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

dust from the heart

  with a burst of rain that pours forth

  wishes and daydreams like sleep

  was an always thing blooming inside

  the heart, spreading those rose petal walls to

  drink its birdsong up like kissing a

  girl for the first time, nervous in the

  dark just before the light comes up on

  a little love shaking on those lovely limbs

  of uncertain leaves

  and the newborn bounce begins to breathe

  shivers and burstbellybutterflies up and

  down all those delicate pieces of flower

  that she plays—finger by fumbling finger—

  counting each new word like a secret was

  whispering her name in that wind that splashes

  the face like shining water climbing across a

  smile for a stuttering sparkling of stars teetering

  on a stillness deep on the inside of sky

  dreams and sleepy stems of cotton seeds

  caught for later lay down days when the

  rain dries on lips and mouths drown in the

  dust of no new rhyming love to peel those

  places in the heart where wings are birds

  and whisperings are only echoes of

  remembering first time touches and

  startling kid kisses

  14

  sometimes i hear you coming with whatnot

  words,

  feel you with neednot hands,

  succumb to your trembling with nevernot kissings

  while water spills out flesh on flowerbeds where there

  is no desire like a love on fire

  and there is no hour when

  passion shatters all these impossibly pieces, splattering

  alwayses like two bodies coming unfolded in the puddles

  of our flowerfired air blowing brilliant billowing

  breathe-nots at our wonderfully wasted wantnots

  15

  you are a breeze that burns me when i breathe

  a memory or a moment blown by like a brittle

  song reminding the trees of little whispers we

  used to ease out of one another with kisses that

  cause deep down lurches in the lungs like a spark

  wrapping its beautiful blue glow around the tongue

  and those touchings that fall and fumble from the

  meanings of hands like something were defining the

  lights of the heavenly stars to brighten up this old

  city of me where alone waits for dreams, prays for

  forgetting that hollow ache you carve within me

  every time i see your blown hair caught in

  effortlessly happy lips, your fingers pulling it out

  like some silky song were buzzing in my brain, contriving

  brutal pieces to press against me before sleep washes

  over me with new wishes, new winds whistling where

  words won’t go

  16

  your hands part the waters of my memory

  like carving miracles into soggy sand and the

  waves that leave broken pictures of your eyes

  shine ethereal echoes, like momentarily melodies,

  where new puddles lay like lazy drops of orange

  dreams to rain down your deliciously drooping lips

  where there is only one thing that whispers louder

  than well intended kiss-wishes and it speaks in

  audible ebbs of ecstatic inflatable breathing, over

  and over again, with the rhythm of the water washing

  wake-ups from the periphery of this drenched, and sun

  dappled daydream like a slow loop of some simply

  serious song were singing:

  i can’t get you off my mind

  i can’t get you off my mind

  17

  you stretch those legs out like pulling flutes

  from underneath a low sung lullaby where

  a chorus of mother hands collapses on my

  head with playfully fingers drizzling yesterdays

  and dewdreams to confuse the color of incredible

  quietly opening up a pouring frenzy of thighs pressing

  into hips where rhythm meets the secrets of your song’s

  vibration and the heart meets the bleeding scream of

  the rain when the brain breathes a little bang-up delusion

  draining from the body like a moving were shining inside

  me spreading out like a symphony of a sunshine tsunami

  crashing into strawberry-lips seething under the surface of

  this sweet storming somewhere sound that like mist eases

  weightless water on me

  18

  it was cold,

  waiting for you,

  a piano plays—somewhere

  —like a vibration that massaged

  me in a manic fray of slurred dew,

  where dreams lie on top

  of misery like a melody

  coming alive inside the heart

  —like a rhythm were

  absent from the memory

  —like a dream were

  coming undone before you ever

  spent it on sleep

  (where do they go—

  these dreams we sell to sleep?)

  19

  she whispers loudest as the languishing seasons

  sink into change, when the air swirls new directions

  like gusts of guesses, her voice slides by my flesh

  with secrets and name-breaths, and there is no voice

  like a remembered voice when love was new and ever-

  changing, like flower-rising, like leaf-falling, like snow-

  descending, like the soothing of cool water from the shuffling

  of hot sands

  she is a question constantly unanswerable and a place i can

  never fully reach with my hands, but she tells me love stories

  in my sleep, and there are trees still standing somewhere that

  hold our roots in its lovely unraveling fingers—all of our love—

  and it holds it there for us, quietly, for remembering, careful not

  to disturb the hair's breath of the birds

  20

  you hide in heaps of consciousness caves

  where the darkness drives delusions of yesterday

  kisses and shines lights from the tiniest touch of

  your tired eyes,

  the shine of a smile that still quiets

  all the turmoil inside this tangle of time like a bloom

  were to find some warmth in the slowly fingers of your

  nowhere hands,

  and you still soothe my body even in this

  dying, even with somewhere memories, you still hold my

  heart above the mediocrity of morbidity, keep my soul

  afloat in the absent air of godlessness

  21

  what do i know about roses?

  but the mind makes softness from

  the red light of your hands, like

  petals anywhere descending onto

  a drip of a dream

  like tendrils tumbling in the pouring

  rain

  what do i know of your water?

  but that it tastes like the rain

  when the summer slumbers into

  fall and the color of the world

  changes into a song made thirsty

  by your sweetest orange absence

  22

  there is a lonely thread waiting to be pulled,

  hanging loosely like a softly snowdrop descending—

  a slower shadow than shimmering moonlight—on my

  metaphor of heart,

  just a little love waiting to pull the pieces of our pastness

  fastly away, carrying strings miles to better beginnings of
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  flowers and kissbreaths on less lost light of morning—

  bitter in the maze of rain—

  and will you travel to tie a heart string around your finger

  for a playful remembering of those stuttering starlights?

  a purplish plum of a finger to press against my lips

  looping—

  looping away—

  into foreverland

  23

  places, unsimply.

  once during someday dreams so dizzy that mazes fell

  like mind-drops, my thoughts drew momentary

  circles of those places i might live inside you

  these pictures have been hiding eternally across my

  memory with mirrors of meanings that move these

  immeasurable makeshift movies into being when you are

  near

  and those me-places that you embody like the muses of

  some miraculous poems come undone long enough for me

  to touch those myths with mindful hands

  and those places cast a frosty moonlight that falls on her breath

  like the cosmos were making snowdrops from the startling

  kisses she spreads across my mouth laying lulls and lightly

  hands over the stars to shut their bright eyes with shushsongs

  descending into the softest sides of sleep that mostly children

  know and other stars only shine to remember in dreams where

  the sound of her most passionate kissbreaths lay me softly down

  in this stuttering snow that falls like an angel shaking a child

  from the stars,

  descending into the dust of deeper countries, diving into

  deliverance

  24

  places, unsimply?

  once during someday dreams so dizzy with mind-drops

  that the heart stops to wonder: where are those places that

  i live inside you?

 

  do they cast a frosty moonlight that falls from your breath

  like the cosmos were concocting snowdrops from the startling

  kisses you slip over my mouth

  laying lulls and lightly

  hands over the stars to shut their bright eyes with shushsongs

  descending into the softer sides of sleep that mostly children

  know and stars only shine to remember in dreams?

  are these the places where the sound of her most passionate

  kissbreaths lay me softly down in this stuttering snow that

  falls like an angel shaking a child from the stars,

  descending into the dust of deeper countries,

  diving into deliverance,

  waiting to touch the you-places that live inside me?

  25

  places, simply

  there must be places where i live inside you,

  lost, directionless worlds that(yes, dizzy)

  can’t wait to touch

  the you-places that live inside me

  26

  there is a touch somewhere i