I have told that story before on stages I don't well up like I used to yeah and I welded up here this was simply emotion on a page there's something that happens when you create something with the story that's different than when you tell the story when you're telling a story out loud it's hard to separate it from the rest of your life but when you turn the language into a poem it almost like encapsulates it and then you separate it from you it's outside of you and that space allows you to share it differently
and it allows you to internalize it differently we tell stories largely for the benefit of others and this exercise the poem was meant for the benefit of me I just happened to share it with you that's right do you think the word poem is a liability when people hear poem they like roses or red violets or blue you know yes and the word when you say I'm I'm a poet people like oh here we go and when you say I'm going to have you write a poem it's a liability right because the word poem or
poetry has baggage yeah I mean I have my mind goes in different directions to respond I mean the first thing I'd say is some of the best art experiences I've ever had was while I was in the audience watching another poet on stage because I know what it is and I know what it can be but that's because I've experienced it to your point um when I'm talking to people about what I do for a living if I say I'm a writer that's one conversation but if I say I'm a poet they're either super interested
which is very rare or they just start looking over my shoulder what word if do you like the word I'm a poet do you like the word I write poems or if you had if you got to choose your own word or job description how would you rather what would you rather say on your business card well the thing is that it is authentic it's the truth yeah I am a poet and I'm many other things I'm an author I'm a facilitator I'm u a songwriter but I'm a poet and a lot of the foundational
work of my art it really does connect to that term do you have a favorite so the real answer is that it's the don't tell me I love all my children equally no I don't but it's the one that is closest to Creation because that's the one that's closest to Source okay will you share yes it's the last one that I wrote All Right better up I don't know is a perfectly appropriate answer to any question I don't know and I won't pretend to know to get attention I don't know why does everybody have to
have a perspective I'm not taking a position can be a powerful position I don't know and I won't be forced to give you an opinion I'm allowed to just listen silence is not always indifference silence is not always violence sometimes silence is just silence it's okay to be quiet it's okay to be patient I'm not yet an expert on this specific situation I need more education I need more information I need more conversation what I don't need is more posting from a random Jane or Jason living in their parents' basement they don't know but it's
wasting space for me to tell them so so I comment in my head instead and try to let it go cuz I don't want to use my voice to be a part of all the noise I cherish freedom of speech but also freedom of choice and I won't blindly follow anyone get off our timelines you're like what happens after arrogance and ignorance combined so I remind myself to get offline and get some sunshine I'm not lying to myself pretending everything is fine but I do my best to be compassionate considerate and kind Define the things
we have in common even when we're not aligned because two truths can occupy the same space at the same time it is not a personal attack on your mind three or four truths can occupy the same space at the same time it is not a personal attack on your mind more truths can occupy the same space at the same time than we can quantify inside our mortal minds and I can empathize with all of them CU all of them are mine Society is sick but we ignore the truths for dollar signs it's gotten to the
point where being crazy has been normalized they only pay attention when our mental health is monetized they're paid for our attention so we scroll until we're hypnotized we think we're in control but we believe what we've been advertised the co-opting of pain but having context is too complex to be made into a meme and I don't know is not something that people want to scream cuz no one wants to die for standing in the in between they want a slogan that will amplify their fever dream they want to pacify or Justify the rage that they're
feeling but Revenge will make us use an olive branch to choke a dove it feels good to hate together it's almost like it's love but I don't know that is powerful I hung on every word every word made sense uh one of my great Joys is sitting here and watching you get lost in your words than you know like being lost in your in the notes that are coming out uh and I and I and I think that's the true test of if if you're being authentic the true test of if you're fully present is
if you get lost in the things you're saying um I think one of the reasons I love talking to you is um because of what you do you and I have shared stages before yeah at events and uh you know you do corporate gigs I think it's a very powerful thing that a corporation or an industry event hires a poet it says something I think about not only the quality of your work but but the power of your artart I think it's almost redefining what an artist life could be I don't think most spoken word
artists think corporate corporate gigs could really help you know I could spread my message this way maybe when I was younger I would have had judgment around it but now I think it's one of the most powerful and important parts of me sharing my art is getting a chance to connect with people I would argue that it's actually more powerful because you know when you go to a poetry slam the audience is filled with the converted when you go to a corporate audience you're prizz I mean you're you're I mean it's it's more powerful because
