Paul Hina

Such Deliberate Loveliness: Collected Love Poems of Paul Hina 1997-2006

Buy the Book.

1

the day before, or the morning

to no man that listens is the sound

not heard and to no man who knows

god is there not a place for holes

to be buried in when she sends you

for rest and if she’s rubbed your

heart then you, as i, can still hear

the breeze of her movements closing

in and

the breath of her mouth as it swept

by and shook my eyes free of death

with a kiss (a kiss that is lost within

the silence she possesses in my throat)

and as her curling mouth was shutting

me down I sunk with her in sleep and

she turned me over and into her love

leading me with forgotten hands to

fall into the breaking day and as the

day breaks away her lashes wave me

farewell and

the air and I are tiny as she leaves

us behind breathing and listening to

her hair run slightly, unearthly, across

my face whispering birds and

i will remember all the angel’s dust

falling on wings as sweet as the cotton

that blows from a spring child’s mouth

and

i can’t forget the innocence of that

same child’s tear as its softness

nears the ending sky’e eye with the

wind and

can you hear her hair?

2

i reach towards a twinkle as tiny

as my eyes are allowed to imagine

and as large as the ocean’s sun

drenched gleam

for a single moment an infinite

wave curls me into digging deeper

towards the breath of all the

drowning children scraping  towards

the sky

and, me, falling under in the

playground of tranquility wishing

upon the yellow light that drips

through the cracks every time iu

speak her name

to whom does this star speak or

answer his wishes for (as it hangs

towards the last moment)

grant me the little dances our

legs create swimming near one

another to waltz slowly past a

place we used to swing our hands

and like children gasping for laughter

we’d lose each other’s sorrow in the

holes left inside our smiles

give me this second as I fall away

racing towards heaven

and the light I see shines the soft

hair on her chin as white as a new

snow and as innocent as the night

before the white falls on a time of

trees

3

a blanket of grace her presence

presents me inside is as still

as the air that hags outside

her

all the wishes that succumb from

within my world tremble from the

view of all those diving horses

as they hiss inside their white

breath

the noise of twilight sits beside

my turn as the cowardly face being

scorned by the steps that she crunches

on the fall

and out love is being joined by a

goodnight kiss that is being smoked

from the spinning fields of my memory’s

impotence

i can’t recollect the texture of her

lips and all the knowing of smoothness

that infected my fingers when I brushed

by her face

and the push of her breath like a dancing

execution on my palm that never ceased

to shut my eyes

if my lids would live then maybe, o0nly

maybe, I could stop trembling

losing the summer of her grace

4

(why if wings spread like fingers

do we squeeze our hands so tightly

around our flightless feet)

so our infinity is disturbed by the

awakened girls shining over moons

of blue light cirties and shares a

tendency to scare this young child

who has lost his mother to a storm

of the same caliber

and because she is gone does the

distance mean to swallow every

gulping heartbeat like a paper

song covering the truth and protecting

the threats of making him miss one

more day of trains or noise of softly

smothered spirits

he can never move fast enough for

pictures and his tiny fingers so

full of youth and love are yet to

touch the frailty that was placed

inside the woman’s eyes that once

tuckjed him inside her womb with a

constant kiss that smelled of hearing

the ocean’s calm

her stare turns him inside the outer

regions of sanity because of the dreams

that smile green like her eyes and

will she ever look at him again?

this night child struggles in his

thinness looking for a larger remnant

of her moon’s closeness to feed his

pale hunger towards a lighter relief

and why if her face is in his head

burning out the night’s silence is

she not less than ash and more than

rain

how do you whisper death when the sky

she spoke of in fairy tales turns black

(letting go and learning to fly)

5

a tragedy that is standing looking by

hushing for less breath than is her face

is moving in her smile that sprinkles

words of candles surrounding baths of

fingers and flesh

his chest swollen by her dancing and his

eyes paralyzed inside kisses of timelessness

that fall from his drinking glass of her

shade (slightly less pink than her movement)

