When an old friend steps out of the familiar corners of the tri-state area and into the boundless realms of fatherhood and literature, you're in for a story rich with metamorphosis. Joining me today is a cherished friend, whose recent foray into authorship has opened new avenues of mental well-being and insight. Together, we traverse the nuanced paths of parenting, personal evolution, and the crucial role of support systems in fostering growth. His reflections on maintaining integrity in solitude and the empowering effects of self-love provide a blueprint for nurturing oneself and, by extension, our little ones.
Venture with us into the heart of a poet's labor, where three years of intimate interactions with immigrants and refugees have been woven into a tapestry of verse that seeks to alter perceptions and invite understanding. The power of story transcends borders, and my latest collection of poems is a testament to the resilience I've witnessed firsthand. As we recount tales of integration, the sting of racism, and the struggle for identity, we are reminded of the indomitable human spirit that persists through the most arduous of journeys.
Closing our session, we acknowledge the weight of responsibility that accompanies a platform—how it can cast a spotlight on the voiceless and knit together fragmented narratives into a quilt of unity. I extend a sincere thank you to my guest for his vulnerability and wisdom, leaving listeners not just with stories but with a call to action: to engage, to empathize, and to elevate the conversation beyond our own experiences for the greater good of all. We part with anticipation for future dialogues that promise to delve deeper into these shared human experiences.
When an old friend steps out of the familiar corners of the tri-state area and into the boundless realms of fatherhood and literature, you're in for a story rich with metamorphosis. Joining me today is a cherished friend, whose recent foray into authorship has opened new avenues of mental well-being and insight. Together, we traverse the nuanced paths of parenting, personal evolution, and the crucial role of support systems in fostering growth. His reflections on maintaining integrity in solitude and the empowering effects of self-love provide a blueprint for nurturing oneself and, by extension, our little ones.
Venture with us into the heart of a poet's labor, where three years of intimate interactions with immigrants and refugees have been woven into a tapestry of verse that seeks to alter perceptions and invite understanding. The power of story transcends borders, and my latest collection of poems is a testament to the resilience I've witnessed firsthand. As we recount tales of integration, the sting of racism, and the struggle for identity, we are reminded of the indomitable human spirit that persists through the most arduous of journeys.
Closing our session, we acknowledge the weight of responsibility that accompanies a platform—how it can cast a spotlight on the voiceless and knit together fragmented narratives into a quilt of unity. I extend a sincere thank you to my guest for his vulnerability and wisdom, leaving listeners not just with stories but with a call to action: to engage, to empathize, and to elevate the conversation beyond our own experiences for the greater good of all. We part with anticipation for future dialogues that promise to delve deeper into these shared human experiences.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Just the Two of Us. It is your favorite broadcast host, mr Zach, so get comfortable with me and let's talk about it. Hey, you guys, it's your boy, mr Zachary, on his once in two and welcome to Just the Two of Us broadcast. I hope you had a new day, a new brand, a new year. Hope you're doing alright. I am sitting here. He is our poet. He's a good friend of mine. Let's give it up to him. What are you doing today?
Speaker 2:
I'm good now, and today I'm even better. It's the second of January. It's my birthday month. Right, I know it's my birthday month and I'm sure we're going to talk about it, but, zachary, today my book launched, so I'm like I got a cocktail of emotions.
Speaker 1:
I was gagging, like I was on Instagram. I was gagging like, oh, he dropped a new book today. We are but the first question. I asked my guest how is your mental health doing?
Speaker 2:
That is. That's an excellent question. I might have to just steal that for myself and when I have conversations, you know what? Moving into 2024, right, especially with the process of launching this book, not just for publicity's sake, but in all honesty. Launching this book allowed me to say goodbye to 2023 and the heaviness or the nonsense that happened. I learned some lessons, right, good, bad ugly, that lesson you can't take away. But I'm in this season where I'm like, I'm grateful, I'm thankful and I'm looking forward in hope to be better. So I'm feeling good. Honestly, I got a good support system, that a lot of just inward self-reflection over the last six months. Yeah, it was a heavy six months, but where well, davis is in a good space right now.
