A poem Inspired by Internet Dating

Technicolor Telephone

I.

I was in love with you before I met you,

After our first day together on the phone.

Sharing fantasies if not fluids,

Matchmaker matchmaker I found my match.

I googled belle-mere that night.

It sounded so right.

The matchmaker made us I had no retort.

I want you so badly from right brain to cunt.

Your voice on the phone

Like a guitar string tuned just to me

Twist of steel that I can touch

Call it love, call it lust,

I’m sweet for you like angel dust

Come this weekend, as you are

We’ll consummate this flame between us.

Get as kinky as you want to. I’ll go there.

There are places I would go

With you but no one else.

Take me to New York

Let’s fuck in your apartment

Until the end of time.

II.

It’s a fantasy, to be swept off like that

But my second act has turned stale and dull

No friends, no lovers, no performance art troupe.

A gorgeous house all my own, but no love.

I want to burn with love.

I want to burn with you.

Take me in your arms,

Finally, October fifth.

We’ll see where this goes.

I’ll be on my toes.

They’ll curl with ecstasy

We’ll see.

III.

A thing about you,

When we’re on the phone.

I believe every word

I move with your drum

I dance with each dream

As if they were reality.

Your voice on the phone

Like a guitar string tuned just to me

Twist of steel that I can touch

Once time has passed between those calls

I wait and wonder.

Get stood up.

Hope and pray

Do high magic.

Make witch bottles

Burn bay leaves.

To make what you speak of true.

But will it be?

IV.

“Bicoastal romance is so Victorian, lots of yearning correspondence.”

– me, in a text, to you.

I’m as lonely as a honeybee.

Without a hive.

A short story in process

What I did and did not do last year.

I recall beginning one January with the best of intentions. Substack-wise. Posting once every two days. Ambitious. Too much so, because I was fresh out of material by February.

I recall a scrap of AWP gossip that “I’m Not Dead” was the horniest Substack, which I took faintly as a compliment. How else does one take something like that?

This time of year I guess I’m supposed to list my years accomplishments. Not many. I published a book with Rochak Publishing, Angelina at the Serrano. The sin and redemption addiction novel that an old professor had wanted Jet Set Desolate to be. At least in intention.

For the first time I had a fan send some books for me to sign, with returned postage envelopes, which was a huge thrill. My fiance was impressed. More on that later.

I submitted a poem to an editor I’ve worked with before and “Chelsea Motel #5” was published in Avalanches, an anthology of art, poetry and prose inspired by Leonard Cohen.

I submitted some stuff to an new editor and an unfortunate series of events ensued which I do not entirely understand but it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I didn’t submit anything else for practically the entire year. I didn’t write anymore, either.

Dear reader, I became addicted to video games. The worst! Do not let this happen to you if you want to preserve a writing practice. I was recovering from Long COVID and felt like putting my effort towards things that made me feel entertained and accomplished instead of yelled at for no reason I understood.

I was weak. I am human. Still, unfortunately.

It makes me sad to type this, as I wasted so much time and energy gaming when I was pounding out the pages for most of my life and had finally reached a good place with it. A place which felt like success.

A place where I have weird haters. Quite a few, as I have been informed. People in Los Angeles who hate that my best friend and I are who we are. People in Portland that are,”mad that I got this house.” Apparently a few lengthy Reddit strings exist, not that I have the stomach to read that kind of shit. I stay away from the dark web, in general.

Anyway, petty grievances of my writing year aside, I am thrilled about the good things which have happened. I acknowledge that my hands downloaded and play these games because sometimes a bitch needs a break.

I dealt with the pain in my life by writing about it for a very long time. Before I discovered a different anesthetic. Which didn’t require going to the core of the pain and writing my way out until pools of blood formed around my writing desk. Lying back in bed playing idle video games made for 4-12 year olds was a calming anesthetic, but I’d like to move forwards. As in backwards. To writing again.

The complexities of online dating led me to start writing poetry again. I have a short story brewing. I’d rather post them to my Substack and blog. Practice work is not my best work but I would like it be heard again on a lower register.

More to come.

My novel Angelina at the Serrano is out now from Lost Angelene Books. A path. A past. A heroine’s journey. Written medicated. Edited sober. I wish I had the answer. I don’t.

ISBN 13: 978-0-9903394-8-9

I awoke terrified today.

Later in the morning, I could not remember if it was real. Banging. Overheard conversation. Something about my ex wife. Someone trying to collect her debt. My divorce settlement absolved me of any responsibility for her debts. Especially this kind. A man in the dark banging on my door. At 4 am.

I should not speak if her in a public forum. Legal issues. Perhaps it was a dream. We Schizophrenics are terribly easy to gaslight, aren’t we. My family did love telling me my fears would never happen. Were delusions. In the before times.