it's an audience that it only took one person to hire you but the rest of the audience is like huh they immediately hate me I mean you come in and your name is inq I mean like they don't even know to like what they they don't even know how to call you Mr q but isn't it more gratifying to watch people change their preconceived notion of what could be in front of your eyes by you just showing up and telling the truth and then surprising them because often times when I'm doing the workshops I then
get people who don't consider themselves poets at all yeah to create their own poems that are meaningful to them and to share them with their co-workers in a way that shocks them so now they're like laughing they're crying and they literally can't believe it what do you have to do in a workshop to take someone who has a left brain job they're in finance they're a lawyer that you get them to a place of presence and creativity where they allow that right brain to flow to access that part of their brain and discover that they
have a creativity they never knew they had well one thing that I learned a long time ago is that if you want someone to be vulnerable with you you have to be vulnerable first MH and if you are vulnerable first and they don't respond well they might not have the capacity it might not be the right container or they might be an M and all of the above are okay I don't need to convert everybody what I have to do is continue to show up over and over again in the time that I have the
session with them and eventually almost like a Rubik's Cube it clicks in the workplace a lot of miscommunication comes from lack of context people actually don't know who they're working with and so if you have more context and you have a human container where they can have an experience together it can lead to better communication better collaboration and better creation if people were vulnerable in the workplace all the time literally nothing would get done right but being vulnerable none of the time isn't working either y so that's really why people hire me is to come
in and give them a container for that moment a moment for it exactly and I kind of get to sit back and smile because I know what's going to happen every single time as long as I lead by example okay so we're going to do have a little fun here I'm going to write a poem great so I'm going to follow your methodology which means you have to go first okay well you might actually have to turn off the cameras at some point so you can actually like do it you can take the five minutes
to do it we can 10 minutes I'll take five minutes and come back yeah I I I mean why not sure all right report I'll report on how it went all right I'm going to do a poem you're start first you're going to do a yes you're going to be vulnerable show me how it's done the prompt that we're going to use today yeah is to choose a moment in your life by the way team we're all doing this so you know stand by everybody's writing a poem Charlene Charlene ducked out okay we're going to
choose the prompt of thinking back to a moment in your life uhhuh that changed who you are in a drastic way so it's a moment where you walked into it one person and you walked out another person it could be good or bad mhm um but it has to be moving and meaningful to you so it has to be something that you wouldn't normally talk about after 15 minutes at a dinner party it has to be a layer deeper because because if you choose something that's moving and meaningful even in the 5 or 10 minutes
that we do this the poem will start to write itself okay the second thing is don't try to make something great make something true mhm and Trust the process okay I'm going to do my example of the prompt it's uh a poem about meeting my father for the first time when I was 15 years old and when I'm doing this piece I not only want you to think about the piece but I want you to think about what it is that you would want to explore okay I'm staring at the number wondering if I should
call I can hear the tick tock from the clock on the wall as it meshes with the Thump Thump beat of my heart sometimes getting something started is the hardest part I didn't meet my dad until I was 15 I had seen his photograph but his image was sickening a coward with a dick but no balls to back it up see when he left me as a kid I had cause for acting up the funny thing about hate is the person you hate doesn't feel that hate you feel that hate but wait weight the weight
can be too much for a person to take and personally I was hurt so I just locked it away I was angry all the time and I didn't know why I couldn't handle my own rage so I would hide it inside pretending everything was fine became a daily Pastime time passed and I started to believe in my own lies I took it out on my mom because she raised me alone the rage that I couldn't own had left me totally numb it was like lay Minds in my mind that I didn't understand so when the
boy inside cried the young man outside yelled I think I learned about my masculinity from TV the people weren't real so I knew they couldn't leave me I would sit there for hours right in front of the tube the images that I saw were my depiction of Truth it was manhood in a box and I bought into it the censorship of anything inside of me that's sensitive the sentence is a lifetime of Tears suppressed in a stone face and overblown ego they've distracted through a paper chase back when I was nine I imagined in my
