Read Of Wanting and Rain: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 2007-2009 Page 6

and tastes

  the knees, lays wreaths of kisses across

  the holy land of your thighs, sinks all

  souls toward the pilgrimage to the well,

  the water of your darkest softness, the

  moon of skin above the void where

  miracles meet for music and meditation

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  your eyes—so brown and muddy deep—

  implore me to bend those pinkest lines

  of lips, to press my softest—almost

  imperceptible—hands down the silk

  of your hair, flush the back of the neck

  with wisps of kisses, and shake the tree

  of your body free of the fall, out of the

  woe of winter, and blush back the color

  with joyful jumps of smiles and deepest

  breaths of this flesh, this flash of fullest

  fruit bursting across the floor of your slow,

  silent dancing

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  my kiss tightens around her ankle,

  a dash of flowers covers her skin

  with the scent of roots coming

  undone in my mouth

  my lips climb up her sweetest stems,

  peeling and tasting every petal,

  —the color and the texture—tulips

  and tendrils tumbling to tickle my

  thirsty throat

  128

  you watch me with want stains

  on your fingers

  but all i want is to touch her—

  that other one, the one with

  sadness pouring all the way down

  her face,

  don't i want to put that face in

  my hands, push my lips near her

  eyes,

  let her see what love

  tastes like

  129

  when the spring breezes come undone

  it is something like the sound the moon

  makes when you walk away from me—

  a kiss still wet on your

  lips, the warmth of my hands

  hanging to those pendulums

  of hips

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  you, baby blue shirt, head sunk into

  french poetry, a soft red glow on your

  nails as the one hand wrestles the other

  to haphazardly tie those soft strings of the

  hair that holds the perfect puppet of your head

  up for the sun to catch a corner of your goldest

  smile,

  and your joie de vivre keeps the head dancing,

  dancing—this head—all the way to the dreams

  where i might touch a sliver of the sun from

  the space in those pinkest lips, the drenching

  of light that might fall from that kiss,

  and that hair could drip whiter whispers all over

  my chest and shoulders, staining my skin with

  the scandal of auburn's secrets—in french

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  your bare shoulders, smooth and

  clear in the sun's brightest yellows

  and a tree casts a shadow behind you

  that leans toward you in the breeze

  as the spring magnolias rain down on

  you

  and the whole scene takes a deep

  breath of your the hair as it brushes

  like elsewhere stems growing from

  those shoulders into the wisps and

  fronds of the sun washing over the

  sins of your skin

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  i can hear the lazy, french dither of your

  voice—a morning sound, gauzed by lace

  and fog—

  and the thick cotton of our sleepy

  webs sticks to our lips and fingers

  and as the sun breathes its way into

  the gossamer streaks of your hair—still

  caught behind the sheer wall of our dream—

  we take the deepest breath of this water

  and carry it with us through the most pedestrian

  of days to drink from when we're dying of the

  depth of these most delicious delusions we

  share

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  the haze of the rain is a prayer, a silent

  murmuring against the spiritual ground where

  we walked, aglow with love,

  and your lilt of laughter lays my body down

  across this wash where the water weaves a rhythm

  like hands traveling the skin with wet, waiting

  fingers—feminine fingers—long and liquid with lulls

  and sleep singing some sex against this imperfect pile

  of older flesh

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  her legs are sweet and long

  and golden,

  standing high on the shine of

  her smallest smile,

  the spring blooming beneath

  her feet,

  and the modesty of the colors,

  the fragility of the stems standing

  for perkier petals,

  sings love songs to somewhere rain,

  to future's fingers,

  and she touches the back of her neck,

  raising her head,

  opens up her hair with the hands of

  hesitant winds,

  and tilts her face up to share some

  science with the sun

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  you were crumbling into a shiver

