Samuel J. Cachola is a poet forged by fire and known for transforming trauma into transcendent art. A Georgetown-trained entrepreneur and former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence professional, he channels his lived experience into a body of work that now exceeds two thousand original poems—what he calls “transmissions of survival code in the language of love and post-traumatic growth.”

Born into trauma, Cachola was the son of teenage parents. He grew up sickly, neglected, and abused—malnourished, asthmatic, riddled with ailments (including worms) by the age of four. From five to ten, he endured repeated sexual assault by a predatory stepfather. By the time he reached adulthood, he had already survived more scars than most face in a lifetime.

At nineteen, he joined the United States Marine Corps. He served more than a decade in intelligence, counterintelligence, and forensic psychophysiology, and later continued in civilian service at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Cachola built businesses, poured into his community, and became known for his principle of “Caremanship over Salesmanship.”

But the deepest fracture came in marriage. Four separate times—through false accusations, betrayals, and courtroom battles—his wife, her children, or her family tried to dismantle his life. The final divorce stripped him of his home, business, reputation, and—most devastatingly—his children, from whom he was kept for two years. He spent nights in cars, basements, and borrowed couches, burning through hundreds of thousands just to defend his name.

“It did not break me,” he says. “It broke me open.”

From that rupture poured a spontaneous flood of poetry and prose. Poems arrived in minutes, often waking him in the middle of the night. This flood became Walker’s Poetry: a living archive of grief transmuted into love, suffering rendered into service.

Cachola writes not as a master, but as a vessel. His sensitivity—once his wound—has become his compass, tuned to what others leave unsaid. His work has appeared in The Plaid Horse, Fairfax Times, and national media outlets, including features on the WWER Authors & Poets podcast and a commemorative Secretariat tribute released in partnership with The Plaid Horse and 1888PressRelease.

FOURward is his axis.
Live Beyond Your StorY is his covenant.
Love Is Life. Love Well.

He offers his work with gratitude, even to those who tried to break him—for without them, the fountain would not have opened. Without the fracture, there would be no nectar.

It is his honor to record.
It is his responsibility to share.

— Samuel J. Cachola
Poet-Non
Walker’s Poetry