Voice Project: giving those with a voice a place to speak

#VoiceProject (follow on Instagram)

 
Over the past few years I’ve tried to extend the boundaries of my voice as a writer. I’ve tried writing on controversial topics or looking for inspiration in romantic places, but my experience has taught me a few valuable lessons:

 

1.       Most people do not care about what you have to say unless they can directly connect with it. Unless it is real and at the same time reveals an understanding of humanity.

2.       You will not truly understand yourself until you make it a point to understand others first.

3.       The people who have the most to say often say the least, usually because they aren't given a chance or they are worried nobody will listen.

 

Most of what we hear today, be it music or broadcasts on various media outlets, is selfish. People talk about themselves. A lot. Musicians talk about their struggle or how hard they work. People advocate for a love of critics and a disregard for public opinion. What they fail to realize, however, is that without other people, we would have no purpose. They also fail to realize that, pardon my sincerity, nobody cares.
 
Over my spring break (from Denver to Chicago and back), I wanted to start a project that would give a voice to those who don’t typically get to speak. It’s easy for me, a high school English teacher raised in a middle-class, predominantly white area, to stand up and speak for myself.
 
What I should be doing, however, is standing up and speaking for those who can’t.
 
Over the next month, I hope to compile a list of great people I meet and give you a glimpse into their lives. Good people still exist, but people won’t believe it (like they won’t believe most things) without cold, hard proof. I intend to provide that proof, and I invite you to join.
 
Please follow me on this journey (I have named Voice Project), not for me, but for the people I meet. I would love for you to share your own, too. Share stories/poetry/art of anyone you think deserves to be heard (or seen), and simply tag it with the hash tag #VoiceProject.
 
Anyway, enough of me. Let the sharing begin:
 
Name: Bernard Lee
Denver, CO
March 27, 2014
 
Bernard just arrived to Denver from Chicago two weeks ago, not long after his release from prison. “I needed change,” he said. “I kept getting into the same old [stuff]. I made horrible decisions.”
 
Bernard’s rough life began while he was growing up in a group home in Chicago. “[The people in charge] took advantage of me because I was smart, and everyone else in the house, except a few people, were mentally insane. Literally insane,” Bernard said. “How am I supposed to maximize who I am in that environment?” Bernard said the only reason he made it out was because he “did everything they asked, no questions. Even if it meant selling drugs. Shit, they would smoke and drink with me. I was just a kid. And they’re supposed to be helping me?”
 
At 19, Bernard was locked up for selling drugs. He did five more stints over the next 12 years. Now, he’s 31 and trying to find his way in Denver.
 
“I was meant to help people. My mother was a Jehova’s witness. Helping people is in my blood.”

With a passion to escape the Midwest and all that it brought him, Bernard walks the streets of Denver searching for shelters that will provide him with opportunities to help.

I asked him if he ever wrote about it. He smiled, and over a Gyro from a cart on the sidewalk, Bernard shared his poem “I’m Tired” with me. When he spoke, his brown eyes opened wider than I’m sure they had in a long time. Each line conjured some trial he endured back East, and his lips puckered to his teeth. During the 40 seconds it took for him to share his poem (completely from memory), Bernard Lee was as honest as he’s ever been. He wanted to write it down (so I wouldn’t take credit for it) and have me record it, which I did. Friend me on Facebook (Jacob William) to see it.

“I just have so much pain,” he says. “I just need to change the environment around me. Your environment can run your life. My environment made me this way. That’s why I’m in Denver. To change. To make something of myself.”

 
Bernard’s poem is below.
 
“I’m Tired”
by: Bernard Lee
 
I’m tired of this pain,
I catch enough just to go insane,
But instead of giving a frown
I smile the smile of a crazed clown.
 
Some people say I’m as soft as a cloud,
Some people say I’m the golden child
Just a little more buck wild.
 
It’s time for a change.
 
It’s time to stop thinking with my d***
and using my brain
But when I use my brain, all I see
Is these dirty hoes tryin’ to play me.
 
What I was taught—there’s nothing stronger than game,
And just as damage does glass
I know words can bring pain,
You do wrong once, it’ll come back twice.
 
Now it’s my turn to roll the dice.

To my nephew

I never knew love until my nephew was born.

There is something overpowering about holding a child who is so deeply connected to you. In fact, even his name is a fusion of our (my youngest brother Devin and me) names--Jacin. I am thankful every day for him, and pray I have the opportunity to be the type of uncle to him as my uncles were to me. I intend to be. But just in case life intervenes with my intentions, as life often does, I wrote this poem.

Love you for reading.