mind that my father was a spy by working for the FBI and that's why he couldn't stop by right or drop a line he was off saving our lives from the bad guys but that was just a lie that I used to get by so that you wouldn't see the tears welling up in my eyes when you're rejected by the person that you're created by you secretly feel like you don't have a right to your life I thought if I confronted him that it would make it all right but since I couldn't forgive him it
just recycled my spite I remember meeting him for the first time every time a person passed by I would ask mom is that him I look a little like him right no oh what about that guy and that was what it was like to meet the man that gave me my life to shake his hand and look into his eyes we talked till he apologized then said our goodbyes I walked away on my own then I began to cry now for years after that I acted like it was all resolved I told them what I
thought so I figured my problems were solved but they just re-evolved my insecurities were eating at my mental health I took it out on the world because I hated myself that's when I finally decided I needed some help I got some therapy I opened up I started writing and sharing about my past I got honest with myself and I started chipping at my mask I looked into the mirror and confronted what I saw accepting the Reflection by embracing every flaw then directing the connection into Breaking Down the Walls by reflecting the Perfection of the god
inside us all I stopped focusing on everything that I had been hateful for and I started focusing on everything thing I could be grateful for and personally there is a lot I can be thankful for if pain is dragging you down just cut the ankle cord that's when the weight lifted and I really started Living it's when my hate shifted and I really started giving it's when my fate Twisted it was like an ego exorcism your mind State can be the most powerful of Prisons my father never played catch with me or gave advice but
if nothing else that man gave me life and that's enough for me if that is all he can ever give cuz I'm appreciative for every day I get to live and even though I don't need my dad to validate me I thought that I should write this poem to thank him for creating me because every moment we are alive is like a gift and if that's not enough to forgive what is oh thanks for sharing you talk about being present you've given you've shared that poem many many times yeah I have to believe and yet
as I sit here and watch you and the emotion well up in you as you share it it's as if you're giving it for the first time is that what being present means I think being present means honoring the moment that you're in whether it's the best moment of your life or the worst moment of your life it's the only moment of your life so here we are I don't normally do that one for the corporate environments cuz it goes a little bit deep but I shared something that was real and even though I performed
it it wasn't performative and so I would invite you you or even whoever's listening to this to think back to a moment in your life that changed who you are a moment where you walked into it one person and walked out another person and explore it through a poem it could rhyme if you want it to Rhyme or not it could be long if you want it to be long it could be short if you want it to be short but it has to be moving and meaningful and if you do that you might be
surprised at what you create okay well I'm going to take a little break going to write a poem and I'll be right back great okay we're back um so we took a break and uh we had the whole team who's here uh write a poem and I have to say if you're listening to this episode I cannot encourage you more than to try this exercise um one of the folks in our team wrote about uh heartbreak as a teenager with such dignity and Clarity of we all were there listening I mean we were all there
living it with him and feeling that heartbreak like it was our heartbreak it was remarkable one of our teammates um talked about what it means to be a mother and what motherhood has done and how it's changed her and the love that poured out of that poem and one of our teammates chose not to read the poem but told us what the poem was about about being um uh a difficult teenager not appreciate not appreciating the love that she had around her and forgave herself and she welled up with emotion simply telling us about the
poem though we didn't hear the poem and the courage and the honesty with which she approached the the topic was remarkable yeah and the closeness that I think we probably all feel towards each other now because we've all kind of learned something about each other that's deeply human is kind of remarkable it only took what 10 10 minutes yeah and for me the writing of it um uh I realize when you talk about writing a poem and you gave very specific instructions which is don't try and make it good just write it true so I
find I found this exercise remarkable and I really I really hope people do it because it's really good and and I really hope people do it with somebody else like go listen to this episode with somebody and then do it with them um even though I think there is catharsis and there is Magic and doing it alone I think there's there's magic in sharing it with somebody because it's a deeply Human Experience and the great thing about Human Experience is they they ful to share you're dropping dimes before you even start the poem all right
ladies and gentlemen you know them you love them I know that we're all well we'll see we'll see we'll see who knows who knows who knows anyway again and I I'm following your rule which is it doesn't have to be good or bad it just has to be I remember the feeling as if it was happening right now the feeling that I had lost all control that I had lost all hope I felt powerless over my situation and my reaction it's a reaction that to this day I am not proud of I was angry I
