daddy

I love words.

I came across this poem of Thaddeus O'Neil's amongst a few others of his in a British fashion/culture magazine in 2005. His work is difficult to come by, with what little is published of his out of print.

He is incredibly gifted with words...below is one that reminds me very much of my own dad.

HIM

most everyone who met him

fell in love with my father

was especially true of the kids who knew him,

the kids on the block, the kids he taught and coached,

all of them

always told me

how great my father was

and how much they loved him,

and they used the word

LOVE.

my sister and I could never understand this.

it had to be a mistake,

surely the just didn't know him

the way we knew him.

or maybe

that was it:

maybe they knew him

as we had never known him.

we loved him of course,

but our love

was as a camel loves water:

with a

LONGING,

based as much on a hatred of thirst

as a love

in drinking that thirst away.

we never understood

why he didn't try

to make us fall in love with him

the way he did with all the other kids.

for a long time

I stockpiled and analysed his many faults

to prove all those kids wrong,

to prove to myself

that he hadn't so much as failed me

as that

he wasn't so great

afterall,

to prove that these kids had made a mistake,

that they had confused him with someone

or something

else,

that they had been scammed,

that my father

was a cruel myth

like Peter Pan

or Superman,

a figment of their own clutching

longings,

a convenient invention

of their

desperate

imaginations.

I've spent the better part

of my twenty-five years on this,

only to finally realise

that Peter Pan

and Superman

and my Father

are real.