The Quieter We Become, the More We Are Able to Hear:
Writing with Teens in a Psychiatric Hospital

by Ann Teplick, Pongo project leader

Each time my meditation teacher suggested that we “hold” our pain, rather than cling to it or push it away, I wanted to do something un-Buddha like. Like scream, or crack a few obscene jokes, or belt out the lyrics of a Jim Morrison song, where torment seeps like a bruised and mucked-up fruit. Shake up the hushed room.

It took me years to wrap my head around this concept of being gentle with myself, less obsessive. To trust that in hard times, I would not suffocate. And though I’m far from100%, I’ve come a long way. The effort is constant. I slack, and I’m back in the wilds of anxiety—heart palpitations, wet like I have just walked out of the sea, breathing that is cockeyed, visions of train wrecks and crimson.

And then, one day, the epiphany—

It’s 6:45 a.m. on a beach in Seattle, foggy and damp, my hair wet and strung into curls. A boat horn blares, a heron strolls through the foam of a wave, driftwood and seaweed scatter across the sand. I am perched on a wet-salted rock, crying, cursing, trying to “hold” the unholdable— an indelible personal pain—one hell of a fire, like I have been blowtorched.

When out of nowhere, a barrage of butterflies light upon me—one on my thumb, one on my knee, one on my shoulder, the zipper of my fleece jacket. Who knows how many are on my hood. They are the size of my fist, with wings, veined and coppery, that close and open in slow motion. And they do not fly away, but cocoon me in stillness. The quieter I become, the more I am able to hear.


On Mondays, from October to March, four colleagues and I write poetry with teens at Firwood secondary school, in Lakewood, Washington. Forty-five miles south of Seattle, the school is one of many buildings on the campus of Western State Hospital, a 265-acre psychiatric facility. Western is wooded with trees, wildflowers, owls, eagles, and deer. Yes, butterflies, too. The teens live a stone’s throw away in cottages at the Child Study and Treatment Center (CSTC), the only state run and state operated psychiatric hospital for children in Washington. CSTC serves youth ages 6-17 in two primary programs—Inpatient Services, for youth who cannot be served in a less-restrictive environment, and Forensic Services, a program that conducts mental health evaluations for the Juvenile Court System of Washington State.

We walk into Firwood school at lunchtime, to the aroma of Mac and cheese, sloppy Joes, chips and salsa. The environment is brightly lit and cheerful, with polished floors, art on the walls, and friendly faces of adults and teens, which is not to say there is never a scuffle. We sign in at the reception desk and head to the computer room, high-five a few students we pass in the hall. “Can I write poetry, today?” “How about me? I didn’t get to write last week!” “I’ve got a cool poem back in my room, can I go fetch it?”

My colleagues and I work with The Pongo Teen Writing Project (www.pongoteenwriting.org), a volunteer non-profit founded (in 1992) and run by writer Richard Gold. Gold is a compassionate man with a huge heart. He is dedicated to writing with youth who lead difficult lives. In the mid 1970’s, while a graduate student of creative writing in San Francisco, Gold volunteered with teens at a special-needs school,  many of whom were patients at an adolescent psychiatric clinic. He is anchored in the belief that when we write about life’s challenges—from hardship to distress to trauma and grief—we can better understand ourselves and take better control of our lives.

I met Richard Gold ten years ago at a summer art festival in Seattle. While manning the Pongo booth, he introduced me to poems from the teen collections on display. They were very difficult to read. Many, excruciating. Stories of alcohol and drug addiction, rage, despair, depression, suicide, physical and sexual abuse, abandonment, life on the streets, crime, violent deaths of family, friends and pets. The ravages of guilt.


Death Letter

Dear Baby Girl,

I never got to say goodbye to you. I was in JRA. I know how you died: shot in the neck by a sniper. You died in my mom’s arms. Before you died you walked to the house and up to her and made her follow you to your bed. That’s when my mom saw the blood and she cradled you. Then you died.

He was just a crazy guy next door, my dad’s friend’s friend because you trespassed just once onto his property. I see an animal on my property, I better just shoot her. He had anger inside that he couldn’t handle, he had mental problems just like me.

I know what I did to you was wrong. What I did to you was hit you, stuck you with needles and basically abused you. I did it because I had no other way to handle my rage. I felt like I should take it out on other species. And you were one of them. I’m sorry.

I remember that every time you went off our property you wouldn’t listen to my mom but you’d listen to me.

I remember that you slept in my bed every night, every time I was sad or depressed. It really felt like you were my real sister.

I remember that you protected me whenever I was scared. I also remember that you protected me from strangers that came to our door—you would growl and bark, I would open the door and you would chase after them.

You made me feel safe and loved.