she glides pulling up her dress to reveal

her feet and he knew if only in a dream

that nothing as precise as her feet (not

even death) could approach standing still

in their delicately placed cases entrapped

by toes to move nothing but slow

her step softly whispered in the air of

the doorway’s darkness and he sat rubbing

tears from his fingertips dwelling far

beyond the untouched

and he stood waiting in her vast country

counting snow as it calms the cool ground

in the key of a traditional waterfall

6

weightless is sleep reachinmg

for a lucid face in the

interior of midnight’s sister

her kiss removes

a gleam from ym

eye like spiders with

crawlers

eepliy stretching

throughout this America

i swin in sanctity of once mys3elf

in mind will echo through pages

of graffiti on her neon walls

and my death will smile

upon her moon by

stars

that now are eyes

but I can not harm

the lady

for even my feet

when embedded in her

greyest of sands

still float

farther than any imagination

and because even her pools

are more than

all of  me

and deeprer than all dreams

7

there is a tunnel some song traverls

thropugh taking me towards the holy

ground that was our church where we

worshipped inside each other’s eyes

and got lost in the inflectyion of “i

love you”

and you rreflection in the window is

still sticking to the glass unstained

by your smile and even though the

pictures of you I’ve developed have

begun losing color from too much

recollection it is still clear that

all I ever knew about life dwells

inside that smile

and even though the words you spoke

inside are fading from a

thousand fingers turning pages for

every crying eye your voice is still

prominent in my sleep

and I relax on the walls of an apparition

and kiss her at the top of my lungs

stirring another lump in my throat sugar

coated from all those tiny breaths that

caused me to drown in her mouth

and so I fall like water collecting

puidlles of little pieces that are her

steps brushing away like a criminal’s foot

and she can’t blow kisses thjat taste

like th elife I knew beyond her ski

and so I pray

has anyone written a song that travels

deeper than tunnels

8

there was a window I saw you

through being wrapped knees

inside arms and eyes inside

sleep with face slightly

falling form neck to shoulder

and I watched for forever to

disappear before I thought of

allowing myself to blink

because an image of sleep is

slower dying than a picture

of something smaller that falls

sooner than rain

so a picture that is a space

being filled with time will

someday grow inside this moment

where a promise was forgotten

by a girl that awakes inside

a life smile that is as tiny

as tomorrow

9

sleep is not for every man who

staggers throughout hours of the

her and me that now only arrives

inside rest that is larger than

somewhere in my imagination

but a dream is never so far as

her whimsical light that seems

afraid of this dark

and the moon is so small that I

can’t find that light of some

rain that has fallen to remind

me of a belief that sits beside

our forever half sleeping

all the while I had been lying

on a sound that is a dead flower

scattering away a thousand pieces

of memory inside my heavy hand

but if I clasp fingers to palm

and believe in roses I will feel

her charms lying on me with a

disease that will stretch my

flesh so as to find the nerves

that feel, as always, the existence

of mortality in the shape of

love’s last hour and wounds my

already burning bed with its

clothes of preservation

but she is there anointing me with

the rhapsody of her words and even

if my blindness, that dwells inside

this half sleep, were to last past

heaven I would rest a finger across

her throat so that I might feel a

voice as quick as my blood would

know a journey to a heart of all sounds

and if I were to touch her lips or

even hover beside her breath I could

allow my thoughts to falter throughout

this infinity of restless harm

but I can’t promise not to open my

eyes in dreams and for all that roses

know a piece of life is only as slender

as a ghost resting her head on my

chest listening for unity

and awake is fighting short breaths

to not fall behind the perfume that

is of herself so that I might sleep

and even as I sink through rooms of

us I fear I’ll never smell roses again

so I just lie alive and wait for the

sun to grow through a disease

10

lying so tiny she breathes quickly

being born under blankets of a city’s

ceiling but it is not enough to cover

what she is or means to a man who

watches her quietly being beautiful

and although darkness forbids him to

see all of her body’s silence there

is a star growing from a window seeing

only her face

her hair is reaching towards the tip

of her nose and half covers an eye

which he suspects, like the other, is

sunk behind lids kissing rest and her

mouth is barely open to catch what air

is in dreams and her lips must know

how to glow when a light tries to find

them

and the light on her face makes me feel

like being under water when a sunbeam

moves into you and warmth is known

and so i watch and think of oceans

i think of the largeness and the

depth

i think of the color and the life

and I know that she surely must be

an ocean inside of me and my body

aches to be apart of what is drowning

because there is no such thing as dying

while you watch an ocean sleep and, when opened, nothing but life flows

from those eyes

and now fallen down(unclosed by her