All too many of my Cassandra Complex fears have come true. To my detriment. In the years that followed.

I trust myself. Instead of other people. They do not live in my skin. With my scars and memories.

Histories, rumors, truth and lies. I tell the truth of my experience. Others say what they want. I don’t really talk to other people. Part of why I’m reviving this Substack now.

Reading essays of other culture creators for pleasure. My mind finally neuroplasticized so that I could finish one. Garth Greenwell from To a Green Thought, “Passionate Ambivalence.”

Music and art in New York.

It made me remember. Museums are all I miss about the outside.

Outside is danger. Reno, 2023. No comprehension of this new dimension. A world changed so fast and far while I lay sick and dying, dying, dead. Then. Revived. Reaching, reaching back to my life. A life. This life.

Wishing I knew anything about neuroscience. To explain. this strange condition. Long COVID. A psych med withdrawal coma. An absence from my body. October 2021.

Two traumatic brain injuries. 2020. 2021. My grandfather, who lived in this house before me, also had a history of these. Was also mentally ill.

.

I understand that sleeping in their former bed.Within these walls. Formerly encasing those emotions and events, I am marinating in para electro magnetic energy. A medium for magic. If one knows how to work within it. I used to try.

I wait. And learn. To learn.

If this Substack “I’m Dead” has a theme and purpose? It is that. Understanding the unravelling of the last few years. Relearning how to write. As Andrea Lambert 1.0 did.

I am AKL 2.0. I don’t know.

I/We/She/Me have another book out. Hollywood Hedgewitch. Los Angeles, 2015. Where fun and pleasure were for AKL 1.0.

I feel like her detached literary executor.

Hollywood Hedgewitch is available here on Amazon, anyway. Read it or don’t.

Hello, dear readers,

I’ll be taking a break for the month of February. Two of my books just came out, which I’d love for you to read instead. And I am god damn exhausted. January’s every other day schedule was demanding.

The part of me which still needs to convalesce took over a couple weeks ago. So, I’m on that page for the moment.

Until next time,

Andrea Lambert

This evening began with waking from a lovely nap.

Right now I am eating an ice cream bar in bed, wearing a red onesie like Bob Crachit. The Christmas lights in my bedroom are on. The Christmas tree is dark. I would/should/could take that down someday when I have enough strength, drive and energy to do so.

Suddenly, right now seems like a time to start. It is February, I know.

From a chronic illness perspective, however, I am planning in leaving it up in perpetuity. I have to save all of my strength for tomorrow’s necessary chore. Taking out the trash. In what looks like will be snowy weather.

Budgeting energy, like budgeting time and money, is crucial for me in finding ways to live in my house, in my impaired body and still get things done.

Suddenly, bed seems even cozier. Sleeping cats on the bed. Maybe I can calm down and rejoin  them. Can I? Worth trying.

Oh, before I fall into a sleep of death and my corpse is reanimated by a Swedish aristocrat, I should drop the good news.

NEON HYSTERIC is out! I am thrilled. Never gets old.

Available on Amazon here.

Available at Barnes and Nobel here.

So buy yourself one. And your sixteen faerie sisters or whoever might want one. Valentines Day is coming up.

As for book party, it turns out the stress of the last one eliminated any further desire for me. I have grown so damaged that reliable speech, performance, timely recording of a reading, etc…. are all dead as disco.

I don’t even know how I’m still alive.

I am writing this the evening before the online book party for DINING WITH A BY ANDREA LAMBERT CURSED BLOODLINE.

NEON HYSTERIC IS THE SEQUAL TO JET SET DESOLATE is coming out next. I am already thinking online book party, once again. A prerecorded YouTube reading as with my last book party is one option.

I would like to incorporate a live Q and A, or live element at all. Regrettably, I fell way behind the technology curve when I was fighting for my life and resuming consciousness and functionality over the last three years.

I have never Zoomed.  That should give you an idea of how disconnected and out of commission I was.

2023 is the year of me. Taking back my identity. I am so happy with the work my publisher is doing. The joie de vivre it adds. The jolt of serotonin esctasy at unboxing my books. Slightly altered titles? Whatever!

I have not had exciting good things to celebrate, or the ability to celebrate them, for quite a long time.

Having something to live for is key for me to stick around in this…troubled…corporeal plane. Any reason not to take the final solution is invaluable. In past years, I’ve stayed alive for new Lana Del Rey albums, new seasons of American Horror Story. Seeing my life dreams finally come true is a hugely motivating reason. Validating my painful endurance of that which came before.

I have this odd little fantasy about sitting there with Keith Richards telling stories and playing cards at the end of the world. He’ll be downing whiskey shots. I’ll be wearing sequins.

That’s worth staying alive for.