Lonely Hearts Chapel

Next Thing

I keep waiting
for something
that’s never happened,
for someone to tell me
they saw it, too,
in whatever I told them
to read or listen to,
in all the things
I see it most clearly,
so often yet still so hazily;
it’s there and really
everywhere but
has never been talked about.

They need to see it
by themselves,
the thing I dread
but expect
to see standing behind me
every time I look back
up into the mirror,
so much taller than me
yet still framed there
with me.
I burn with fear and want
to feel
its hands on my shoulders

for the first time,
pulling me back into itself,
whispering things inside of me,
like “I’m so proud of you,”
or
“It looks just like I planned.”
I belong to that night
when it will finally charge
into my bedroom
unannounced with
its chalky half-shaded angles
and command my terrified smile
exactly what to do next.

I figured the eve of All Hallows’ Eve warranted the posting of a recent poem of mine, which a friend called “kinda spooky but inspiring.”

Love always,

your Mister

Miss Lonelyhearts and the Shrike, pt. 2

I’m the closest I’ve ever been to you, my shrike angel,
but I must circle to the stairs backstage
because the stage you dance upon is my height sevenfold;
I pray you’ll keep me in mind while I part from your sight.

With a slow, dreamlike urgency
I’m on the stage and you are dead;
no more magic dancing flight, only stillness.
I don’t cry
because you’re in my arms
and we’re as close as we’ve always been.

What-you-used-to-be spills onto me;
feathers stick to my boring flesh
and certainty becomes my soul.
With your sticking, colorless death
I trace our shapes onto the stage,
entwined in dance.

Your death seeps into me,
taking me away from myself
before my drawing is complete.
I fall into my work
and know I did enough.

Whoever finds us there
in death and art
will know that we thought
we knew what love was,
that you were sure
your dancing would bring me onstage,
that I was sure
we were dancing together the whole time
and my art would make it true forever.

Whoever finds our bodies
may not call it love,
but they will understand
the creative unselfish effort,
and they will wonder
if it really conjured immortality;
but a piece of them will be absolutely sure.

Reborn;
rushing fills nothingness
and there you are, as always,
the color of light streaming through
a fluttering eyelid.

My most intense romantic entanglement moved me to write these words, even all these years later.

Love always,

Miss L.

Miss Lonelyhearts and the Shrike, pt. 1

My mind tends to wander,
and when it wanders,
it often wanders to
you.

I suppose that’s how I find myself
sitting in this empty auditorium,
indoors but somehow outdoors,
(possibly through the use of skylights,
but I can’t tell because I am) fascinated by
you,
flying around onstage in front of me,
because, in this theater of my mind,
you’ve become a bird,
or revealed that you’ve always been
a person
dressed as a bird,
performing;
I might be dreaming,
but your performance makes me question:
“maybe everything was a dream until now.”

I examine you and I see that you’re a shrike,
a hunter-bird, a vicious hunter-bird,
but the dance is so sweet and
natural.

I examine you more intently and I finally understand it,
how you molded your human hollows and mountains
to fill that downy costume.
Your costume, that’s what makes your dance look so effortless;
it somehow reminds me of the night I watched Angels in America
with you,
and I cried when two men danced to “Moon River.”

I’ve been breathing your performance,
but the air becomes thinner
because something’s changed:
you’re watching me breathing you.
I blush and you squawk at the blood behind my smile;
you squawk: “American prophet!
Tonight you become American Eye that pierceth Dark!”*
You glow, suspended in the stage-lights,
beckoning me forward
like an angel,
one I’ve seen before, through heavy eyelids:
an angel on a screen, speaking revolutions
but unable to perform them alone.

I feel like we’re dancing together,
though it feels like we’re miles apart, and I’m just walking,
moving with an automatic need: to be closer to you;
to understand your dance, your costume and what they mean to you;
and to become ONE with what lies beneath,
by respecting the mind
who
integrated It All.

As I approach, I notice the wires allowing you flight,
but the dance isn’t fraudulent because the wires shine with magic,
the same silvery fishing-line magic that holds the universe together
and draws me ever-toward you,

the magic of natures not-yet-understood.

*This is a line from Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”

Love always,

Miss L.

