Synkroniciti is stoked to welcome poet and visual artist Dean Luttrell of Houston, Texas, with “Dreams,” a candid and inspiring poem about the audacity of becoming who you are, especially when the world demands otherwise. It is paired with one of Dean’s artworks, Untitled (Yellow).
Dean shares his experience with prejudice in the Christian church where he served as a music minister, a system that insisted on conformity at the cost of his spirit. Choosing his health and personhood over an abusive, soul-crushing version of faith required a fierce, quiet audacity: not the showy kind, but the kind that keeps a person alive.
Unbidden, his former life returns in dreams, often as the houses he inhabited before changing professions and coming out as a gay man. One residence in particular, a minister’s home attached to a church, its real‑life décor verging on the maniacal, has become a symbol of that time.
“Ironically, the quiet spaces almost scream sadness./ A coldness hangs like East Tennessee fog in these houses.// One such house, a parsonage, was oddly fitted in yellow./ Carpet, drapes, walls, tiles and toilets—all yellow.// A coward might suffocate in yellow death there/ Powerless to make changes.”
That oppressive yellow resurfaces in Untitled (Yellow), but here it is transfigured—no longer a suffocating force, but a burst of joy and celebration. To take the color, the ethos, that once threatened to smother you and turn it into radiance is audacious. Institutions cannot contain that kind of courage. Those who try to limit access to joy, spirituality, and self‑realization are the ones who ultimately lose them.
Dean reminds us that leaving this culture was not an act of bravery but survival in the face of weaponized faith.
His imagery is palpable and evocative, from that cold East Tennessee fog to the harsh yellow reborn as joy. He shows how the very forces meant to repress us can become raw material for transformation, guiding us toward fuller, freer, more individuated versions of ourselves.
Experience Dean’s luminous work in Synkroniciti’s Audacity issue, Vol. 8, No. 1, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Dean Luttrell is a poet, musician and artist who has lived in Houston over 35 years. He holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Music and is a graduate of the Glassell School of Art. His poetry has been published in the Archway Readers Anthologies, The Ekphrastic Review and The Equinox Journal. He won Third Place in Houston Poetry Festival’s Ekphrastic Poetry Contest. This is his first time to appear in Synkroniciti Magazine, for which he is extremely grateful. This year he is celebrating his 75th birthday and his 30th anniversary with his partner and love of his life, Michael Kincaid.