I want to say goodbye now, but not forever: please take care of your sisters and grandpa Peter, but especially yourself. I hope you have a good time in heaven with Jesus and God. Take care of them.

Goodbye.

Love always and forever,

Sad Puppy


As a writer, raised with an abundance of love, I cannot create these scenarios. But writing is my life, and I well know its power to pull me through the smack of tough times.

I have been working with Richard Gold and the Pongo Teen Writing Project for eight years—five, in King County juvenile detention (Seattle), three of which I served as project lead; and for the last three years, as project lead at CSTC. The experience has altered me—not only the honor of working with young people who live with challenges many of us cannot fathom, but the fact that I am learning how to listen—really listen—with no interruptions, judgments, pity, or verbal attempts to alleviate suffering. My belief in story, and the importance of telling our stories, has been reinforced a thousand fold. Our words matter, and the world desperately needs them.

Since 2000, Pongo has reached out to over 4,000 teen writers in juvenile detention, psychiatric hospitals, juvenile rehab facilities, LGBTQ centers, and homeless shelters. King County juvenile detention and CSTC are Pongo’s pillar sites. Pongo has published 12 anthologies of teen poetry, most of which are given away to the authors.

The teens we write with at CSTC have severe emotional, behavioral, and thought disorders. Their lives are delicate, layered and complex. We cannot fix this, but we can share our love for poetry and the tools for writing, so that they can find ways to express emotions and experiences that are often a 10+ on the Richter scale. When they do, their sense of relief, satisfaction, and greater self-respect is palpable. The process is stunning and humbling.


Coke

He controls me.
He wants me to want more, more.
He’ll make your friends and family disappear.
He’ll scream in your ear.
He’ll make you be a thief.
The high will make you want to have sex
And to be loved because nobody else will love you back.
He doesn’t love you.
He just owns you.
First try, you don’t want him.
Second, he becomes you.
Third, you won’t know yourself anymore.
There is no way to stop him.
You are gone.


So, what does our day look like?

Before we meet with the teens, my colleagues and I gather for an hour to share poems we have discovered and poems we have written. We devise writing activities to accompany many of our personal pieces, and explore themes such as family, love, heartbreak, the masks we wear, forgiveness, gratitude, resilience, and survival. We discuss who to invite to write that day, with a focus on those who have not written with us in a while, or perhaps ever. We especially seek teens who have a difficult time expressing themselves. Last year, we worked with a total of thirty young writers. The numbers vary each year, as does the level of functioning.

Once the teens arrive, we begin with an Opening Circle. We introduce (or reintroduce) Pongo, and follow with a conversation about poetry and why write it. I love that poetry is succinct, says the most with the least, and is the perfect building block for all writing—perfect to experiment with metaphor and simile, repetition and word play, sound play, rhythm and rhyme. Symbol. Poetry is a nugget, and has the potential to be a powerhouse. It serves us well at Firwood school, where our sessions with the teens are brief.

We believe honesty is one of the most important qualities of good writing, and we share this at our Opening Circle. We encourage everyone to write from the heart about who they are as a person. We distribute Pongo anthologies and invite the teens to thumb for a poem that hooks them, one they might want to read to the group. The teens connect with poems they relate to, those that express loneliness, alienation, anger, humiliation, abuse, and abandonment, to name a few. Often, this identification is a comfort.

Next, we pair up with the teens. They can work on a poem by themselves, and ask for assistance, if they need it, or they can work directly with us. If they choose the latter, we begin an informal chat. We ask them how they are doing. How is their day going? High points? Low points? What might they like to write about? Often, there are issues pressing, such as an argument with staff or a friend, a frustration at school, a vicious rumor circulating about them, a longing for family, or a not-so-positive family visit. They speak, and we type, guiding them to infuse their work with images, details, and repetition to underscore importance.


Rolling Down on Me

I am very sad.
I feel like breaking down –
Like a bridge collapsing
Due to holding on to so many barriers,
Keeping so many cars from falling
Into the river below.
My dad is a car.
I’ve been run over so many times.
Yet I feel that he’s been run over, too.
I’d like to turn the anger around.
I wish we could have been
A bridge for each other.
My dad is in prison for 23 years.
My sisters and my family are cars
On the bridge.
I want to keep them from being like my dad.
They’re struggling.
My little sisters are adopted,
My older brother has a guardian,
My other brother is in foster care,
And my other brother is in a group home.
I am a bridge.
I want to keep everyone safe
And be strong for them,
But I’m not doing well myself.
I wish I could be there for them,
But instead I’m in here.
I am a bridge that has cracks in it –
The cracks in my heart.