The Evil Dream

I had a very happy
dream last night
where I strangled the thing
that sculpted me
from nothing, from whatever
whole I was made of.
As it stood before me,
humbly, I grew ever-more
enraged and wrapped my fists
around its song and pleas
because it would not answer
my questions–
not the way I wanted,
anyway–
and so the body faded
like dusty water in my hands
as I leapt laughingly through
the sprays, into the void,
becoming the sculptor of myself;

then empires fell for me
because of my pen
as everything I wrote came true;
and hordes of evil men
descended upon me, promising
their bodies, golds, and slaves
for me to give them
more;
and so I did, delighting
absolutely in their orgies
and total degradation
in the few moments until
it all became so boring,
whereupon I killed them all
with an asteroid strike
of my pen–
before their worship of
my power could lead them
to kill me or rape me
or whatever else they do–
and so I made myself
the evilest, most talented thing,

with a world to myself,
alone, slowly devouring
entire mountains of books
I’d made other people write
for me.
I hated to wake up.

This was partly inspired by a dream I had a few months ago: everything I wrote started coming true; then Ivanka Trump appeared and tried to recruit me to work for her father’s administration. I wish I could say that was the only time a Trump had tainted my dreams, but alas. It’s especially unsettling because you know we’ve reached that point of their regime where nobody would be 100% surprised if they woke up to find a Trump just sitting there, in the room with them. Oh well. Instead of trying not to think about it, I’ll just face the bull head-on and ask you guys: anyone else have any Trump dreams they’d like to share?

Love always,

your Mister

From Monsters

I’m often told I’m carefree
but you’ll find that I’m obsessed
with obsession,
addicted to addictions,
and attached to avoiding
the feeling small.
This
is the only happy disease.
It possesses me to sing
my passions
and sometimes
as I’m being watched
I see the Promethean spark
in eyes that aren’t mine
and know I’ve found a sibling;
together
we are the Moviegoers,
the Bibliophiles, the Passionate
Compassionate Fanatics grown
from children drawn to stars,
who saw the patterns
in our earliest pain
shifting across the timeless canvas,
dancing and warning us
of the maddening
impossibility of being alone,
from which moment onward
we were cursed to be surrounded
by suicide and empty bottles,
and by numbers
that would never mean anything
to us,
and–
worst of all–
surrounded by
the monsters made from children
that never looked up
from the toys set in front of them.
This curse is our disease,
to be forced to explain
the necessity of art
and to make men from monsters,
knowing we will not succeed.

I wrote this under a blushing blue sky, remembering all the nights I sneaked out as a small child just to look at the stars (with a group I called “Stargazers Anonymous,” made up of imaginary friends that might’ve been you.)

Love always,

your Mister

Miss Lonelyhearts Pays a Loan

I was born with a mountain on my back: parents not descended from gods; so I’m cursed to carry the gods like my parents did, like all our neighbors who borrowed rocks to weigh themselves down so they could eat and live and teach their children down here, because there’s good money in making life harder for yourself and better money in making life harder for others. But I mustn’t rage or kill or hate and bury you with my own burden. I must learn all I can about gravity and government, to fortify the knowledge under calluses and accept that I may spend my entire lifetime paying people who call themselves specialists to remove my mountainous lack stone by stone. And because I’m privileged enough to know the body is never enough, I will fill my hardness with buoyant dreams, dreams that I might someday eat alongside the gods, if only in name or blood or memory, and dreams of myself spiriting the gods into revolution, forcing nobody to carry us because we won’t make mortals move rocks anymore, like tyrants or pharaohs or vengeful myth-spirits. We will share our magic of knowing that motion is life instead of stone, then mountains will stay where they are and everyone will move around them by sunlight, air, and water, with clear lungs and unexhausted strength, soberly honoring those who walked before, the martyrs of the systematic, who killed themselves under the weight of everything they would never have and everything they would never be, “so WE could be different.”

I wrote this while thinking of my Political Economy professor, who once walked into class and (almost angrily) told us he’d just finished paying off his house; he then silenced our fomenting congratulations with a curt “Don’t clap. It’s nothing to clap about.” And we all instantly obeyed, straight-faced, because we knew exactly what he meant.

Love always,

your Mister