Faith
Salt Water Prayers
"I prayed in the language my grandmother left me — half hum, half wound. God answered in the tide."
Sent from a pew at 3 a.m.
Read →
Messages that made it to shore — Vol. I
BOJACK
Poet. Author. Mental Health Advocate. Voice for the Unspoken.
Love ✦Black Manhood ✦Mental Health ✦Faith ✦Social Justice ✦Identity ✦Healing ✦Culture ✦Vulnerability ✦Liberation ✦
Love ✦Black Manhood ✦Mental Health ✦Faith ✦Social Justice ✦Identity ✦Healing ✦Culture ✦Vulnerability ✦Liberation ✦
The Concept
Every poem is a message in a bottle.
Some sink. Some drift for years. Some find the one shore that needed them. This is an archive of the ones that made it.
"
I prayed in the language my grandmother left me —
half hum, half wound, all woman.
God answered in the tide.
Said: son, every shore was once a storm.
Every shore was once a storm.
— from SENT, 2024
About
A son of Oxnard, writing into the things men were taught to swallow.
Tavonte "BoJack" Jackson is a published author, poet, and nationally certified mental health counselor. He writes from the intersection of Black manhood, faith, and the long work of healing, turning lived experience into language that refuses to flinch.
Poetry book
SENT, 2026
Counselor
Nationally certified
Roots
Oxnard, CA
The Book
SENTpoems by Tavonte Jackson
A debut collection built around the metaphor of messages in a bottle, poems written to lovers, ancestors, addictions, the country, and the boy he used to be. Each one sealed, set adrift, and somehow still arriving.
The Themes
Eight currents
running through the work.
Every poem belongs to one of these. Some belong to all of them at once. Choose a theme and follow the tide.
♡
Love
On wanting and being witnessed.
◐
Mental Health
Staying. Choosing. Beginning again.
▲
Manhood
Black boys, soft and unbroken.
✦
Faith
The God of small mornings.
✕
Social Justice
Naming what the country won't.
◊
Culture
Oxnard, ancestors, the 805.
○
Healing
After the bottle. After the war.
✧
Identity
The mirror, the becoming.
Mental Health Mission
The bravest sentence a Black man can write is — I am still here.
As a nationally certified counselor, BoJack works at the intersection of poetry and therapy, building language for the feelings the culture taught us to bury. The work is liberation, one sentence at a time.
From the archive
Recent arrivals.
Manhood
What the Men Never Said
"We inherited the muscle, never the mouth. So I'm writing the words our fathers swallowed."
Sent from my father's silence
Read →Culture
Oxnard Blue
"Strawberry fields and lowriders humming. The Pacific holding everything we couldn't say out loud."
Sent from the 805
Read →Love
Love, As Evidence
"She didn't ask me to be soft. She asked me to be true. Turns out — those were the same prayer."
Sent from the morning after
Read →Mental Health
The Weight of Staying
"Nobody told me healing would feel like grief. That choosing to stay was its own kind of holy."
Sent from the edge of a Tuesday
Read →Social Justice
Names They Tried to Bury
"Say their names like a psalm. Say them until the sidewalk remembers. Until the country flinches."
Sent from a candlelight vigil
Read →Social Action
Naming what the country refuses to say.
The pen has always been a tool for liberation. BoJack's advocacy spans equity, inclusion, mental health access in Black communities, and the long work of dismantling the systems that ask us to die quietly.
- Equity & Inclusion
- Mental Health Access
- Anti-Racist Education
- Youth & Community Voice
Speaking · Workshops · Readings
Bring BoJack to your stage.
Universities. Conferences. Wellness spaces. Houses of worship. Wherever the conversation needs poetry, honesty, and a counselor's eye for what the room is really feeling.