memory of a shine making mirrors from

  the light of the moon, musing on its old

  saturated strings of gold and white lips like

  kisses slipping slowly into the softest sex

  of sleep

  7

  the years pass, slowly, and the pictures

  of you fade imperceptibly,

  your gestures grow cloudy,

  and your animation jumps and skips in

  places like some ragged old film,

  and the ache of missing you is dull inside

  me—always reaching deeper and further

  down into those holes of memory, measuring,

  repairing, trying hard to hold on to your hair,

  or the look in your eyes when you loved me,

  the weight of your face in my hushes of hands,

  the chaos, the soft coiling of a melting collision

  when we kissed,

  your bare back, your breasts,

  your smile,

  the way you crossed your legs,

  the way you sounded when you said you felt a

  greater gulf of girl opening inside you,

  wanting to fall into a warmer, softer wash of a

  woman for me,

  but you're warm, and you're soft,

  and no girl was more woman than when you

  whispered—closer now—my name

  8

  your old song,

  a humming as you stroked my hair,

  my head resting on your lap,

  a tired child caught in the combs of your long,

  feminine fingers,

  that sound is a distant shiver now,

  hardly a vibration,

  just a shimmy up my back,

  and, now, the ever-growing silence of that lilting

  is so gor
ged with sorrow,

  and the sweet air that used to seep into these ears

  from those slips of lips, those cups of kisses,

  is slowly being submerged by time,

  hiding the clarity of its sound in the dusty corners

  of memory,

  where music sheds its meaning and wakes up

  a cruel, quiet wind that blows and blows its

  soundless secrets into sleep's ears

  9

  the cold steel of your eyes lays

  me out, lights me up,

  a tired tuft of your hair momentarily

  hides their bluest waters,

  and caribbean dreams rest in their daylight

  stars—lights waiting for the moon to

  expose them,

  and when the soft glow of your body emerges

  from that bluest water, exposing more fullness,

  more life with every wondrously wet step,

  i sort through the sand,

  grooming the grains with my tireless fingers,

  searching for a sliver of your starlight,

  a spark of skin sunk away somewhere,

  smooth as glass—

  hiding a clear window to my heart

  10

  your absence creates abstractions,

  holes of complex shards where dreams

  used to be, places gone and breathless,

  and death decorates what's left:

  a napkin stained by your lips,

  crumbs from your kisses strewn along

  the floor.

  and those swirls of shapes reflect your

  old air, create visions of your hair hanging

  over your faultless, fragile eyes—eyes that

  are familiar to a world distorted by tears,

  and the room knows no more direction

  after the depth of your delicious deliverance

  has disappeared in the great vanishing whisper

  of your far off voice vibrating shivers across

  my skin, trying to put the pieces you've left

  back together in this puddle of a puzzle

  11

  your dress—straps slithered from

  those smoothest shoulders—hugs

  your waist as another's hands might

  while dancing with you

  —dawdling back and forth against a

  slow, tired trickle of music

  i imagine your head resting against my

  chest,

  your heart pounds as i squeeze

  you closer, carefully trace the lines

  of your hips with curious fingers,

  and when my hands hover over your

  body, embracing your heat, i hide

  behind this world's wall with