Speaker 1:
So let's introduce yourself All right, because a lot of people don't know you and some probably do know you, but last you know, how did you grow up, Like I heard.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so how do I condense this, you know. So I'm from, I claim Jersey, right. I think Jersey claims me. That's where I moved down from back in 2016 to Charleston, right? But I'm from Jersey, but really I was born in Brooklyn, new York. I lived all over what they call the tri-state area, so like Connecticut, new York, new Jersey, and that's where I was just raised. You know the concrete jungle.
Speaker 2:
My heritage is Puerto Rican. I'm a football, you know, puerto Rican with a beard, and so my wife, she's from upstate New York and Syracuse, and now we got a two-year-old son and that's been so dope. So I'm a father and it's just been an amazing journey to learn what it means to be a father, to learn about myself in being a father and figuring this thing out. You know it's been so good. And then I just love serving people. I love the connection through stories. I love using my platforms, my gifts, to just be there for the greater community. You know, especially the diverse community. You know the beauty of it all. You know the nitty gritty, and so you know my motto in life is, you know, is speak life, inspire dignity and do good, and so I like to do that in everything that I do, and so that's really a little bit of how it brought me to being a poet and now a published you know, full-out author over the last man, let's say five years or something like that we're gonna get it.
Speaker 1:
So what is father? And once my on this platform he talks about. You know fatherhood and how to be a father, especially when people have kids. I don't know how to be a father when you young people looking out to you. So how did you navigate through that? You know for your two?
Speaker 2:
years. He's a deal. It's. I'm still navigating through it, right, it's a process, but I learned it's two things One, if, if your journey in life is gonna will end up in fatherhood right, I don't know people getting out of you know, people don't really know if you're gonna have kids, you can plan for it, but still doesn't mean it's in the cards, right?
Speaker 2:
I know a ton of good people that want to have kids and they're not having kids, right? So here's why I say that Fatherhood, what I've learned you're always building into yourself the kind of father You're going to be, because you're always building habits and disciplines in your life that are gonna come out when, if potentially, a child comes right. So what habits are you building that you're gonna be Able to hand off to the child that's gonna come into this world, right, that you're gonna be gifted with. So you got, you got to have some self-awareness that, like yo, I'm already doing this thing now, right, I'm becoming who I am as a person now, before you get to this the status or a title of fatherhood, right? So I had to learn that. So, within that time frame, though, and now that I'm being, you know, become a father in two years.
Speaker 2:
I'm dealing with a lot of those decisions I made Back whenever, right, they still rear their heads consequences of whatever just habits, right, a little bit, right daddy, issues that I've had. They just come out in life and so a child will bring out all the parts of you that you didn't even know were there or that you were aware of. And just you know, just self-awareness is huge. And then having a strong support to help you, you know, just navigate and sift through everything, talk to people, therapy, mental health days, I mean the whole thing, you got it. Just I guess the third part today it's like you got to be honest of where you're at, where you want to be, and then you know, you know, like, have some forgiveness and some grace for yourself because you're gonna mess up, but it's gonna be a right, cuz you know you're gonna get get up again every day, new mercies and just move forward.
Speaker 1:
I think one thing you said about Like going back, when you say it's like certain things that you see now folks in a little head out as you see you growing up and now you see it now, and one of the things that surprised me is you said honesty, because a lot of people are not Honest with this. Oh, a lot of people. Hey, I'm gonna just pass this by, it's okay, but when you Sit by yourself, Hmm in the full corner.
Speaker 1:
Hmm and when you think about today, you think about what things you can change. That's what you be honest with yourself. Right a lot of people don't know how to be Identically honest. Like I don't get how like you have to be honest what you do. Like fuck those people. Like you gotta be honest with them sometimes you have to be honest with yourself right To see yourself grow right. So how do you manage? When you see something from your childhood To now, it's like oh yeah. Be that man.
