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,
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