Permanent

    Upon the altar of windcrash I dreamt you into my future. You were there when I left my job to train a new hire blessed by the notes I left, when for some godforsaken reason my predecessors wouldn't. I left them for you, innocent one, to guide you as clearly as possible through the wickets of confusion, that you might be saved from failure or at least not have to worry about it. You were there across the street blowing your driveway when the wind lifted your dress through the wretched fold when I fell into your spell on the school bus to drown where the rolling suicide melted my soul into yours. I swear you could read my mind and you teased me then and there like you did in class long ago, knowing I would want it eventually, that I always would, even after telling you I was married. The smile is all that remained, that all-knowing smile you spread over my regret to scream through adolescent barb wire that stung so bad I cut my wrists to bleed out the months I waited to gain enough courage to talk to you. The time can't be given back, it can only be found in sorrowful vaults of love deep in the abyss where my depression echoed off the trenches of your skin that sank me stupid beyond the bands of the rainbow framing your sunlit hair. It's so quiet here, sinking through the layers you weaved for me, passing through like the clouds of the day kissing the sun-sparked sky off the candy pane of your face. Beauty is blind, but that doesn't mean I couldn't see you and me together on a hot summer day being friendly neighbors, forbidden from having each other, hiding the biological truth so desperately under a burden of formality.

When You Drive on Me

 When you drive on me
 You pretend I'm a mountain,
 My legs a gently rising slope
 Leading your toy cars to snowland,
 Where they can view the whole town.

 When you drive on me
 The world stops turning,
 My mind stops spinning,
 I lose all my senses to touch
 What comfort undressed
 In sheets of blessed cotton
 That shaped the air senseless,
 Surrender complete, enthralled
 By the grace of a child.

 When you drive on me
 The soft rubber wheels melt my skin
 Into creamy pillows of snow
 Guided by your tiny hands
 Over bone-frilled ranges of sleep.
 Tread softly, little one,
 Slowly to the summit,
 To park on my chest
 That heaves the tread,
 Raising the summit to slumber,
 Your little fingers pressing
 Gently on plastic wheels,
 The wheels rolling smoothly,
 Rolling my head through snowflower,
 Becoming a dreamer on your summit,
 Shuffled by rolling mountain of breast,
 Collapsing from shorted lungs below,
 Escaping flesh through summit above,
 Drifting from escape, collapsed
 By each snowflake drifting dreamwards,
 Disintegrating into air, into me.

Casino Wonderland

 To the north star we drove
 Under diamonds in a firelit sky,
 Dawn of new year west of sundown,
 Tulalip's cove on the Salish Sea.
 The beach rolled forth
 Breakers of light that froze
 Over trees, dangling crystals of ice
 Adorning each branch in holiday colors.
 Cerulean maples behind bubblegum cedars,
 Neon green junipers that swirled candy,
 A rainbow garden beside a buttery grove

 Atop a waffled street edged by lavender firs.

 Inside a lemon-stone palace

 Casino lights dazzled the interior,
 Glittering logos of cash
 Emptying the hollow joy within,
 Redirecting it without.
 Ice skaters swiveled 'tween
 Statues of orcas angled aloft,
 Threading illuminated fountains
 That gushed all the winnings
 To the frostbit voyagers outside
 Where faces turned poleward,
 Bathed in the glow of fireworks.