Speaker 2:
It honestly the like, my tribe, my people, like there's, there's certain guys, even certain girls, right, I call them my badass girl gang, but like you gotta have, if you gotta have your people that are gonna, that know you, that you're vulnerable, you know vulnerable with and that can speak into your life. And so when they see things or or when they tell you things or call things out and you have those silent moments, you can really ponder these things and then say you know what I do want to make that change, right. And then, just in all honesty, the honest part comes in your quiet moments. Just what is yourself talk? What do you do with your idle time? Right, what do you do when no, when the camera's not on, and you know and and will and Zachary not, you know, you know shooting the breeze and having interviews. Right, when the cameras are off, when everything's not, what do you do? How do you spend your time? What is your mind go? What is your heart in your mind, in your you know spirit? Go? Like that's more of an honest self.
Speaker 2:
And so are you gonna have that conversation with yourself when these things bubble up to the top, right? How do you care for other people. How do you care for the dog? Now you know like I engage all that and then I'd be remiss, I you know, if I didn't bring it up. You know, I again a man of faith, and so I go back to like how grandma raised me, how mom raised me, right stuff like that. And they always said right. You look at the good book, you go back to the scriptures and so I'm just like how would Jesus play out this thing? Right, I'm not Jesus, but how? You know how? What was it looked like? And so just, you know, just trial and error, because I'm human. But you got to be real with yourself, man. You can't be rude yourself. You ain't being real with nobody else, right?
Speaker 1:
If you're not being real with yourself, who are you? Right, right, hey. If you don't know who you are, support the other people around you and it's a ripple. Could you stop yourself? These talk brains are the people who goes on, who you support, because you can't support yourself, you can't love yourself. I'm nobody else Cause you don't know the meaning of loving yourself. It's the value of the worst in yourself. So thank you for sharing that. So let's jump into this book, because this book came out today.
Speaker 2:
Today, my God today.
Speaker 1:
And you said early. It took you three years to release this book.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we were talking before. Yeah, before we got on, I was telling you a little about it. Yeah, zachary, it's been a long why a long time, three years.
Speaker 2:
So a little bit of background on this thing. Right, I've been doing in terms of like, all right. So, like, back to my model right, speak life, inspire dignity, do good, right, so part of a way that I do that is I do a lot of work, not by nature of my job, the position that I have at the school district for Charleston County, but also just what I do in life. I do a lot of work in immigration and with refugees, all right. So the southern border, which is like Texas and Mexico, right, and you know, in Arizona, like the whole California, like that whole West Coast, right, so the southern border, us to Mexico. And then I then I've been out to South Sudan and Uganda and literal, you know, war torn areas, un camps, refugees, stuff like that.
Speaker 2:
So, in for the past three years, by by nature of my work at the border and in Africa and things like that, I've been capturing stories, right, having a conversation with people, just seeing what it really is on the ground and when I, when I was writing, the way my outlet of decompression and just and release is right, right, it's poetry. And so in that process of this three year time frame, I had a stack of poems and then I realized you know what and I don't know what any of your listeners I don't know what they're, you know where they're at in terms of immigration, conversation, whatever Regardless what I saw being told, being shown on the news or in newspapers, whatever was not what I was seeing on the ground. And so there was a massive, like I mean a cavern of a disconnect and I was like what is this? And it wasn't getting any better. Right, we got here, we got wars on top of wars on top. Right, we got, I mean, every other, regardless of the political, political spectrum, like people are dying and right, ships are, you know, going down and people are being shot and people like razor wire, like did just all this stuff with immigration.
Speaker 2:
Anyway, I realized I got a platform and a voice and I've seen something that a lot of people have not been able to see and experience themselves, and I can no longer unsee it. Or unknown, zachary, right, I got the conversations. I gave a piece of who I am to these immigrants. I right, they gave a piece of who they are to me. I've, I've literally stayed at the border, I've stayed in immigration camps, I've stayed in UN camps, right, I've spoken to this diverse, beautiful people living in broken situations, and I realized that my first book is going to be a book that honors those people. And so it took me three years to not to finally refine, capture the poems and put out something that I felt would honor these stories, honor these people and hopefully change the tune or change the narrative of how we have conversations or talk about migrants, sojourners, asylum seekers, refugees, whatever you know the title is. But that's why three years? That was basically what happened there.
