We recently connected with C. David Durkee and have shared our conversation below.

C. David , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you wish you had started sooner?

I did not start to share my creative side with the world until I had already lived most of my life. I had been married, divorced, had two grown children, had paid mortgages and had made my reputation as a litigator in South Florida. Despite living my life, secretly I had been writing. I wrote for myself. I wrote poems and silly stories and journaled about my life and the way I looked at life. But these writings were for me. I would stash them away. If someone found these writings, I would laugh it off and say they meant nothing.

One day, a girl I was dating came to my house. I was living alone at the time and had left my journal open. Before I knew it, she had become engrossed in my writings. She stated in an excited whisper, “These are incredible. You must do something with these.” In a very short time, she had helped me create a Facebook page and we created my pen name, Broken Poet.

By using a pen name, I felt I had the same freedom to write from the heart as I did when I wrote for myself.  I could write about Miami in the 1980’s and all of the craziness. I could write about addiction, depression, darkness and getting older without judgment from society. Broken Poet and these crazy poems and musings started to become popular. Random people, people I had never even met, would write to me and tell me that I had touched their life, that I made them laugh, I had made them cry, I had made them remember, I had reminded them of a love long past.  This feedback made me write even more passionately. My silly little thoughts were having an impact.

One day, someone wrote to me and told me a story. He told me that his father had died of cancer. However, before he died, his father and his mother had found my poem, Morning Prayer, and it had a tremendous impact on them. They liked the poem so much that they would recite the poem together each day before his father would go to cancer treatment. This poem had become their mantra in his fight against cancer. The son had written to me because the family now wanted to know whether I would allow my poem, Morning Prayer, to be inscribed on to his father’s headstone. I, of course, immediately agreed.

To this day, this little story is why I write. This little story is why I wish I had not been scared to share my writing sooner. I write to touch someone’s heart. Whether it is a silly poem, or a heat felt song, I just want to touch someone’s heart. Make their day a little brighter.

Since I started this journey as a writer and a song writer, the feedback has also touched my heart. Each day when someone tells me that they read what I wrote or heard what I sang and it touched them in some way, I am inspired to use the gift that God gave me and keep writing. But, more importantly, I believe I write for a reason and know that my words mean something and should be shared. It should be shared, not to make a million dollars, but because it might help some family that is fighting cancer and needs to hear or read what I have to say. Never be embarrassed to share love, no matter what form that love comes in. I guess that is the message.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is C. David Durkee and I have lived almost my entire life in Miami. A few years ago, I tried to escape from the craziness that is Miami and I moved away for a year. However, my inner compass brought me back home. I now realize that I will likely be living in Miami, out of choice, the rest of my life. I often tell people, “I am a Miami guy.”

Growing up in Miami in the 1980’s left a huge impression on me. The art deco, the color, the spice, the drug running, the shoot-outs, the music, the craziness. Once you have that type of adrenalin running through your veins, no amount of traffic or hurricanes can lessen your love for the magic city.

I went to Palmetto High School. The same high school as Jeffrey Bezos, founder of Amazon. Kind of funny when you think about it. I often ask, “why didn’t I think of that?” Alas, I took another rout out of high school. Evidently, going to the beach almost every day my senior year did not bode well for college admissions, and I ended up at Miami-Dade Community College. Despite working full time and partaking in quite a bit of the 1980’s lifestyle, I pushed myself hard in school and ended up getting my four (4) year degree from Florida International University in about six (6) years. During my time at FIU, I helped start a pre-law group called FIU Law Society. Our new “law society” group competed in a Mock Trial competition against some of the more established universities, including the University of Miami, and won. We did not really know what we were doing, and we really did not have a coach, but by putting our heart and soul into it and believing in ourselves we actually won the competition.

As a result of these successes at FIU, I was accepted to the University of Miami Law School. At that time, the University of Miami Law School had a program so that you could work during the day and go to law school at night. So, I continued to work and go to school at night. Eventually, after working full time and going to college at night for ten (10) years (Miami Dade, FIU and U of Miami), I graduated from law school.

I then had one last mountain to climb. I had to pass the bar exam to become a lawyer. Again, I put my heart and soul into it and, again, the hard work paid off. I passed the Florida bar exam with the highest score and, as a result, was honored by being invited to give the speech for the newly admitted lawyers for the Third District Court of Appeals. This was one of the highlights of my life. I was able to stand before my family and friends and tell them how grateful I was to become a lawyer.

I became a lawyer in 1994 and have done nothing else for 30 years. Over the years I have fought for the little guy. I have helped people fight insurance companies, hospitals, corporations, and other wrongdoers. I spent 7 years of my life advocating for justice against the manufacturers of a terrible, defective product known as “Chinese drywall.” I am now one of the leading advocates for clean-up workers of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil spill who, after 15 years, are getting sick and dying of cancer.

I have been honored to be a lawyer. When my children were young, they would often come home and ask me, “Do you know this person?” Often, I would say, “Yes, I used to represent that person – I was their lawyer.” My child would then say, “Wow Dad, that family loves you, they say that you helped them.” Having my children hear from their community that I helped people, that is what their dad did for a living, was worth more to me than any money I could have earned.

Growing up in Miami, having to take this long road to become a lawyer, paying for every nickel of my education myself and never being given a silver spoon, having children young, being a dad and a husband, each step of the way has prepared me to be a writer. A writer who has not lived, cannot write, for what would they write about.