If ideas for writing are hard to come by, we might offer a prompt, such as writing about a close friend, someone they trust. Or writing about something funny that’s happened to them. Perhaps, the best gift they’ve ever received, material or other. We might ask, what makes them happy? What makes them sad? What gives them hope? And we build from there. Sometimes the words spill and sometimes they don’t. We might suggest various structures, such as the wonderful and user-friendly List poem. For example, a list of “wishes,” or “10 Things I Like About Myself,” or “Things That Drive Me Crazy.” Perhaps a list of good memories, and not-so-good memories. Or we might improvise a poetic structure, such as “My guilt (anger/frustration, etc.) surprises me when. . . is predictable when. . . helps me when. . .hurts me when. . . is like… (simile)."

The teens come to us with many levels of writing experience. Some are masters of hip hop and rap. Some are meticulous and devoted to end-rhyme. Some have journaled in the past. Others have seldom written. Others still, may be wary of poetry and throw us the Stink Eye. Initially, that is. We aim for a positive experience, and according to our surveys, we continue to meet our goal.

Each session ends with a Closing Circle, where the teens read the poems they have written. They receive compliments, applause, and acknowledgment for their creativity and bravery. I believe everyone leaves the room taller, prouder, and stronger.

Years ago, when I first began this work, it was not uncommon for me to excuse myself to find refuge in a bathroom stall where I could meltdown in private. I’d fall apart on the drive home. I’d duke it out, box with insomnia, because of the sights, sounds, smells and tastes that the teens had articulated. Our inhumanity to others and our inhumanity to ourselves haunts me. Yet, this is where I want to be—rooting for the voices that are too often ignored, denied, shunned and walked away from. It is here that I have no choice but to be present and compassionate.


They Won't Stop

I hear them
They hear me
They tell me to kill people
My mom
My aunt
My brother
My friends
And staff
I tell them to shut the fuck up
But they don’t
They’re in my head
And they won’t be quiet
I pray and plead for them to but
I’ve learned that don’t work
I’ve been hearing them for 10 years and
It makes me sick to think about that
I’ve been on meds that make me
Fat
Sicker
Tired
And that make me suicidal
I’m on a medication that makes me feel angry all the time
I tell doctors and staff but they don’t care
That’s the truth
I hear voices and I tell people
No one cares
Not staff, friends, doctors
Or me.
I pace and I get punished
I have schizophrenia and no one wants to help me
This makes me feel anger, pain, shame
And lonely
I’ve been feeling lonely for 10 years
And I feel it will never go away
That makes them louder
And I can’t stop it
That’s the saddest thing ever:
I hallucinate and I can’t stop it
Not now.


Mental illness is not a pretty picture. I believe at certain times in our lives, we may question the thin line that keeps us on one side, and how easy it would be to slide to the other. We are at a constant face-off with ourselves and life’s fragility.

The teens we work with at CSTC are beautiful young people. They are truth tellers, fearless in many ways, and many, with unsinkable spirits. They inspire and instill gratitude, for the simple privilege of sitting side by side with them while they write their lives. And I will continue to hold their pain like a butterfly—a Monarch, maybe, or a Lupine Blue. This, is the ultimate grace.

[This essay was originally published in Hunger Mountain, journal of The Vermont College of Fine Arts]

by Alex Russell

This year, while volunteering with Pongo in Seattle Juvenile Detention, it seemed like every other night on the news there were stories about kids doing terrible things. Some boys attacked a bus driver at night when she wouldn’t let them off through the back door. A group of girls made national headlines when a video showed them beating another girl in a downtown transit station. When I sat down with a kid to write poems, I hoped he or she wasn’t involved with anything I’d seen on the news the night before.

As Pongo volunteers, we are there to serve kids, not to judge them. Even so, the habit of judging is persistent and reflexive. I was a victim of violent crime in 1998. I was 19 at the time, shot in the neck by a guy who couldn’t have been much older than I was. I thought the experience gave me a window into the lives of those who had also experienced extreme violence. It also predisposed me to judging kids who had committed violence against others. I volunteered with Pongo to help kids no matter where they came from, no matter what they had done. I didn’t think I had to worry about my own judgments.

Toward the end of the year I was facilitating a group poem with a teen I’ll call John and one other boy. In the process of digging for lines, John mentioned how he was on CNN for why he was in Detention. Then things changed. Judgment is a persistent habit. It a filter to help us understand the world around us, and it’s something that happens involuntarily. As soon as I knew what John was talking about I couldn’t help feeling suddenly withdrawn. John’s demeanor seemed to change as well, but unrelated to what anyone else said or did. It was as if he realized immediately what it meant to become “that criminal on TV” instead of just John, a kid trying to get through a poem.