Speaker 1:
So as read your book. What is the message behind it?
Speaker 2:
What? Yeah, so it's basically a converse, it's a. I'm asking you to come and see in my eyes, through my words, what's occurring at the southern border, to understand somebody else's pain, to understand that it's not just what we have been told, right, and then even to how you opened up, to check ourselves and be honest with ourselves about how we view somebody else that we don't know, that's different than us, right that we hear about who they are, but like it's fear, the lens that we're viewing people. So we actually don't view them as people. We see them as monsters, drug dealers and prostitutes and people who are going to take over our land and ba, ba, ba ba, whatever. Right, that's garbage from what I've seen. So I want you to come and see, just enter the journey and walk alongside me, through my words, into this world that most people will not have the opportunity to walk Damn.
Speaker 1:
Like that that's what you said is I love listening to people other stories when it's not about me. When you read it, you can carry this stories around other people who are willing to listen. Right, and that's how you get the conversation started, right, and how you get people to take a step back and look at like, okay, is this really what political or house society or social media? Because a lot of people go off social media like the big titles on newspaper, right, like oh, it's a word, I forgot the word but it's like okay, it's this big title, it is. It doesn't mean anything. Right, that's big words.
Speaker 2:
Right, right, they're just trying to hook you Right.
Speaker 1:
And that's why I'm reading it. You start reading it. You'd be like, uh, no, no, no, you're going to read it. Sit down and have a. You sit down and read it. You'd be like, not understand, right Now I have different, I are a different view on it, right, right. So I'm glad that you are paying out number one, your first book. Because I know how it is. I'm a second book this year.
Speaker 2:
That's awesome.
Speaker 1:
I know. So that is amazing and the fact that you give us a opener From to your eyes for this story is amazing. Yeah, thank you. That's all we can do. Yeah, and I know, I know this is actually for a good favor, but, um, you want to. You want to sneak feet. You want to sneak feet.
Speaker 2:
Well, one I got. You can see behind me, I got a couple of books back here, um, so the title of it is called threads of resilience, oh yeah, weaving the human spirit through poetry, and so, and the cover is basically like the wilderness of the cactus and you see a mom and child walking through this dirt road. And the reason I chose orange it came out through my team that was helping me format it, but, but orange represents optimism and hope and joy, and so I wanted the. I like I don't really pull punches in my writing You're going to, you're going to get the raw and real, right Of like, of what I saw, but also what I felt, right. So, so, a little bit, you're going to, you're going to see it through my eyes, but, but you're going to get the wrong real.
Speaker 2:
But guess what? The stories? I think stories build society, like you were saying. Right, they make that connection. Oh, there's a human being on the other side of this, not just a random picture or a monster that media wants you to, you know, wants to portray, right. So so that's, that's the cover threads of resilience. Because there are some resilient, uh, uh, you know, just people that I've met just across the globe. Um, but yeah, I can. Uh, I don't want to give you.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'm sorry, say again by the way, I love the title, the title six out.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, Thank you, thank you, but yeah, here's her. Here's a Aside from the actual introduction. Um, here's my. This is my first poem and actually kind of how I launched today. Um, but it's called. It's called journey, all right, and this is how I open up the book.
Speaker 2:
Journey with me. Let me take your mind's eye across land, lakes and silver tone, light rays of the sun. See the landscape shift when you trek miles to meet those who have tracked miles to be met with walls and arms not of embrace but firepower, dust clouds turned up by propeller winds, meeting desert floors. Border patrol uses helicopters to turn away those who should have made different choices, water washing over your body as you cross bodies of water, the only borders carved by God's own hand.
