a memoir by Daniel Kozlowski
It's not a memoir...it's a report.
Twenty years in a place nobody wants to go. Thirty years of notebooks. And what God had to say about it when He yanked me out.
it's about an eleven-year-old kid who had God broken out of him...left him wide open...then the Devil stepped in...took him for a ride...into hell on earth...seemed like a fit...he stayed
until God came back...kicked out the Devil...told him He never really left...and told him why...gave him the playbook...maybe he was supposed to be there...meet the Devil and his demons...live in their world...write it all down...thirty years of journals...then bring it back for the ones still down there...and the ones who love them...maybe help someone find a way out...so they know they're not junk...that their lives might mean more than junkie...alcoholic...criminal...bad guy...
maybe a part of some angel's infantry
so the Devil's in it...God too...street angels and demon drug dealers...motels and pickup trucks...drugs and drink, hospitals and church basements, the road from Detroit to Mississippi and back...and music the whole way through
and there's a young family in it...now, while he's trying to decipher God's playbook...his fiancée, their seven-year-old son...keeping him together...keeping him laughing when the shit gets too heavy...helping any way they can
it's told two ways at once...the kid living it...and the man, thirty years later, working it out in real time...while the past drops in live, whole...and he never turns around to explain it...no wiser, older self looking back...the two stories run side by side and only meet on the last page...like two rivers running next to each other for two hundred pages...and they don't converge...until they do
Everything in this book happened. Memory is a funny thing — the cocaine and whiskey probably didn't help. The dialogue is how I remember it. I wasn't wearing a wire.
Born on the Frontlines — page 23. The whole book came out of it.
Some of us were born on the frontlines
in the battle between God and the Devil
prepared in advance
with future wounds as bona fides
to trick the Devil into a backstage pass, into hell on earth
that most do not know and cannot see
an angel’s infantry, roaming and riding
from the fringes of urban hellscapes to the white picket suburbs
thru the hidden underbelly rumbling below
dancing with the Devil in a Dionysian search for relief
“in the middle of all the shit” that happens around us
we cannot control it...we were made for this
battle tested and hard, we relish the crazy
because now we can deal with it...run it
we create a circus around us
to drown out the shit we know we are missing
a weird kind of buffer fun zone
an exclusive troublemaker’s paradise
where we are in a constant state of healing up
steeling ourselves for another skirmish
in the never ending conflict between good and evil
from our experience, our suffering and pain
our genetic willingness to enter the fray
the rest of the world can learn what the other side
the wild side is like
we are both preachers of love and purveyors of strife
examples of “that life”
we are “I know a guy” wise...so you don’t have to
and as we take the never ending hits
we add another scar, more ink onto our bodies
or into a dog eared journal
and we always dot another map of “been there”
we lay out the battlefield for all to see
so you can avoid the pitfalls that we traversed and survived
Some of us were born on the frontlines
in the war between God and the Devil
we only ask for you to recognize
and maybe pay us just a lil bit of respect.
That's where the company got its name. The book has the rest.
the shirt. Black. The cover over the heart, the ring on the back. Not for sale — it comes with the book at a reading, and the people wearing one have read it.
the tag. Matte GI dog tag, five lines, 30-inch chain. Revelation 12:11 — they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. For the infantry.
the bookmark. The cover on one side, the sword and how to reach me on the other. Free. Take one.
The book is finished — 210 pages, built from thirty years of journals and 500 days at a basement desk. The first fifty copies went to family and friends in September. A second run is out now, hand to hand.
There's no ISBN and it's not on Amazon. That's on purpose. I'm looking for an agent and a publisher who want to take it the rest of the way. If that's you, the email's below. The manuscript is complete and ready to read.
Represented for media and marketing by Fuel Media, Detroit.
Here's the thing...I'm not the only one who did a tour.
If you lived in your own lil sliver of hell...addiction, or whatever yours was...and you made it out, or you're still trying...I want your story. Written, a voice memo, a photo of a notebook page. First name or no name. Nobody's grading it.
The Devil can't work in the light. The more of us shining one, the smaller hell on earth gets.
angelsinfantry@gmail.comYour story stays yours. Nothing gets shared unless you say so. I read every one.
november 19, 2026
Adcraft Detroit — Merry Mischief Market
Display Group, 6235 Concord Ave, Detroit
Table 18, Market Room 2 · 5–10 pm · music + artist market · open to the public
More dates as they come. If you've got a room and some people who could use this — a church basement, a treatment center, a bar with a mic — email me.
Daniel Kozlowski
carpentry, songwriting, poetry
@angels.infantry
Agents, publishers, press: same email. The manuscript is complete.