I was made to be milk glass—
  Lately, I've been more of
a scattering of light,
  a technicolor oil spill,
effervescent kerosene,
  a phosphene
in a running eye,
  fluorescent aerosol
going cumulonimbus
  in a green sky;
a variegated skin rash
  caused by shining neon bile
all festering and iridescent;
  a tattered road map
on the wall of a food court,
  bearing incandescent roads
twisting like snakes
  eating their own tails;
a human being in the form of a
  kaleidoscopic feedback loop
passed back and forth
  between the mouth and the ear
and the mouth and the ear forevermore,
  burning the tongue, the finger tips
and teetering on the edge
  of glittering, glorious incendium—
After the smoke has cleared,
  I can go back
to sleeping on the shelf.

People who lies to save their self is more understandable than to receive a lie from a friend just to devastate you.

With one kiss,
Her lips, burned
her name into my;
                                  mouth.
                                                None other
                                                will ever eclipse
                                                 the taste of her lips;
                                                                                    never.

I'm going to hold onto my birth certificate
like my mother holds onto receipts

and when I write my last rent check
addressed to whomever lives upstairs

I'll knock on the door

and when they open
I'll kindly flash them the paper
which never expires
and I'll ask
for a refund

and they'll say "No,"
"We only accept exchanges,"

and then I think I'll believe in reincarnation.

my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me.
she says it as though it is something
i should already know.
and when she says it,
the shift inside me is something i wish i could compare
to the grinding of tectonic plates,
if only i were strong enough to bring about an earthquake.

but since i am a stranger even to aftershocks,
i keep quiet.
my earthquake is stillborn,
expressed instead as a nod,
as a chewing of the lip,
as a silent, compliant “mhm.”
and the urge that nestles itself at the pit of my stomach
is not an urge to disagree;
it is an urge to forget.

because my psychiatrist tells me i have holes in me.
she says it as though it is something i should already know,
and she says it in a way that is not meant to make me feel incomplete,
but it is a way that still does,
and if i can forget this,
even for a moment,
i can forget that i am not okay.

i do not like not being okay;
i do not like having problems,
and my psychiatrist,
she tells me i have holes in me and she says it
as though it is a problem.

and so begins a slow disintegration:
i become but a bearer of problems,
a garden growing only weeds —
something in need of fixing.
i see myself a war-torn landscape,
dry and cracked and lacking life.
i see myself the kind of ground you step on and say,
“remember when things used to grow here?
remember when it used to be green?”

i am still trying to be green,
always trying to be green,
but my psychiatrist tells me
i have holes in me,
and suddenly green becomes a color i will never know how to paint.

outside my psychiatrist’s office,
on the wall of the waiting room,
there is a painting of flowers —
irises and a geranium —
and the leaves, i know, are supposed to be green,
but the paint is old and faded
and they don’t look it.

and for a moment,
i think
that maybe,
whether iris
or geranium
or boy riddled with holes,
maybe it is possible to bloom
even if you are not green.

(a.m.)

A fish can learn
The worth of the sea
When it finds itself caught
In the net
Of oppression