One must live in order to write. I feel I have lived a very full life. Therefore, I write. As I have said, I try and write from the heart. Sometimes when I write, even I am amazed at how easy the words come out. I truly believe God has blessed me in this way. Some people struggle to state their true feelings with words. I, on the other hand, have the unfortunate ability to be brutally honest. Brutal honestly is just that – honest – but brutal. I liken my writing style to Bukowski, although, hopefully not as crude. I strive for the honesty of Bukowski, just not the cruelty or the bluntness.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Sharing my work and touching others in their soul is the most rewarding aspect of being a writer. Whether it be a poem or a song, when another person tells me that they needed to hear what I wrote and that it made their day a little brighter, that is the payoff. A few years back, I was the beneficiary of a true miracle. My daughter was traveling to Gainesville, headed back to school, and I received a phone call from the Florida Highway Patrol telling me that my daughter had been involved in a serious car accident.  She had rolled her car, and they were taking her to the hospital. That was all they told me. I weighed the evidence. I knew she had been in a convertible. I knew she was traveling on the Turnpike, so she was probably traveling at least seventy (70) miles an hour. I knew she had rolled her car.  Knowing those three facts, I knew the chance of her survival were low.

The hospital where my daughter was taken was close to Orlando. My ex-wife, and the mother of my daughter, and I had to drive about 3 to 3 1/2 hours in order to get to the hospital and try and figure out if our daughter was ok. As we drove, I got a call. The person on the phone told me he was a doctor and had stopped to help my daughter at the side of the road. He told me that she was talking and appeared to be ok. I thanked him, profusely and told him, “I have your number, it is on my phone, can you tell me your name?” He said, “I am Dr. Oz.” I said back to him, is it spelled like the fellow on TV. He said, “I am the guy on TV.” This left me thinking that perhaps I was dreaming.

We arrived at the hospital, and I ran to her bed. However, she was not there. There was an empty bed and bloody sheets. I fell to my knees fearing for the worse. Just then my daughter, in a wheelchair, burst through the doors being pushed by an orderly. She saw her mom and I standing there with tears in our eyes. We all started to cry. We hugged. I could not believe she was alive. I could not believe she had rolled a convertible at 70 miles an hour and was still alive and ok. After we stopped crying and we all got a hold of ourselves, my daughter said softly, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Our tears turned to laughter.

After this day, after this miracle, I have lived my life with the philosophy, “But for the Grace of God, go I.” I am thankful. I try to work as a lawyer and write my poems and songs to help people and make sure they know that the sun is always shining, even on the darkest days, it is just on the other side of the clouds. That is my purpose and that is what drives me. I want people to know that any day can be the day you will experience a miracle. The morning of my daughter’s accident, I did not believe in miracles. I did not wake up that day knowing I needed a miracle or knowing that one would be given to me. I now wake up every day thankful – knowing that today might a miracle. Maybe a small one. Like a sunrise. Maybe a big one, like saving my daughter. But I wake up every day expecting miracles and appreciate ever little one of them. That is the message I want to share and that is the message I try and spread through my writings, my songs and my new podcase that should be coming out in the next few months, called, Sunday Mornings with Broken Poet.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I grew up in a household where football and sports were worshipped and being tough and strong was admired, Art, especially poetry, was mocked. That was for guys who were soft. So, throughout high school, I would dabble in the arts. I was on the debate team and did humorous interpretation and participated in plays. But my parents were never a witness to this aspect of my life. My parents were good parents. They would show up at every football game and at every other sporting event. For sports, they could not be more proud of their son. But as far as art and drama was concerned, for my parents, that was silly – not worth investing time and money in something like that.

As a result of these values that I was taught, I hid my art. I did not want to show my poetry to the world. Art was silly, and for a guy, it was a sign of weakness.

However, eventually, through encouragement and support, my art, my poetry and my songs made their way to the Broken Poet Facebook page. I started to become even more bold and started to present my poems and my songs at local spoken word and open mic events. Eventually, I started to gain a following. Eventually, the people who appreciated my words and my stories, gave to me a wonderful gift, confidence. These people, with every comment and like, with every clap of the hand, put the wind under my wings and gave me the ability to share my work from the highest mountain top.

This was the lesson I had to unlearn. I had to learn that art has tremendous value. A necessary value. A value that makes life worth living. Having the ability to open yourself up so that other people know you are sad, or an addict, or going through a change, is important. Making someone know that there is someone else going through the same things they are, is a tremendous gift that is more valuable than gold. We are human. As humans we need each other. We need to know that others think like we do. We need to know that other people out there may appear to be happy, but, on the inside, they are just as sad and scared as you are. Through art, through poetry and song, we have the ability to share these things with each other. We have the ability to make sure our fellow man knows that there is someone out there whose heart is listening to them and is open to help.

We need way more art in this world and way less sports and toxic masculinity. We need more understanding of each other. We need to make sure we share and open ourselves up to each other. We need to be vulnerable – and not be scared to be vulnerable. We need more poets and less warriors. We need more songwriters and less politicians. We need more story tellers and less millionaires. These are the lessons I have unlearned.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.broken-poet.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/1Broken.Poet
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/BrokenPoet1
• Youtube: https://tinyurl.com/1BrokenPoetVideo