By Jonathan Anthony Burkett

When I was a boy, I had a lot of feelings and almost nowhere safe to put them. Then I found a pencil and a piece of paper. Writing poetry did not fix my life overnight, but it gave me a place to let things out instead of holding everything inside. Looking back, I believe it helped me survive.

Hidden poems

My grandfather, the man I called "Doctor," died in November 1996. I was nine, and I held my grief inside. The next spring I had my first seizure, and doctors believed stress was behind it.

Not long after that, I began writing down how I truly felt about everything that had happened in my life. I wrote poetry and hid it, because I knew that if my mother found it, she would throw it away.

In my book I wrote, “Writing began helping me to release and express how I was feeling, instead of holding everything inside.” Some of what I wrote back then was angry. That was the point. It was getting the anger out of me and onto the page.

My love for poetry came from Maya Angelou. I loved her words, her poems and her quotes.

When paper and pencil were my friends

Something changed in me once I had that outlet. I started joking and smiling at school again. I explained the change simply: “When I was writing, it felt as if the paper and pencil were my friends.”

At home, things were still hard. I lived with neglect and abuse. When my mother found my diary, she ripped it up and told me she did not want me writing down my problems anymore.

If a child is in immediate danger, call 911. In the U.S., the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453.

She could rip up the pages, but she could not take away what writing had already taught me: that my feelings could go somewhere other than inside me. I learned that talking to myself instead of writing only left me more confused and feeling worse.

A composition book under a streetlight

By April 2003, I was sixteen and sleeping on the streets. One night I sat at a bus stop under a streetlight with a pen and a composition book, and I started writing about how I felt.

I thought about a friend’s sister who had cried after someone broke her heart. I understood that she had taken a chance on love because she wanted to be loved and cared for. So I wrote a poem called "Chances." It begins, “Chances, are they really worth taking”, and goes on to ask whether even “the chance of a broken heart” is worth it.

Then I thought about how many people complain about their jobs, and I wondered if they were truly living. I wrote another poem, "Alive." It ends with a question I asked myself, and now ask you: “Do you consider yourself a blessing or just another person?”

I wrote all night, until the streetlight went off because the sun was coming up.

Poems that kept coming

From then on, I always carried a notebook. One night when I could not go home, I sat on a park bench and wrote a poem called "An Awakening to Love."

Years later I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day in jail before I was released without charges. Even there, I wrote. A female corrections officer called me "Mr. Lover Boy" and read one of my love poems aloud to the whole cell block. When the officers asked to hear one more poem, they would not keep it. They told me to give it to my special friend instead.

Here is a poem from my book about the power of words. I hope it speaks to you:

Gripping the hearts of many
With the feelings of love and hate
Words help to be conscious, of many wrong actions
One may take, due to their stress and problems in life.

Words don’t change, words help to realize
Understanding whom to trust, and whom to obey
Whom to neglect, and whom not to neglect
In our lives

Knowing it or not
Words are what, made a change in life
Even though, we still have a lot to change.

Help one another in our lives
With our attention and words
Because words are what will, bring us all together
In love, and in harmony.

— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Neglected But Undefeated (2012)

How to start writing your way through

You do not need to be a poet to do this. If you are carrying something heavy, here are a few ways to begin:

• Keep it simple. A cheap notebook and a pen are enough. Mine was a composition book.
• Write the truth first. It does not have to be pretty. Angry words on paper are better than angry words stuck inside.
• Keep it safe. If someone at home might read or destroy it, find a safe place for it or keep it with you.
• Ask yourself questions. My poems "Chances" and "Alive" are mostly questions. Questions can open you up.
• Share when you are ready. One day a poem you wrote alone may encourage someone else.

Writing is not a replacement for help from people. Please reach out to someone you trust, too. But a page can hold what you are not ready to say out loud yet.

From hidden pages to a book

The boy who hid his poems so they would not be thrown away grew up to publish Neglected But Undefeated in 2012, with my poems inside it. If you want to read more of them, and the story behind them, visit the Books page. You can also find more of my words on the Quotes page. Tonight, try writing down one true sentence about how you feel.

#jonathananthonyburkett #upstormed #jonathanburkett #neglectedbutundefeated #poetry #writing #journaling #healing #mayaangelou #survivor