From the North Field

I grew up in the picked clean bare skeleton

Outside of a steel mill city with a fervent rust complexion

Where the building bricks ran down with ombres of rouge along their sides,

Crying messy streaks like I was not allowed

The metal beams and nude support structures

Shedding fresh baked thin biscuits the color and

Scorch of a molten metal that had forgotten the passion of how to burn,

And paint flakings kaleidoscoped in psychedelic popping and blooming rainbows,

Showing the trending colors 15 years behind the vogue, rippling

Out like an oil drop having runoff in a pond.

Coincidentally the populace was similarly arranged

From city epicenter to outskirts by color of their skin

As if a misplaced ballpoint pen had been left on cloth

Then feverishly been scrubbed out to leave a dilute permanent watermark ring

A monochromatic gradient that skewed my understanding of color not with prejudice, but

Enabled me with a naivete and a curiosity of what lay outside of a societal system’s pale grasp.

I heard the bigoted barks from judgmental jaws

About racial epithets just the same tone as the ridicule

I heard about the bend in my hip or my slippery voice and in-toed sitting.

As a tow-headed child sidled between the verdant country and muted city

Sandwiched between the lofty homogenized white bread slices of prejudice and dogma

I took to the trees where I studied every sassy fern and

Sauntered along stripes of pitched coal and sheetrock.

Hardly ever disturbed there, my musings were boundless and safe

Even from ridicule reverberating in my callow brain,

I incubated in the woods, in a haven where I could metamorphosize my thoughts

Hormones raged alongside eccentric feelings of confusion and technicolor fantasies that

Only existed when people dared paint the atmosphere with a variegated brush palette.

In my woods I traipsed through wintry landscapes and over snowy covered roots

With the intention of burying myself under dusted blue-white ice with dirty streaks on top of pond

Pockets formed by tributaries grinning red orange streaks, scattered along the woodland terrain.

I came out of the woods when I was 14 to a cinematic medical scene

Two life squad crew carried my mother out of her bedroom

Piled high with impulsively bought books with dust affinities

And even dusty home shopping network clothes in hidden prints and patterns

That she never washed because they were never worn.

She had consumed every tint of pill

In her heavy brown wicker basket of a pill box.

The ambulance lights didn’t refract emitted diode streaks in my eyes

Because I was not allowed to cry.

Neighbors brought loud tinny trays of foods to our door

And I went to school each day

Like a sense of normalcy was enough of a life support to keep me

Afloat as the clinical medusa’s nest of clear hospital tubes that miraculously revived my mother

She stepped out of the hospital

When ice thawed down to sloppy grounds and spunky grass patches,

Having missed all the semi-arctic snowy glitter and arid burning winds.

From that example I discovered my own pain was not some

Metaphoric escape route, no useful rough thorny rope tied in a noose nor a frigid plunge absolving me from affliction

When I departed the woods I set in search of soft chiffon compassion curled around muscly

Sinews of testosterone and hands to hold me, Palms much larger than mine,

I let men who I thought were clever

Paint their stories and ideas

Down my limbs

As I tried tracing the outline of a father figure against their skin

Around their flexing spines and pumping shoulder bones

Along uncharted connect-the-dots of dark moles and fair pock marks,

Grasping at their backs like I could not find air

Or as if my breathing might not succeed

Each time a feverish heat blossomed along my chest and up my neck

I kept feeding a carnal vice under the shroud of kissy romance and dewy fairytales,

By building a man made only of sand and

Often the disappointing but honest waters would wash him away

I moved to a metropolis,

Fueled on a television’s static buzz and glamorous magazine finger smudges

Of what could be.

Where I was I didn’t find love that I wretchedly wanted

And I departed a rear view of factories constructed like prison compound kingdoms, with

Smoke stack pilot lights dancing a maiden siren call I could no longer hear through smog castings

The faraway vantage of cityscape gleamed like a metallic nirvana

But when near my vision couldn’t be blinked clear to untarnish the metals and stubborn

Smudges on skyscraper windows.

I blew up fetishy latex rubber balloons the size of blimps for an artist

And I swiped scraps of silks from the floors and garbage cans of a no pay internship

I made my own beloved creations that were not stunted but that shone and grew

Like wind blown into soap rings to make buttery bubbles inspired by the greatest mirth and joy

And that delight was mine to keep.

I found a ratty beautiful gold terrier stranded in the middle of a street

Intersection between express route elephant buses and bustling bumble bee cabs.

I named my dog Liza Minnelli

Not simply because of the moody raven dark eyeliner markings around her eyes,

But also as a promise to be my queerest self

And I wanted to be a person with a funny dog whose pale pink sandpaper tongue stuck out

I dirtied my fingernails

Picking up pearly nickels and striped metrocard passes

next to tarred gum or collapsing wire trash cans

And I found a lasting love I told myself I did not deserve

And I did not paint a father figure on his back

And I worked four jobs of different lengths, commitments, focuses

And I saw a steroided disco ball make a shimmery plummet to announce the arrival of a new calendar

While working from a skyscraper’s 40th street vantage point

As I loathed a superior who filed her nails like a metronome against me

Hunching with slubby heavy sweaters

Over my shoulders and I cursed to myself about her heavy makeup

Because she did not let herself love

And I took a risk promised to myself years ago and whispered my secrets to the universe

Of a dream I had

Soon the city sparkled up the support beams and window panes glistened

And that dream did not turn into a reality like I imagined

And I didn’t commit to jump into the East River

And I found out I was okay and would be alright,

And I mean okay and alright in a certain confirmed manner,

Not like a colloquial rosy brushstroke to feign comfort

Watercolors from my soul poured down my face

And I cried.