Steve Dalachinsky
Somewhere along the way from Boulder, CO to USC I lost touch with the poet part of myself, that part of me that cracks open the world so I can see something imperfectly exquisite and just simply cosmic.
Last week was the 2-year anniversary of Steve Dalachinsky’s death. He was one of the greatest poets I ever knew. Many people will go their whole lives never knowing who he was or hear his poetry or read his poetry. Many will never have the memories of hearing his heavily-NYC-accent-Free-Jazz-voice crash into a microphone in some nondescript dark backroom stage area in a tragic-looking bar recovering from the madness of Saturday night.
So many people will never have those memories of sharing a stage with him or taking the ferry to Governor's Island to read poems all day to the NYC Poetry Festival crowds. No one will have the hilarious memory of reading poems to unaffected parents with their children on leashes and their dogs unleashed in Tompkins Square Park near Alphabet City, standing on a milk crate like what we were doing mattered so much more than their want to not be bothered by a bunch of hipster poets.
No one will ever have the memory of being invited by Steve with my friends to read at the White Box Gallery on a whim, and then find out Steve was furiously drunk and purposely did this to spite the event curator because he felt slighted by him. No one will remember how that night, in that crummudgenly way only Steve could do, he roasted the event creator in front of everyone, and then read poetry way over his alotted time while we laughed at the sheer beauty of the ephemeral artistic moment he created.
And then, outside the gallery, unless you were there, you’ll never understand the pain and regret he felt as he said, “Well, I just burned another bridge.”
When Steve passed, it was September 14th, 2019, after he performed at the Islip Art Museum on Long Island. That same day, he went to a Sun Ra Arkestra concert in Manhattan. After his reading, he suffered a stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. His last words were, “Maybe I overdosed on Sun Ra.”
When the news reached me in LA, I cried.
I cried. I read his poetry. I laughed. I told stories about him to my father, who is the furthest thing from a poet, but might have wandered in and out of Jazz clubs in the Village during the 1960s and 70s with each other, passing each other in the night and early NYC mornings without even knowing. There’s a microscopic possibility that they even sat together and drank together and talked about Jazz together, that their worlds collided for a split second which set off a series of prophetic events that placed me in some random NYC dive where I was reading poetry and Steve heckled me from the audience.
My identity is a patchwork of chaotic stanzas and photographs, longstanding friendships and broken relationships, and this journey isn’t over for me, far from it, and when I think of Steve Dalachinsky, I see a part of myself sharing a stage somewhere being poetry.
After he passed away, I was invited to read at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA on October 25th, 2019. A few of my friends from NYC who run the small press great weather for MEDIA were doing a book tour for their newest anthology. I wanted to share my stage time with Steve. I wanted him there, reading with me or in the crowd disturbing the awkward silence that poetry readings are famous for. It’s a silence where the audience pretends to understand something that they really don’t. It’s a silence broken only by unnecessary laughter about lines that really aren’t funny. It’s panicked laughter because no one wants to be caught not laughing, because it means you just didn’t get it.
I never get it.
I wanted Steve there. So, for the final 2 minutes of my time, I had them play a recording of Steve performing while I stood there, a full step back from the microphone, silently, with my head respectfully bowed, and my hands behind my back.
It’s my favorite performance. You had to be there.
To be a poet means accepting your time on this planet feels like a secret between friends, like an inside joke. It’s an existence that never feels right, because of the heightened awareness and sensitivity to the most frivolous details. It’s an existence of sudden outbursts of happy-sad tears and long walks in the dark and arguments with inanimate objects and spontaneous crying on a train or bus just because a random song reopens a wound that recently healed and there’s no way to ignore the joy of merely remembering everything that led to the scar.
When I think of Steve Dalachinsky, I see all poets. I see myself. I see a dark room, a stage, and a microphone where for 5-minutes total strangers finally get to be there.
