A year ago today my dad died. So here is this.

A year ago today my dad died without warning.

I wrote this poem a few months ago, and I recorded it and edited it in time for today.

It's called "Poem for Dad" and was published at The Rumpus around the time they reviewed my book.

This poem will eventually be the best poem in my collection FRIENDS & ONE NIGHT STANDS, which maybe will find a home, and maybe will not.

The recording of this poem is sort of the first step, and not the final. It's going to be part of a poem and music EP. I think there will be four tracks on it, maybe eight. Eric Lewis will probably be writing some of the music, and Jon Carrelli will probably be writing some of the music. I think this EP will be available on vinyl in the next few months. Probably only on sale through me.

So here's the audio recording of the poem:

POEM FOR DAD

Feel free to share it with others. I release those rights if I ever had them.

And here's the poem as it's written:

POEM FOR DAD

My brother called me up on the phone and said Hey Dan dad called me up again. He’s worried about you again, man. Isn’t it about time you started doing something with your life? Like, you know, get it together man, pull it together. Get a life. You’re gonna give dad a fucking heart attack for chrissakes.

I am together, man. This is my life. I push around words for a living. I’m a professional word pusher. And if you don’t like it why don’t you just pick up a dictionary, pick out a word and go shove it up your ass, man. And I hung up.

Let me point this one out for you. Nothing I write is fake. Nothing I write is true. But that one, that one’s a lie.

It’s the foreverness. It’s the day my dad died and I’m not picking up his telephone call because I’m chasing a chick. It’s the ever since that day my hands shake when I hold things.

And I remember I remember being little with my brother not wanting to wake up in the morning, my dad walking into the room, Up and at em boys up and at em, he’d come right from bed where he slept naked, I remember thinking what a huge fucking dick he had, and it would wag back and forth as he moved from my brother’s bed to mine, no glasses on, liable to bump into any number of things.

So. Now I will attempt to do something I've never done formally, which is pick this poem apart. I recently spoke to a class and was sort of kindly coerced into explaining this poem, and it got me thinking, so here are my thoughts.

Paragraphs 1 and 2:
This is the only part of the poem I wrote before my dad died. I didn't realize that specifically until recently. It's interesting to have this in the poem because it's sort of a mean-spirited section. And the truth is, my father and I were not always friendly. Well, actually, I think he liked me a lot more than I liked him. But as I grew older, we grew closer, and it was only in the last few years of his life that we were very close.
This scenario never happened. My brother never called. My dad would never tell me to stop being a writer. At times he would be worried about the viability of my career decisions. But for the most part, he was confident that I would do whatever it takes to do whatever it takes.
This is mostly me just imagining things, and also me sort of feeling like an outsider in my family, and sort of me being angry at the appreciation of my lifestyle that only ran as deep as the surface. This is me being very revealing. More revealing than I will ever be about my writing. There's also a small amount of bullshit thrown into this analysis. Because I am, generally speaking, a bullshitter.

Paragraph 3:
This is the turn moment. This is the moment that means everything and nothing. This is my reflexiveness. This is me saying fuck, aren't I a sick fuck, why am I publicly writing this poem. This is also me being very vulnerable.
This is the only part of the poem that takes place in the here and now. In the present.

Paragraph 4:
This is a moment from the day my dad died. I was chasing a girl. My dad texted me a picture of the sunset from the beach. Then he called me later. Most likely to brag about the Florida weather. Which was his favorite thing to do on the telephone. Or in general.
This is me trying to in some way blame myself for my father's death. This impulse is really interesting to me. There's nobody to blame, nobody. But I want to blame myself. That, to me, is an amazing thing, and a point of tension in the poem, in my life.

Paragraph 5:
This is the heart. This is the living organism. This is the memory, the only memory of my father in the poem. It's shared with my brother, who is definitely the only person that experienced my dad's death in the same way as myself. Was I thinking about that when I put this into the poem? Hell no. If you think I was, you greatly overestimate the amount that intellect is involved in writing, or at least my writing.
Also, this moment is funny. This moment is the heart. This moment is embarrassing and graphic and would make my dad uncomfortable and makes me uncomfortable and makes my family uncomfortable.
This is the heart.

So apparently this is how I celebrate the one year memorial of my dad's death. This is something. Here is this. This is me attempting to come to terms with life. This is me thinking two things. This is me thinking: the one cliche in the world that is definitely, no definitely true, is this: loss gets easier with the dulling of time. And the other thing I am thinking is about when people say life is not always fair. And I am thinking, that is kind of bullshit, don't you think? Fairness implies deservedness. I think maybe nothing is or is not fair, because nobody deserves or does not deserve anything. Shit just happens.



Cheers &


Dan