cleansing) some love drips from a

nowhere hanging hand towards a taste

of finally learning how to swim

11

i’ve got all these little births

in my pocket that sing wishes like

sounds of dropping coins for hope

and they all move towards a life in

a hole that holds a place for every

kiss that will come from a person

who will fill them with more holes

and though you let every tiny truth

slide from your hands you know that

everything now born is running for

death

and you watch each hole swallow every

newly born dream but maybe once you’ll

see a wish get away from the night

being somewhere else making dust

and a situation will occur called

crashing moons and will now be

referred to as broken stars

12

shaking form under her hands

there is a man being quietly

away who has dropped his wings

and who can’t give anything

to a woman that speaks so softly

to all the snow that falls

around him

and he tries everything to forget

the smell of fire but this man

can only stand as still as flames

when his eyes see this woman

turning beautiful

and as her mouth swallows him dead

he understands how soft the rain

must feel when it falls into snow

and if moments froze like flowers

kissing frost then we would all

know the beauty of dying in the

hands of warmth

13

across from nothing there is me

and a window of fall only being

distant from a spring ago

she was where nothing is now

drawing a picture of me being in

love by a window of spring that

lit a reflection of us on a book

I was reading but can’t remember

and though now she is nothing

more than a somewhere ago I know

she is here among many pages that

are too tired not to fall

but if finding her were to mean

a different color of love I would

be afraid to harm the

spring’s reason for

a fall

there is now not enough light for

pictures of pages that now fall from

trees I can’t remember reading when

she drew a picture of me being born

in spring

and though many seasons will continue

to die I’ll always remember knowing

more love than nothing

14

a voice of always may be forever

dying like the one sleep interrupts

hoping to not be seeing those things

that knew you then

and where is a how when you can’t or

won’t even arrive into hearing often

one more night and less a day me

thinking you and you being then

and a what makes another noise that

can’t or won’t hear me grow no more

15

in the middle of evening a storm is

being crafted with care by some force

beyond this thought

the rain falls slow into static and rushes

on my overhead like miracles in chaos

and rushing from my view I see all these

lonely victims  colliding into one another

for a shared moment

all of them running safely hopping above

collected windows and ignoring reflections

of childhood tongues catching tiny visions

that from smiles gre laughter

standing inside I think of myself not

being older than fear or younger than

storms so I search spinning the world

for some light to shine newer than now

and there abandoned by use is an umbrella

holding up a woman that stands politely still

with head up and one hand out catching youth

her eyes fall to me and a smile is becoming

everything across her face and she laughs

with hair clinging in front of her eyes

streaming magic down her new hope

and I laugh like someone who knows

the name of rain and run into a wall of

wet that stops me from being anything

but alive

she comes to me and finds her hand

behind my neck and her eyes are so

familiar to a life that had forgotten that

even wet fingers aren’t cold when they

love

and her umbrella falls from her and

she drips inside all of my loneliness

and kisses me with all her storm and

a flood falls across all the rainy children

laughing at the rolling umbrellas

and I remember I love her

16

a reaction covers all the composure

that was you before she doused you

with herself gracefully moving like

a cloud slightly glazing blue heaven

and you would know home to be a

place where she exists past here and

beyond now into your admiration

that would cause even angels to burn

joyfully in her light

shivering like candlelight in the

darkness she drips silently away

with a smile that makes your whole

self quake and quiver victorious

and your eyes fill up with tears

blurring every image of the world

around her and wrecks your very

core with the clarity of watching it

happen

and knowing it could again

17

and it is her

moving in slow motion towards

me being toppled over end to

end suddenly spinning inside

a rainbow dream summertime

morning

and it is her

smiling as the sun wraps the

sky and swallos every blue

with the brightness of a million

shooting stars rushing like bullets

hitting one right after the other

tastefully melting over my flesh

whispering memories of cold

mornings wrapped in blankets

wishing for her warm fingered arms

to tangle me into a frenzied excitement

and it is her

numbing me with a downpour of

falling ecstasy pouring a heavy harmony

in an uncontrolled throw of nighty

stares that drip rings that echo over and

over caressing the silent pools in our pools

and it is her

making every breath gasp back into the

depths of my heart beating my air like

abandoned window shutters sending my

blood to boil inside my sinking stomach

and it is her

wanting to touch my skin with the gentleness

of the outside breeze that softly whistles a

chill across our lips as I give her my last

deep brown butterfly kiss and fly away

with eyes tightly concealing an unnoticed

scream