To Jacin (a letter I hope you never have to read)

 
If we somehow separated
or you sprouted through adolescence
without aid of your uncle’s water,
know I left you with the first
half of my name, a reason to find you.
 
If your grip upon a ball is unguided by
my words, coached to you by some stranger
on a sideline of summer grass,
know the pattern of your fingers on leather mimics mine,
as does the placement of your pen as you write our last name.
 
If you ever felt abandoned by the food of Being,
the drive of our Pulse, that very love once used to fill
a dry tin—which now only yields reflections of a hungry heart—
know I reached my arms to you, packaged my soul
and sent it forth in the carriage of a prayer and demanded careful speed
 
of a messenger boy’s bicycle, one that would suit you
had I been there to teach you how to ride; and I watched it
coast into the wind with the whimsical wonder of a dandelion wish,
faith of an accompanying, divine request
heaved to the sky each evening.
 
Know I never felt so selflessly small
until your entire hand swallowed my finger, and that
I never gave a kiss with true meaning
until my lips pressed against the crown of a head shaped like mine,
your face gently pressed against the pillow of my chest;
 
know I never saw family so clearly
until you wore great-grandfather’s chin
beneath a smirk that revived faces
of great-uncles you’ll never meet,
who raised our fathers in a line of men
 
tough like Kentucky clay, strong
as steel fastened to the earth
like the tracks of Burlington’s line, the lengths of which
I would travel if I had to give the second half of my life,
or my name, just to find you.

The Aurora Series

The following poems were written in the Roundhouse, downtown Aurora. The first is an ode to my great grandfather, Lloyd Hansen, a railroad machinist who passed away before I was old enough to gather much of who he was. The second is a reflection on today's generation, including myself.

I love you for reading.

JN

City of Lightning
I remember little of his face
something of his voice,
but see all of my Great Grandfather
sitting in his wheel chair
demanding my left fist cover my left eye and
twisting his hips,
grunting that I do the same and send my right hand
thrusting, clenched, into his leather palms
he held above his jagged elbows,
 
his callouses thick like the bricks
of this building where he used to toil,
his stubbornness thick like a machinist’s
hands coated in oil or like these walls,
built ascending to heaven to house railcars
but now to house fermenters
and tile floors, the rafters perfumed
with aromas of coffee beans
 
as I sit above his footprints
and sip a drink that steams
like old rail engines, warm and fast and jolting
like its name, or sparring jabs
or the memory of him.

Waiting Generation

The boys and girls whisper
of Tomorrow, flick nickels
into wish pools that ripple
toward Tomorrow, send fickle prayers
for labormen to lay brick roads
away into that ever-promising day,
 
and they wait and wonder
with still feet, weak souls and growing worry
as the sun sets and casts  the caveat of Yesterday,
the haunt of unsavored time,
a shadow more daunting and certain than
bright and wishful promises of Tomorrow.
 

Poetry Friday: Love Letter to my Ugly Sweater

Poem of the Day!

Love letter to my ugly sweater

Today is ugly sweater day,

Thus the entire school is decorated
Like a Charlie brown Christmas tree,
Wilted over with
Clashing colors and wool-knitted covers
With turtle necks,
Makeshift vests,
Tinsel draped across the chest.
 

But I question whether,

Looking at the tag that dangles from my sweater,
Its creator intended it to be
 
Ugly.
 
Someone scraped together
pennies to pursue a dream,
learned the trade of knits and seams
And produced this for me,

It fits me.
 
This sweater is ugly
To many,
But it keeps me warm
And probably did the same for its previous owner,
Who thought it through
And bought it new,
Who wore it proudly until he outgrew it,
Until it lost the beautiful flicker that once caught his eye
And dumped it off for someone else,
To be recycled multiple times.
 
Some think it to be ugly,
But I think it’s perfect,
And that’s the beauty of this world,
 
That we were all made beautiful,
and this truth:
Someone experienced love,
and you're living proof.

Everything is beautiful--
not to everyone--
but all it takes is one
 
And though people may outgrow you
Label you ugly or mark you a failure,
dump you off for someone else,
stamp you with decreased value
 
You are new to somebody
Who would love for you to keep them warm,
Who will think you fit perfectly,
Who will scrape together pennies and love
And whatever else it takes to wear you with pride,
to never outgrow you.

A letter from the uninspired poet, carved into wood

A letter from the uninspired poet, carved into wood

Write not
only when words crash
through your head like waves,
filling your lungs until you cough them
back to surface, still as themselves
but carrying your blood, a piece of your soul.
 