Speaker 2:
It seems this land was not made for you and me. It was made for those we have decided to keep, those we deem worthy of burying our citizenship, or at least those that can pay for it. Pull it down Now. You may not be ready for this journey and I assure you that it is hard, but I've got stories of brown beauties babies, toddlers, preteens, mothers, fathers that have walked the distance seeking a life that would make a difference, maybe for themselves, but mostly for their children. And in their mind's eye, their resolve understands all the more that the risk will never outweigh the reward. So I ask you, as I ask myself, how hard must life be for a chance to live, like me?
Speaker 1:
10 out 10 I recommend To kind to kind and I 10 I recommend. So I want my listeners to you know take your card Anywhere you can find it and of course, what's what the car goes up If that car or get another car.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:
Welcome and one of the things we are, we're going to stay on the topic. I think have you ever?
Speaker 2:
experienced racism. Oh my dog. Yeah, listen, you know I opened up, open up with a joke. You know I was. I was like you know, I'm the bearded Puerto Rican, right and so. But that means that because of my complexion and having a beard, people don't see me as a Latino, right, they're like oh you Arab, oh you Egyptian, oh you Muslim, oh you that, whatever, right. And so it's bad enough being a brown brother, but now you add it with a beard and people want to go wild. Right, they make things up and especially moving from the Northeast, like Jersey, where my crew was bro, I mean, it was the United Nations, like you can't help but have diverse friends, you know you come down here.
Speaker 1:
It's the cost of it.
Speaker 2:
It was a culture shock. It's literally black and white. There we go, and not only that, and man and there's more to my story with stuff like that. But it's not just black and white, like literally between race, race and ethnicity, but like as a brown brother, where do you fit when you're like a Latino? Right, because you're learning a whole new culture, and it's not that I was just like where do I fit? But I'm also a Northerner, so I don't fit the Southern culture Right, so I'm learning everything. So I was already on the outside.
Speaker 2:
Forget this. I'm a brown brother and my wife is a white girl, and so they see both of us walking down the stairs. The looks right Like it gets wild, but you know, I love it down here. I love the opportunities I've had. We're here for it, you know, and I've had just a great time. I've had some, you know, terrible time. People say some disrespectful things, for sure, but it's, you know, it's what it is. Humanity is always going to have an ugly side and I'm just like I'm not going to stoop down to people's levels, you know, I'm just going to keep it moving.
Speaker 1:
I think for me like living in this stuff all my life, and you have to. You know, first thing that comes to your mind for my skin complexion is drug dealer. Mm, hmm, mm, hmm, mm hmm, put them in jail. They are stealing. Mm, hmm. Like all those scenarios, you think we are not intelligent. We are slow. Right, we don't do anything. We are project like section eight. Right.
Speaker 1:
And I think those are the stereotypes that come up for my skin complexion, but people don't know that there's more than Mr I will come down to Correct. So being shocked and when I hear people, when people come down to stop is is is. You hear this stuff every single day. I know people from the north Like it's a culture, so it's a culture. So like you, like in white. Mm, hmm. I can't even go down the road Like today. People look and like I'm about to start the store. Mm, hmm, mm hmm.
Speaker 1:
I had this one person following me from one out to the next out until I got out the store Like damn.
Speaker 2:
Right, right Like chill.
Speaker 1:
Like chill, I don't Matter of fact, I pay for you in your, in your self. Let's, let's go.
Speaker 2:
Right, well, and that's it so. And so back to back to just the immigration, piece of connector, right, so I'm a brown brother, hispanic, but I'm born here. You know what I mean. But now, guess what, with everything in the news and everybody like immigrants, immigrants, now, people are just like, well, you, I'm just like another one, you want to throw in a bunch. Go back to your country, go back to this, hey, brown from Jersey, what you mean? So you mean like, but people, people going to be ignorant where they ignorant. You know what I mean. There we go, but yeah, it's wild out there, but it's all good, I'm still here. They ain't, they ain't getting rid of me.
Speaker 1:
So another question. Yeah if you have to. If you could go back in time to your younger self, what advice would you give yourself?
