Warrior and Poet: Bland County veteran's poem part of state anthology
Josiah Jack, a veteran, carpenter, poet and film artist, takes a moment to check out the poetry collection in the Bland County Public Library.
Living next to a bus station in Philadelphia, a robotic announcer would often awaken Josiah Jack and his wife in the wee hours of the morning as it offered announcements.
“It was madness and we wanted peace,” he proclaimed.
As the couple reflected on where they wanted to move, they preferred somewhere they’d never been. To get closer to their perfect location, they also began searching for communities with the darkest night skies. Their search criteria led them to Bland County.
Three years ago this January, they moved to Southwest Virginia.
“It ended up being the most beautiful place. It’s like a magical place,” declared Josiah Jack Kalian, who writes under and prefers to use his first two names.
He knows about beauty and peace because he knows their counterweights, war and devastation.
His “path of darkness” began before he joined the U.S. Army and encountered war. It commenced on Nov. 18, 2004, when his brother died. The young man was target practicing and the gun misfired.
He and Josiah Jack were closest in age of the family’s 11 children. “My brother and I had our whole life planned out together,” Josiah Jack said. Forging a path after losing him was “walking into the abyss.”
Yet, it was then that he said, “Poetry found me.”
Josiah Jack began expressing his love for his brother in poems. He’s adamant in his belief that “God made us all poets.”
Josiah Jack understood and wrote poetry from his spirit.
He didn’t possess traditional education. Josiah Jack’s family moved every few years. He said his mother taught him until he was 11 or 12, then he worked full time with his father who built houses. He said his dad didn’t trust institutional education.
As a young man, Josiah Jack wanted to join a search and rescue team. To do so, he needed a GED and began classes, but he struggled with accepted grammatical rules. In one class, he remembered taking the teacher a well-known poem without punctuation.
The teacher told Josiah Jack that he could write like that when he became the well-respected poet.
Josiah Jack said he declared, “I’m becoming him.”
He’s well on his way.
Josiah Jack is one of the poets featured in Perseverance and Resilience: Poems from the Veterans Poetry Project. The anthology was published in June as the culmination of a project by Virginia Poet Laureate Mattie Quesenberry Smith, PhD.
Smith, who also serves as an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow (2025–2026), championed the Veterans Poetry Project after receiving the Academy’s fellowship to provide a vital creative outlet for military veterans across the Commonwealth.
Josiah Jack was three weeks into his first college semester when a buddy called him and said he’d joined the Army. He knew he could wish his friend well, but Josiah Jack said he felt called to sign up as well and did.
He was trained as a medic and sent to Germany. From there, Josiah Jack was deployed to Iraq and then Afghanistan, places where the brutality of war became obvious as games were turned into warfare.
He remembered watching little kids play soccer, trying to lure American soldiers into the game so the ball could be detonated. His friends from the Vietnam War era tell of similar tactics used then.
“It’s war. There’s nothing beautiful about war. It’s desolation,” he said.
After responding to an explosion in Kabul, Josiah Jack said he called his mother. She and one of his sisters were leaving a mall after having their nails done. He knew the mall well and found himself “torn between places,” experiencing the odd juxtaposition of the two sites and circumstances.
“You can’t go into war without taking something of it with you,” Josiah Jack reflected. Everyone, he said, works to deal with it, perhaps through adrenaline rushes, substances, or isolation.
Josiah Jack acknowledged that he’s tried multiple paths.
“I’ve tried to commit suicide several times,” he said, acknowledging the gratitude for the angels who saved him. He particularly remembered a stranger who came running up to him just in time or meeting a medic who served in Vietnam and would talk with him.
They inspired Josiah Jack’s anthology poem, “For my Friends.”
In part it reads: “if they had fear/it didn’t show/as in the blackened swell they go/to save me/from my hell/in that cold/and lonely sea….”
For The Mighty Pen Project, which encourages veterans and their loved ones to commit to paper their memories and reflections, Josiah Jack wrote an anti-suicide ballad. Originally, he said, it was just for veterans. Then a friend’s daughter took her life. He rewrote the poem so it applies to anyone.
He acknowledged that more than 17 veterans die by suicide each day.
One of Josiah Jack’s poems about suicide is titled “dear Nine Mike Mike”. Nine-mike-mike is slang for the 9-millimeter bullet. On stanza reads: “legions of demons we know volumes of pain/but wallowing in hurt only makes us insane/if your finger’s on the trigger/no/I don’t think you weak in any way/but leaving like this leaves demons to stay/to burden and plague us all/giving roam in our darkest hour/causing another to fall.”
Josiah Jack also knows the power of substances. “Alcohol,” he said, “is not something to be trifled with,” acknowledging that it nearly ruined friends’ lives and his own.
Josiah Jack bears no animosity toward the soldiers he fought against. He ate in the homes of Afghanis and saw children killed.
“When they lose a child, we lose a child,” he said.
For a time, Josiah Jack said he also lost his sense of purpose. He used to run into burning buildings and carry out 300-lb. men. Then, he sustained a fractured spine. He can’t run.
All in all, he said, he has more questions than answers, but, when horrible breaking news alerts appear, Josiah Jack urged people to plant a flower – to take control of that small act.
Everyone is experiencing trauma at some level, he said. “In the deep end,” Josiah Jack said, “we can either pull each other up or drown.”
Since he left the military, Josiah Jack has been honing his crafts. He used his GI Bill to attend the New York Film Academy. He’s acted in several films, including “Outpost,” “All of It Happened on a Thursday,” and the TV series “Now Serving”.
Then, COVID came and his dad died. Josiah Jack said he went to help his mother, including with selling the family home.
Since then, he’s shifted to working behind the scenes as a producer and screenwriter.
His movie “Job,” he said, is 90 days out from shooting in an old log cabin in Terre Haute, Indiana. It will be his first time directing.
Beyond his writing, Josiah Jack continues to practice the craft he learned from his father, carpentry, and takes comfort from his faith, one that’s evolved from the quite conservative Baptist tradition of his childhood.
Today, of denominations, he said, “I don’t want to wave someone else’s flag.”
He remembers being taught that only the KJV version of the Bible was legitimate. Josiah Jack said he wondered, “How come I met this beautiful person carrying an NIV?”
He said, “I saw enough hatred” and people who used religion to constrain people.
Josiah Jack said he puts his focus on Jesus’ love commandments. He’s also quick to note that King David was a warrior and a poet.
A member of the Virginia Poetry Society, Josiah Jack plans to keep creating poems.
Poetry, he said, “draws from that infinite well of your soul.”
Throughout the interview, Josiah Jack returned to one statement multiple times: “Put your hand on the pen, not the pistol.”
Writer’s note: If you are considering suicide or need help with a mental health crisis, please call or text 988.