became that that I speak and write against I put my finger in his face and said you get me on that plane and you get me out of here that's what happens when you're in a difficult situation and you feel alone Your Instinct for self-preservation kicks in and you take control of your own destiny because you can't trust or rely on anyone else to the rest of them they were with others they wore the uniforms of their service they wore the ranks of their position they were among their brothers and sisters and I was in
Afghanistan in a pair of khaki pant a golf shirt and hiking boots I was the one person in the on the whole base without a sidearm without a security blanket I was the one person who was alone MH long story short we eventually found a flight that could take us out of the war zone back to Home Zone and this flight had one passenger that was more alone than me he lay in a flag draped coffin in the center of an empty cargo plan plane and although the flight was quiet I barely talked to the
crew and they barely talked to me I I had a chance to be with somebody who needed me I spent the whole flight 9 and a half hours with him I slept next to him or tried to sleep and it turned out he was there for me in a way that was more powerful than I expected that day I learned what purpose really means true purpose is the chance to serve those who serve others I am grateful for everything I learned that day and I cling to those feelings for what I found filled me filled
me more than anything else could was beautiful man so beautiful anyway the thank you how did it feel to say it out loud after creating it and how did it feel to be in the presence of the emotion that's still there I have told told that story before on stages I tell the story I it's Visual and I I was present enough in the moment I remember when I got really became that mhm it profoundly moved me and changed me and taught me what's purpose means and I'm in the purpose business yeah um and uh
it's not often that we find ourselves completely powerless in that way and completely out of control of your own destiny yeah there's a lot of details I left out of here that contributed to the fear like and I think though I can give myself Goosebumps when I tell that story I don't well up like I used to yeah and I wed up here this was simply em motion on a page there are some insights in here that I've never told from the stage that I realized in the writing of this that he was there for
me that I've never said those words before I thought that that was one of the most powerful parts of the poem and the Lang language that you used to describe it the poetic language the intention behind it there's something that happens when you create something with the story that's different than when you tell the story whether you're trying to tell the story well or you're just trying to tell the story authentically that's not what I'm talking about I'm saying when you're telling a story out loud even if it's fully true it's hard to separate it
from the rest of your life because we're storytellers Stories We Tell ourselves and other people become Our Lives we are living our story every single day but when you turn the language into a poem it almost like encapsulates it and then you separate it from you so the story has become something else and it's outside of you and that space allows you to share it differently and it allows you to internalize it differently and it allows you to alchemize it differently I think you know we tell stories largely for the benefit of others and this
exercise the poem was meant for the benefit of me I just happened to share it with you that's right and I think this is one of the things that I've taken away from this exercise which is it is an it is a magical feeling to do something creative for the benefit of only one person which is the person making it and that you get to share it is why it's such a deeply human and connecting experience and why we've created this magical space in this studio right now with you know the five people that are
in this room is because we shared a little piece of ourselves not for the benefit of each other but we just let you in you know the the sharing of our poem was a gift to the people who got to hear it because it wasn't written for them no it was a gift that you gave yourself first yeah and then you giving that same gift yeah to us I mean it not only makes me feel close closer to you yeah but it makes me reflect on my own life and that brings me closer to myself
so there's this um self-fulfilling virtuous Loop that that starts to happen I if I'm if I'm if I'm completely honest mhm look I I know you and I've seen you perform and I'm I love your work thanks man and uh and you always make me think and I love the way you use language I love beautiful language you know um uh but if I'm honest you know I might have been nodding and smiling but was going through my head was I mean it's a poem you know and I don't think anybody can truly appreciate how
you're talking about it unless they do it this is one of those things that you quote unquote you you know you got to try it yeah it's like well I don't like sushi well you've never tried Sushi you know try it first no matter how somebody describes it to you you really have to just try it well we made a journal for that very reason so that people could do it without me having to be present um and go through different prompts that bring about different stories in their lives that they can create with um
and have some sense of poetic release and uh for many years I've been doing these corporate things but I I never started out doing corporate things they were libraries and like would go Upward Bound programs and I was doing them from teenagers yeah yeah and uh then eventually I realized when I started doing corporate wow adults need this as much if not more than kids cuz they have like more stories piled up underneath yeah the truth and it's just a new way to get it out my uh therapist who no longer with us but he