Speaker 2:
Ask more questions. Just ask more questions, cause I'm going to tell you right now, zachary, all right, we'll talk about man. You see, see how you opened up everything coming back full circle. Let me be real honest, one of the honest moments that I had to have about myself. Right, it's kind of going to. It's going to wrap up a couple of points that we already talked about Zachary Short story and then I'll wrap up the point. This is why I say ask more questions.
Speaker 1:
Keep going, we got time.
Speaker 2:
All right, cool. When I went to school in Jersey, cause we moved to Jersey in 2001. Okay, I did not play soccer throughout high school and the reason I did not play soccer was because in my mind I was like that's what immigrants do. I'm not going to be associated with those people. Now here's what was happening.
Speaker 2:
One, I had way too much of this American centric mindset, right, conservative mindset. Those people, us versus them, america is like the whole world. I had that mindset. But two of the things I was I was also fighting, to the point that we were just talking about. I was fighting the racist notions because I was a brown kid and so it was hard enough being the brown kid.
Speaker 2:
Right Now, the levels of discrimination or biases or racism, they vary in the north and the south. Right, there's a few more layers in the north before you get there, but they still are there, and so I had to fight those notions. So, as a brown boy that was born here, I'm fighting, like not being lumped in with immigrants and people saying stupid stuff. Right, but also I had this stupid mentality of America first and I mistreated immigrants. I didn't want to be associated with it. Right Now, here I am. I'm going to be 37 this month and my first poetry book is what? Embracing immigrants, embracing the sojourner, right. So when I go back to myself and like ask more questions, ask questions about what you don't understand, ask questions when you feel like you might understand, question why you understand it, but ask questions about everything and don't hold back, you know. And so here it is. You know, all these years later, and I love immigration work, I love refugee work. My first book is about immigration, like it's crazy man.
Speaker 1:
Full circle, full circle, full circle.
Speaker 2:
Yo, Zachary, you got the first interview Full circle.
Speaker 1:
The thing is what I love when I'm having different types of guys on my broadcast. They realize how much they miss or how much they love about themselves, how much they learn and grow being. Yeah. Yeah. When you have other people listening, you don't never know what they are going through. They might go through the same as you. Right. And you might change them up like damn, I'm not about that, damn, damn Me on the song. Let me listen to some more. Never know who is listening. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
The main thing about my whole platform I'm here to give a listen to is those, the people who don't have a voice Right, don't have no way to turn to Right, right, and that's huge.
Speaker 2:
That's huge. That's one of the things I tell people all the time. I still tell people I'm going back to the border next week, right. And I tell people all the time I cannot promise you that I'm going to connect you with the right lawyer or that you're going to get citizenship or asylum. I can't promise you that. But you know what I could do. I can promise to echo your voice and tell your story. That's my platform, that's what I've been given. Right, I'm going to make sure I do that to the best of my ability. You know I'm not using your platform for other people. I mean, that's what I think. That's what it's about. Right, if I'm helping you and you helping me, we're going to be better off, right, right. So this whole thing being divided not on this man, listen, I ain't got time for that.
Speaker 1:
And the thing is, when you said divided, and I was like, because we have those people that still speak ignorant things. Educate themselves, educate them, and they still be ignorant and stubborn. Right.
Speaker 1:
Tell them all the time, like you all are for me. You going, I don't care what you take at the end of the day, along with you listening, along with you listening, along with you out over there Right. It doesn't matter because you sat there and had a conversation with me, because so I can tell you how I feel, how I weigh. This is going for you, because you are going to pass the information along.
Speaker 2:
Right, right. You're going to pass it along. You're going to echo something, you're going to retell something.
Speaker 1:
And until you realize that when you pass my point along, that's how many power I have. So you started a conversation. You don't even thought you had started a conversation with somebody. So somebody carry that conversation to another person and it's going on and on and that's. The people don't realize A voice is the power that carries these conversations, correct? A voice is stories, a mouth.
Speaker 2:
That's right.
Speaker 1:
We can pass away.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
So yep, question for you. Go ahead. And the last question is going to be powerful. Okay. What advice can you give me or my listeners that you can give in general? What advice can you give?