Write not
for admiring fingers
that sway like grass blades
or leeching arms that wave
when you force your breath upon them,
or for the scoffing ears of critics.
 
Write not
only for pain, or love, or to be heard
by selected persons, to be called perfect,
write not to receive mercy from
merciless worlds,
 
but Write always,
tunnel through stutters,
chisel through blockage
with the tip of your pen,
and if you bleed, leave a trail
so they will know how you came
to emerge, covered in proof
that the secret to freedom
is accepting and
overcoming discomfort.

 

 

 

Leaping: the perks of embracing change, risk, and discomfort

This is a concept I've been trying to nail down for a while. Still don't quite have it, but it's a start. In essence, I feel the need to change my surroundings. I want to seek new opportunities and meet new people. I want to hear new sounds and see from new perspectives.

The thing is, we all do. Somewhere inside us we all want to "travel" or "See the world."
The problem is, we convince ourselves that life won't let us.
The reality is, we are the only thing standing in our way.

It is okay to get comfortable and stay where you are, but so few times in our lives does the itch to take a risk grow so strong that we feel the need to change. I have already let a few of those moments pass me by, and I won't let it happen again. It is in those moments we have the greatest chance to land on our feet if we leap, leaving behind any chance of regret.

So, here ya go. I love you for reading.




Love note from a traveler
I led you to a horizon,
an overlook of life-breathing fields
to revive our starved desire,
yet when the Sun’s arms reached for us,
pressed their welcoming palms to our faces
and unlatched the dark doors
of cloudy futures, you resisted
 
the glistening meadows ahead, spoke
worry of risk as I toed the cliff to freedom,
spoke excuses that crept up my back
like the impatient fingers of children
tugging my shirt to leave, return home
to familiar dark rooms and dust and patterned walls
who mimic patterned days,
 
the rows of houses,
squares of cement and scheduled time
to lament invented struggle, to speak hatred
of humdrum, of wishes to be led
to new horizons, unknowing
of my plans to return,
to toe that cliff and wait for westward winds
 
to catch my arms,
outstretched as they are,
to embrace the gift of endless sky
and abandon the hands
tying down my shirtwaist so
I may leap toward freedom and leave
in the dust a reminder of where I once stood.

When Death Wakes Us...

We type #thestruggle as a joke and follow twitter members named "First World Problems," so I assume we understand the absurdity of our culture's tendency to chronically complain. We are all guilty--some more than others--of turning a minor problem into a tragedy. We focus on which clothes to wear, which phones to buy, and which of our things we can flaunt in certain circles. The reality is, this stuff doesn't matter. At all. And though this is an oft explored idea, life always has vacancy for a little wake up call.

My cousin is a police officer and sees things that never reach the papers. To be an outsider looking in on someone else's pain is bad enough, but to carry the responsibility of "calming them down" so you can ask them objective, emotionless questions is a burden I wish not to endure. He described to me a recent call, which he called the "saddest thing [he's] ever seen," and which inspired this poem. The event caused us both to think about the minute things that consumed our attention that day--including what we were wearing. It led us to conclude that a tragic amount of people drift away from reality into a society-induced sleep that steals them from what is truly important. Sadly, sometimes death can be the only thing to wake them...


A Policeman's Paltry Wardrobe, Justified

My medley of clothes, complete

with blues to exploit my eyes

and reds and yellows and matching ties

for each point-collared shirt, dangles above brown feet

 

and black-toed leather with wooden soles,

worn from dancing when I wore them to dance

with the pinstriped pleated pants

now pinned to the plastic, ready for banquets or weddings or any of their roles;

 

Indeed I can

assemble such wonder,
a wardrobe of garments set asunder

from counterparts, fit for any moment for any man

who dares to invest such care

in appearance, who thinks patterns

and linens would matter

if I happened to trip and fall dead to the bottom of the stair

like this woman, found by her daughter

in this crimson sweater of wool,

which matches the blood rippling from her skull

onto the concrete that caught her;

this blue smile, unaltered by gargling screams

that grapple with the chilling warmth in her cheeks,

which wrestles with the exhaling breath that seeks

to wake her from infinite dreams—

O revive the eight men and me, black-suited,

who circle a throttled body, contorted

yet dressed for this moment mistakably thwarted

by phantom chance, while true purpose ascends from her grave, uprooted

by the thought of my closet, aligned

for show and supposed events,

this collage of color meant to represent

a life which, if defined by this, is undefined,

and so I waive the right to repurpose

these things drooping from steel like wilted dreams

or like the limbs of a mother, death seeping from her seams,

bludgeoning me with a cost I conclude isn’t worth it.