was kind of like a father figure for me um in my 20s uh said once happiness is not a point it's a range and it really stayed with me I actually made a poem around it because you are responsible for figuring out what brings you out and into that range and only you will know and only you will know over and over and over again so you better keep checking in um that's so good that's such a great Insight that happiness is not a point it's a range it's not a it's not a it's not
a spot on a Target it's a whole field you know and if you you can miss the target but you can wander around a field and and I think we we treat happiness like a like a like a bullseye MH and by the way it's damn near impossible to hit a bullseye and to hit it every time and split the arrow that you just fired and so we think we're unhappy because we're not in the bullseye but the reality is I'm degrees of happiness happy every day that's right and what can you do when you
recognize you're slightly out of the range that will just kind of bump you back up yeah and you don't need Euphoria no Euphoria is boring all the time and temporary yeah constant but imagine constant Euphoria I mean well I think you're probably high on drugs constant Euphoria is probably a drug addiction I have been many many times high on drugs and there have been many many times where I've actually wished I would come down you're up too long and you're like wow okay this Euphoria is hurting now yeah when does this end I want to
come back I want to come back why is there the belief that art has to be born of pain you know more art comes from pain than Joy more songs are about breakups than finding love you know artists that we write about whether they're composers or fine artists we always talk about their torture yeah you know uh is that true because or maybe you know or is it just ironic like you found pain in Euphoria and that's the pain you're going to write about like what is is that true that artists have to be tortured
that that you unless you're tortured you can't be a great artist 5050 say more um I'll tell you a funny story that I don't normally tell but it just feels appropriate so I do think that you have to have gone through things in life to be able to draw from that well but there is this illusion that to be a good artist you have to always be in some state of suffering yeah and I just think that's so there was this one time that I was going through a breakup was probably in my late 20s
and I had a really hard time figuring out my own mental and emotional health you know so I was still in this process I'm still in this process now but um I was really in the process then and I had gone through this challenging breakup I was at home alone I'm high and I'm like I'm going to write a breakup home you know to describe this feeling that I have right now so I sit down I'm about to start writing it and then I I thought thought let me read my old breakup poems so I
go back I find all of my old breakup homes all these different relationships some the same you know but a lot of them are different and I read them all stoned in a row and I finished and I thought oh okay I don't need to write a new breakup poem I need to figure out why all of my breakup poems sound exactly the same why am I continuing to recreate the same lesson in a new disguise over and over and over again and so I started to delve into that not only in my life but
in my work so rather than just complaining and perpetuating some of the pain that I was feeling I started to write my way out and I've always come back to that for myself and for my audience which is I want to explore the truth even if the truth is painful but I always want to wind up leaving others and myself in a place of Hope in a place of possibility and in a place of empowerment and that I think is the ultimate job of the artist is to mirror The Human Experience and make people inspired
to go live their best lives as you say that what goes through my mind is the best couples when they fight and I mean this I mean this as romantic couples Friends Business Partnerships colleagues co-workers people who are in relationship MH that the best relationships that when they fight and they don't fight to be right they fight to get to resolution that's right right we're fighting to get to resolution and that is my mindset and I know it's your mindset and so the things you say are different and what I love about what you just
said and what I love about your poems is no matter how dark or deep or hurting your poems may be your words may be you always write to get to resolution you don't leave us in it you take us at very minimum you offer glimmers of Hope or point a direction or raise a rhetorical question and ask what if you every single time uh and I and I think that's one of the reasons you are so inspiring it's not just the words you write it's that you always push us in in in a direction of
Hope every time thank you man well you know that the feeling is mutual I love your work and I love your perspective on the world and uh you've inspired me countless times and continue to I think we'll end there not because I want to but because there's a punctuation mark thanks for coming by uh very intense very moving and uh once again I really hope people Google you look up your Journal find out more about you but more important I really hope they go and write a poem thank you brother thanks man so good if
you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts and if you'd like even more optimism check out my website simon.com for classes videos and more until then take care of yourself take care of each other
