Dadda
There's something I need to say
Dadda
There's something on my mind

I'm watching stars come crashing down
As the moon screams in delight
the wind whispers my name
Saying, "Everything will be alright."

I can't see your eyes and I'm tasting mud
But pools of static are haunting mine.
I wish to hold on to something strong
but the arm that I'm grasping is unlatching now...

Dadda
I'm telling the jury the puppet is dancing
Dadda
I've had your shoes, I put them on for size

Though I never saw the gun by your bedside,
Now I can feel your breath fading
I'll go crawling down
Looking for a dead body

He can't hear me scream his name
the jury's decided no more playing
Deathrow for the man with a tender embrace

Dadda...

Dadda...

Dadda...

I look in the mirror
What do I see?
Wrinkly woman
Staring strait back at me
Her eyes have bags
She hasent slept in weeks
Her hair all white
White as snow
Her eyes wide like a child's first hope
She looks at me
Puts her and on the mirror
"Dadda?" She asks
" no I'm not your father"
"Dadda?"
" I don't know where he is.."
"Dadda?!" She starts to freak out
" I'm not your father!"
"Dadda!!"
"I DONT KNOW WHERE HE IS! I DONT KNOW WHERE HE WENT! HE LEFT US OK! HE LEFT us.."
She turns her head and looks at me
"Why?" She asks
I tell her" I don't know!"
She points to the watch on her wrist
"He only gives you those so you can count down the minuts to see him! It's not worth it! Every year it's longer and longer, and soon he will walk right out of your life!"
"Dadda is suppost to come! I want to play!"
I look at her, reach out and touch her hair
"The only game our father plays is hide and go seek except we give up looking and waiting for him"
"But I've been waiting since I was three!"
" and now your eighty! Don't you see? Go get sleep or find some friends! You will find other love, it's just as good."
"Don't lie to me!" She demands in a deep voice. Her eyes full of hate!
"No don't do that! You don't deserve all that hate !"
" nothing is as good as a fathers love! Not a date, a true boyfriend NOTHING!"
"How do you know ? We have never had a fathers love!"
" but you see it around you. Then you give up and try boy love."
"Don't say that!"
"You know it's true the only reason you date boys is to find some love for you! You seek attention and kisses and hugs! So you feel someone truly cares and loves! Your pathetic trying to wait! Pretending to love him every holiday ! "
"SHUT UP SHUT UP!!" I say and punch the mirror
"Why don't you make me! You pathetic slime You can't enjoy Christmas *** he's gone mine !"
I stood up and stare her in the eyes. "No one owns me or tells me what to do!"
"Oh I'm so scared!"
"Yes yes you are ! Your scared of never being enough! Your scared that if your not pretty! You'll die and he won't give a ****! Your scared that you will loose him! Your scared no one will care! Well guess what buddyriend and family that care !"
"Why don't you sleep it off? And wait for him to care?"
"IM DONE SLEEPING AND WAITING FOR HIM !" I reach in and grab her by the throught. "AND IM DONE LISTENING TO YOU!"
I turn her neck till the mirror shatters
The glass breaks
my hand blead
I sit and cry like nothing mattered
I look at one of the pieces on the ground in front of me. It's a little girl only about age 3.
"Thank you" she says and curtsys and disinagrates away.
I sit and cry. Tears of joy
Nothing is more blissful then freedom
Even more then a boy.

She was always counting her blessings.

When starved for misbehaving:
'I was wrong. I should have listened to Mama. At least I took a full lunch in school today. If I sleep early I would not feel hungry.'

When bullied for being the most quiet girl in class:
'Maybe I should talk more. Maybe I should look at people in the eyes when I do so. I was wrong. It's okay. At least they will leave me alone for now.'

When scolded for not doing her housework well:
'I was wrong. I could have done better. I should not have taken a break. At least I still have Mama to yell at me. Anne has none.'

When hit for playing the radio too loudly:
'Dadda was in a bad mood. I should never have turned it on. I was wrong. At least the radio is still around so I can secretly listen to it in my room.'

When slapped for her grades dropping:
'I should have extended my studying hours from seven to nine hours a day. I was not good enough. I was wrong. At least I still have another three months till the next test.'

When ***** by drunk father:
'I do not understand what happened. It was all just pain and darkness. Dadda said I am not allowed to tell anyone anything. But it's okay. At least he promised me more pocket money for school.'

I have one grandmother
And one grandfather.
Cousin Kate has two of each.
When I was young she tried to teach
My to call them Nana B
And Dadda B respectively,
But I guess that was too hard for me
So I just call them
Nana and B.

Nana looks a lot like mom
Except she's got more wrinkles on.
And lipstick that's a perfect pink
And dog treats underneath her sink
And a silver hairbrush,
Creams for foots,
And on occasion she calls me "*****".

My B, he's from Pier-Dip-Pah-Too.
His real name's John
(My brother's too!)
And B works on the radio
And tells me things I didn't know
About boats. And on the holidays
He always serves glasses
Of Seven-Sideways.