Speaker 2:
You know I'm a. It's something that actually, oh, this is crazy. You can't plan this stuff out. All right, you see the hoodie I'm wearing. Yeah, it says silence is not an option. Right, speak Even if your voice shakes. Violence is not an option.
Speaker 2:
And this is from a favorite Um, a store out of Puerto Rico, la fundación happy or the happy givers. All right, the happy givers check them out. You can't make this up. This is crazy, but this is what some of the hard parts over the last six months is that there was some, there was some huge Situations and points in the last six months where I allowed somebody to not to stifle my voice, mmm, and I was not being true to myself, to what I knew, to next steps in life. I mean everything. It was just crazy that we're not gonna get into it.
Speaker 2:
But moving into 2024, this was, this was like one of my models silence is not an option. So, even if you're timid and you're shaking, let it out, right, you can't bottle in what you're, what you're what you feel, what you're seeing, what you're understanding, especially if, if you're not in a you know, if you sit in a vacuum, not engage with other people, then that's just an opinion. Everybody's got an opinion. Forget it. But if you're with people, in community, with people, if you're, like you know, walking alongside people, you know, I mean you're gonna be more of an honest person and honest with yourself, right, stuff like that and and it gives you a platform to speak into certain things and so speak. Do not let anybody stifle your voice or shut you up or twist your words. Right, you don't got to be mean about it, but you could stand. You could stand your ground and speak, so don't lose your voice, right?
Speaker 1:
And awesome. Add on to that Don't be afraid of what people give you right. Don't get angry, don't get upset, don't do just.
Speaker 2:
Or even if you do get, because we're gonna get emotional, the emotions are gonna happen, right, but don't let it. Don't let it chain you so that you don't move or say or think in a certain way. Right, don't get chained by somebody else's opinions or what they're gonna say, whatever it is right, you got Shake that off. You got to shake that off because some people are persuasive. Yes, some people are persuasive.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely Okay. Definitely. I'm one of those people I can't be. I'm gonna be honest. I'm one of those people I can manipulate you. I just have the voice and how I care myself. I can't room and all eyes is on me. I don't have to.
Speaker 2:
You're a good conversationalist, right? I've learned that about you over the years, right, you, you can hold a conversation, one, and so you have that with you. And when so you enter in the conversation, people are like, oh, what's he gonna say? You know what's that you're gonna say. And so then you got him. But you, that's where you use that power for good, there we go, and not for Basically owning somebody like we can't be gods over other people. We're, we're, we're human beings, mm-hmm, right.
Speaker 1:
So After all has been said and after all has been done, what do you want to be remembered of if today was your life? What do you want to be remember or what do you want to leave To your people?
Speaker 2:
How about? How about I end with a poem? How's that?
Speaker 2:
There we go a poem that I want people to think about, I want your listeners and you to think about, and here's, here's why I think it answers that question. But it also engages the mind, for, like, what else is there Right? And the poem that I end with in my book, and here we'll end with this one. Now it's called my final report. All right, my final report. When I step onto eternity and into the courts of praise, I will confidently tell the king I have shown them the way, and when he asks about, about their provisions From about me, I will say you see, sir, I've given all that I can, so please forgive the embarrassment Of me being naked before the son of man.
Speaker 1:
What if people can find you on social media?
Speaker 2:
Tethered words, that's T-E-T-H-E-R-E-D, w-r-d-s. Tethered words, com. On i-g it's tethered words, um. And then tethered words, poetry, right, um I, because I have two accounts. So tethered words or tethered words, poetry, or just go to tethered wordscom T-E-T-H-E-R-E-D, w-r-d-s.
Speaker 1:
And I will put it in the little caption Love it.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:
So, so, so much To be yes, so to be sharing your story and giving my listeners a lot to think about.
Speaker 2:
I appreciate you, zachary, so much. I'm glad. I'm glad we got First interview, first book. Come on, we gotta do this again there we go.
Speaker 1:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate you and, as we say to all the listeners, if you ain't listening, if you were sipping, then what the hell are doing? See y'all later. Bye.
