Poetry by Dave Dave (June 18, 1976 – July 15, 2018), collected by his mother Marie Rothenberg Hafdahl. Born David Charles Rothenberg and later Dave Dave was an American conceptual artist. He was badly burned as a child. He was posthumously awarded a Hollywood F.A.M.E. award in 2018 for artistic merit. The betrayal by his father seared deeper than the flames that almost killed him. His survival was at a cost. His body carried the story long before he ever spoke it. The scars on his skin, daily pain and mirrors reflecting a version of him the world struggled to look at without flinching. Stares, whispers and many reducing him to what they could see; the scars.They did not see the discipline it took to breathe through the nightmares nor the courage it took to trust again. His recovery was difficult, surgeries, setbacks and silent tears. It was learning how to move in a body that felt foreign, it was accepting that the person he had been was gone-and deciding, consciously who he would become next.He could have chosen bitterness. It would have been easy. Instead, he chose something harder; forgiveness and love. He refused to let hatred be the final author of his story. Forgiveness did not mean forgetting. It meant reclaiming power. It meant saying: What happened to me will not define how I treat others. That decision transformed him.The very wounds that once isolated him became bridges. When others felt broken, he understood. He stood as living proof that devastation can become foundation. His scars once a source of shame, became testimony.He lifted people because he knew what it felt like to lie on the ground. He listened because he knew what it felt like to be unseen. He loved without condition because he understood how fragile life is.His life became more than survival; it became service. He refused to allow the attempt on his life to harden his heart. He became gentle, forgiving and a light for others walking through darkness. He found a strength far greater than the strength it took to survive. He chose LOVE and FORGIVENESS. Marie Rothenberg Hafdahl, David Rothenberg's mother, has been filmed, photographed, videotaped, and interviewed relentlessly by the world's press. She has received thousands of cards, letters, and telegrams from well-wishers around the world wanting to know more. In response, with the assistance of prize-winning filmmaker, television producer, former pastor, and best-selling author, Mel White, Marie recounted her son's fight for life as only a mother can in her book David's Story.