  and the gray outside

  soaks up the glow of all faces,

  except yours,

  and as the heat from your cup rises

  to your lips,

  a kiss happens

  that warms the room

  and all our thoughts matriculate

  toward your fingers

  and another shiver

  gets shaken away

  while you shine

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  spring's leaves have returned as hands

  that touch the wind, squeeze with the

  tenderness of a memory that whispers,

  dreams of old touches, leans on the sleep

  we use to fall under when we kiss,

  caught in the eternity of these wisps

  of spring's breeze,

  hiding in the heart,

  holding secrets of the sunlight from these

  conniving clouds

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  your hands hunt for hiccups, hover over

  hurts, heal the dimming lights of the heart

  with forgiving fingers, feminine flutters across

  dreams, climb the stairs of this dull life and

  press flowers from your feet, turning gray

  chaos into a kaleidoscope of colors where

  old words, and blurry kisses, come alive again,

  blow from your lips like poems dripping

  from your fingertips, like cold rain drops

  descending on my naked back and shoulders

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  i've held it for you, carried it

  cupped in my hands like caught

  rain,

  i have touched its lips every night

  with the fingers of dreams, unfurling

  old kisses, unfolding them like pressed

  flowers, spring things that hold color

  long after they're gone,

  but the ghosts are fading, the colors

  are daubs without definition now,

  and my mind can't reach far enough

  to find that face—that smile—that sent

  me so many shivers, so many stars

  for secret keeping, but even their lights

  are only ghosts, an illusion of a shine

  that has burned out long ago, unfurling for

  no one, unfolding into nowhere, kissless

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  you don't know how the fragility of your

  eyes—their softness, the conniving quality


  of their size and color—makes rain bounce

  on consciousness waters, pierces imagination

  countries with the sex on your skin

  you don't know the first thing about how

  long and lovely those curves of legs can make

  mush of men's hearts, the way they wrap around

  the mind, make mischief with our imagination

  hands

  you don't know that those lips are full of dreams,

  soft fantasies where kisses are caught and tenderly

  delivered to mouths that have been lacking the buzz

  of the lilts of your breath

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  i have a thousand pieces to my heart,

  jagged parts

  and parts with soft, round edges of lips,

  stretching all the way out like roses from

  my chest, leaving blood stains on her knees

  (and then a vine cuts away another

  piece to whisper in her ear, 'you can have

  a piece of my heart, you can press a thorn

  for a poem, cut to the quick of this puzzle

  of palpitations for cities of passion, worlds of

  wobbly knees, where comets meet kisses, and

  stars meet sex head-on at the center of the galaxy

  where your heavenly body can find mine with fingers

  and legs, mouths and memory) smearing

  petals like great puddles of paintings

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  sadness stands sweetly atop your face,

  filling out your features with the fattest

  pools of eyes about to swallow the world

  in their sweet, dewy surrender,

  and you'll never know a poem was

  composed for you,

  strings were strung and plucked,

  songs were hummed

  just to see you smile,

  and when you did,

  we all melted away in the light

  of your incredible indifference

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  i was lulled by the moon in your

  eyes, laid down to sleep, a hand

  admiring your knee, listening to

  oceans with my ear on your

  softest earth of thigh,

  and i dreamt of stars and snow,

  and flowers peeking out for a taste,

  a tingle, a trollop over the trickles

  that slide down the breath i bend

  over your brilliant body—

  brightening all the lights inside me

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  at the first blush of may, you have

  already imagined her eyes, watched

  the waves of water flow over her

  hips into her thighs, your hands have

  memorized her hands, and measured

  her breath from the rising of her chest

  —her breasts succumbing to softer

  kisses—just to know the rhythm of

  spring, the home of each color's

  heartbeat

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  you have me tied—tight in your

  torrential hair—made my heart

  twisted in the vines of your softest

  limbs, tripping over the lost languages

  that have been hiding in your mouth,

  words waking up from your lips,

  lapping up every poem like eating half-

  bitten kisses before they float away

  on the fragrance of your