In my family we have this tradition
Called "the annual lake freeze competition".
My aunts and uncles, they all guess
Then me, of course, then all the rest
Which day Lake Ontario
Will freeze right over
So we know
Who. Gets. The Trophy.

Nana, she records the dates
And then with B she sits and waits
Day in, day out
They watch the lake
For one fine day
When no wave breaks the ice
...and someone wins The Trophy.

(One year the lake never froze and there was NO WINNER. My dad is obsessed with Global Warming and no he always votes anti-freeze.)

Now today's my day: January 21st
And I'm so excited I could almost burst
Cause I just know that phone
That's ringing
Is the call to inform me
Of my winning.

Gasp It's for me!

Hand me the phone, Mother ,
Give it here.
Why hello, Nana!
(She says "hello, dear")
Oh. I didn't win.
Well that's okay.
B says its a gamble this game we play.
Turns out it froze yesterday
And the trophy goes to
Cousin Kate??!!

Next year I think I'll vote anti-freeze
And I'll throw big rocks right through the ice.
Or maybe my brother, he'd suffice.
It's just not fair! Kate's won it twice!
But I did get to talk to Nana and B
...and that was nice.

Jack Kerouac made my momma hitch

down the west coast from Seattle to

Albaquerque in the 1970s but she

never made it to Mexico

Jack Kerouac made my dadda struggle

through an English major only to dig

ditches and deliver mail twenty years later

Jack Kerouac made me who I am today

a Dharma *** looking for any highway

outta here to Frisco to New York City to

subsist solely on coffee and searching for

Nirvana and being forever unsatisfied

with the name I was chained to at

birth people ought to choose their own

Jack Kerouac made who I am tomorrow

completely impossible to discern but he

filled me with blank paper and handed

me a pen and Thoreau the great

Transcendentalist made me write in

the dark but Jack Kerouac made me

transcend the ******* and write

for nothing for Buddha for smoky

haze for the turtle that walks with

the world on its back I may now

never stop looking for me in the

streets of Denver to ask me where

I would be without Jack Kerouac

CONEIDER  HIGH"

Mmm life of stress, no rest. Nothang but Struggle, I ponder why it seems
trouble. No one
knows he
struggled, Dadda sa'd tide stays not longer. Weather wiggled unstable'.
Coneider
strong.
Clouds appear awesome and the top of the skies smell so handsome. Top on the
peak of
the
world. Above adhere golden stones of light. Realistically loyal
to life.
Optimistically humanitarian.
Much
more to life
than
Destitute, if there's any infrastructural,
love is, spread her wings she learnt to soar.
Human is made, none cultural.
Who did it save?
Transformation does not come without
individuality.
Power of love create solidarity.
'4gi'e me' f'r my flaws already bow' my head. I wish
more freedom as free as tree (s) fixate hove on
Cloudnine as I'm high.

C9fm

A golden shaft of morning sun
Threw lines of life to cirrus cloud
A flight of teal on wings of steel
Arrowed from nights flying shroud.
The gems of dew on emerald grass
Blazed crystal violet, hills of glass.

A day is born, a time to live and laugh
Feel young and happy, free as chaff
Caste in the zephyr breeze.

A tear of joy springs to my eye,
A grin, as big as life,
I fly across a meadow, leap a stream.

I’m happy for you Sue and Pete,
I celebrate with night’s retreat
The dawning of your daughter’s day
With all my soul I wish her well
Sweet happiness in life’s foray.

Bon voyage sweet Kathryn

Uncle Dadda
Hamilton
New Zealand 1969

One sunny day when I was 10 - the flowers in full bloom -
my father tried to shoot himself, upstairs in his locked room.

Except it wasn’t a sunny day.
It was an ordinary night -
a night I watched from the neighbor’s window a police officer smash through the glass doors of my childhood home -
a night three days before my first family visit to a psychiatric hospital -
a night filled with my mother’s tears, my confusion, shattered glass, and gunshots.

No, not a sunny day, but get it?
HAHA - misdirection.
HAHA - juxtaposition.
HAHA - I’m describing the opposite of a happy, sunny day.
HAHA.

I cope with the sadness by mixing it with jokes,
like how you may cope with having to eat a dead crow by dipping it in chocolate -
doesn’t help, does it, you sick *******?

My father has the sadness.
He tried to cure it with a shotgun.

His father has the sadness.
He drinks.
I wish I had a fun way to tell his story, but that's mostly it.
He wakes up early, puts on his best old-man clothes, and sits in his basement watching old Westerns
and he drinks.

I don't know why he gets up early.
I don't know why he gets dressed.
I think it's for the same reason I write -
same reason I run -
I think alcohol helps him swallow that bird - you sick ******* -
I think he had the same fear when he had his first son:
that he'd pass on the sadness.

He did.
His son did.
Was it passed though their genes or through something they’d seen?

That question terrifies me,
because I hold my daughter with my left arm -
an arm covered in scars which clearly read:

“Your dadda has the sadness.”
“Your dadda’s not well.”
“You dadda lost every fight with himself
except one” - and that’s ongoing.

He’s losing.

I fear the day she may write
about some sunny day when she was 10.