Happy Birthday, Morrissey

Dear hero, imprisoned,
With all the new crimes
That you are perfecting.
Oh, I can't help quoting you,
'Cause everything
That you said rings true.
- Morrissey

I was going to put up a picture of you as a much younger man, when you were on the crest of it all and you had handfuls of flowers spilling from your pockets. I don't mean to say that you're no longer on the crest of it all, although everyone else says that you've already had your time, that it's already been decades since. Anyway, I'm not going to be sentimental here. I loved your songs and I love them still, all of them plaintive or ebullient or both, your voice coaxing open the fist in our hearts year after year. I know nearly nothing about you, no matter how much has been written of your life or how much of yourself is incarnate in your lyrics. And of course you won't read this, and you wouldn't know horseshit about me either. But today you turn 49, and I have sung with and along to you more times than I care to remember, and all I know is that I once thought the loneliness would be unbearable, and then I heard you sing. You don't know me, I live in a city you might never have heard of, you don't know me, but here is celebration, here is gratitude, here it is, here it is.