JayZed isn’t your average affluent Melburnian eastern suburbs resident spinning suburban fairytales. Forget the manicured lawns and polite chit-chat—his life is a raw saga of high highs, crushing lows, drugs, money, heartbreak, and poetic rebirth. He’s a tradie with a past, an investor who lost it all, but along the way, he discovered a passion for poetry.
“A lot of memories here,” he says, inviting me into his childhood home. He takes out the briki and makes a Greek coffee, still bleary-eyed though it’s 10 am. “Sleep apnea,” he explains.
Everything inside the house is perfect and pristine, but he lives in a unit at the back—less ordered, chaotic, but more interesting.
“Nobody lives in this house now,” he says, remembering a childhood filled with life: weekend cricket games played by the Aussies down the road, his local primary school, and a diverse community that included fellow Greeks.
An admitted introvert, JayZed—his artistic alias—contrasts himself with his “life of the party” brother and father.
“I’m not one for small talk,” he states. “Almost every time there’s a lull in the conversation, they fill the space talking about the weather—just benign conversation.”
Instead, he finds solace in observation and poetry, sharing his soul through a constant stream of text messages.
“My life, it turned like the wind has changes | I grabbed it and I held on for dear life | Always in awe, aware of the strangeness | Earning to live after going through strife…”
My phone pings with a steady stream of his poetry, sent at all hours—initially written for himself but now shared in bulk SMS. Monetisation doesn’t interest him.
His tradie success, once bringing in “an easy 400 grand a year,” proved hollow.
“I lost respect for money,” he confesses.
His “soulmate,” a Thai woman he met at a Doncaster over-28s club, was his anchor, but when family issues forced her to break things off, he spiraled.
“I was heartbroken when she kicked me out. Rejection was brutal,” he says.
At 41, he found himself drawn into a destructive cycle.
“It’s a fallacy that only young people can get caught up in drugs. There’s a guy I met at my mechanic. He introduced me to his friends, and they all started coming over for drugs. It was just a social thing, and I was okay. And then one day, I wasn’t,” he explains.
Addiction took hold.
“I just kept using. I just kept going there,” he says.
He sold a property, hoping to “get the hell out of Melbourne to break the routine,” but the bank seized the earnings to offset another loan, and things did not go as planned.
Amidst the chaos, poetry emerged.
“It was around 2014 when I started writing poetry while I was still using,” he says. He views it as therapy.
“For me, it’s therapy when I write—whether it be about war, shit I’m going through, my ex, my sister, my brother—anything, you know. I write it down, it’s like therapy, and I just get it out.”
He doesn’t read poetry or poet biographies, preferring to explore his own expression. He writes at night, edits, and shares.
“Poetry got me through some of my hardest periods,” he recalls, remembering the discomfort, sweats, and restlessness of withdrawal.
JayZed’s path to sobriety was harrowing. “Yeah, it took me another three years to get off drugs,” he admits. His father’s attempt to “boot me out” was a turning point, but it was a health scare during COVID that provided the final break from drug use.
A gallbladder removal in 2020 forced him into recovery at his father’s house in Rosebud. His mother’s tears solidified his resolve, and he swore never to touch drugs again. He’s now “four years clean.”
Poetry has become a routine, a nightly ritual. He texts his work on his phone, re-reads it the next day, edits, and shares.
“Almost every night, I write something. Not all of them are good, you know—some of them are quite depressing…” he says.
Though he’d “love it if they got published,” he’s not actively chasing fame. He was thrilled when English teacher Denise Zapantis submitted his poem Hostile Instinct for the Greek Australian Cultural League’s Antipodes periodical.
JayZed’s story is one of raw honesty and hard-won wisdom. He’s a man who stared into the abyss and found his voice—a voice that speaks with unflinching clarity.