John was likely the same as every other kid I worked with, someone who’s experienced major emotional traumas. At our best as Pongo volunteers, we help kids externalize traumas most of them bury in order to survive. When the traumas are on paper, they lose a lot of their power. My fellow mentor Eli Hastings described it as turning shame into pride: by writing poems, kids turn traumatic memories they are ashamed of into works of art they are proud of. Because of this, it only makes sense to approach the trauma and not the crime, the seismic skip that is a symptom of that trauma. Approaching the trauma is the only way for anyone to heal.

When I went to drop off his poems, John was the same as every other kid I worked with last year. He was happy to see me and started reading his poems as soon as I slipped them under the door. Everything was as if the session had gone perfectly. It made me think that maybe I wasn’t the failure I thought I had been. More than anything, it reminded me that the process of recovering from trauma is complicated and imperfect, and never really over. The symptoms can change over time, whether they begin with actions that find us imprisoned, or with unsettling judgments against others. Both share the same root causes, but if I learned anything as a Pongo volunteer it’s that there is always a way to move forward.

Sometimes we think that… We can make someone love us if only we love them enough, if only we give them more and more power over us, if only we measure our love by how much we hurt. This is the poetry of heartache. And this is my personal reading of the poetry that follows, the latest winner of the Pongo Poetry Prize. (Following the winning poem, there are links to three great poems that received Honorable Mention.)

What It Really Is
by a young woman, age 16

Lost

I am a lonely, lost pit-bull.
Confused, hurt,
And nowhere to go.
Last time I saw you, we were at the house.
All I could smell - weed.
All I could see - cocaine.
You gave me so much attention!
This gave me a sweet taste in my mouth.
Then you left and haven't come back.
It's been over three months,
I'm mad,
I have rage and anger.
I'm also alone and hurt.
The only thing you'll ever hear from me is whining.
Other than that I'm silent.
It's because I miss you.
I'm not anything without you.
I am a lonely, lost pit-bull -
Confused, hurt, and have nowhere to go.

What It Really Is

All I can hear is screaming.
That's all I can ever hear.
It never stops.
All I can see is fist and blood.
That's all I ever feel.
You threw me out,
Beat me, and made me feel useless.
You smell like sweat and cologne.
When you hit me, I taste blood.
I didn't do anything.
So why did you do this to me?

You Said

You always said you loved me
And that you would never leave me.
You said those exact words
Every day.
You said you wouldn't hurt me,
But the thing is you treated me like an animal -
That's not me!
Even though you said what you said,
You still left me.
Even if you meant what you said,
You still hurt me.
When you said you really didn't love me,
And you did what you did,
You put silence in my mind.
So now I don't have anything else to say,
You gave me away like a useless little puppy.
Now, all I can see is you.
All I can smell is you.
All I can hear is your voice.
The useless puppy is looking for you.


Honorable Mention, July 2010
Just Imagine
Scarred
Romantic Rain

As cops with 70 years of service between them, Pete and Don know who they are. They can joke about needing to sit in the last row at the conference, with their backs to the wall, as they check out the other participants. They can express how hard it is to trust anyone who isn’t a cop.

I met Pete and Don at a conference on treating survivors after a sudden, violent death. The conference site was a Christian retreat center in Memphis.

Pete and Don know who they are in another way, a profound way. They know that repeated exposure in their careers to traumas of violence and death has been very damaging to them and to their fellow officers. They know that some of the values of their officer community, including stoic silence, have contributed to the hurt. Pete and Don want to help their brother and sister cops, and they know that as members of the police subculture they are in the best position to do that.

And another thing that Pete and Don know, and share, is that their own inability to process trauma brought them to terrible low points in their lives. To give me context, they talked about the fact that every 55 hours one cop is killed and three commit suicide. They talked about the fact that officer suicide rates are comparable to those of Marines. They said that police have twice the national average of divorce. They said that police officers suffer diseases of adaptation, such as diabetes, digestive illnesses, and skin disorders. They said that 30% of cops have diagnosable PTSD.

Pete and Don say that the need to contain feelings leaves cops frustrated and angry – an anger that masks sorrow, guilt, and vulnerability. Cops can become cold, “a talking uniform,” or hyper-vigilant. Naturally, there is a price that officers’ families pay. Pete tells a story of an officer’s wife who was overheard telling her son, “Now don’t make any sudden moves or loud noises when your father gets home.”

As survivors of this emotional pain, Pete and Don describe themselves as being among “the fortunate few.” And Pete says, “I fell in the sewer and came out a plumber.”

Pete told me the story of a cop who was called to the SIDS death of an infant – an infant that was the same age as the officer's own child. The officer tried unsuccessfully to revive the baby and later accompanied the ambulance with the body to the hospital. Then, immediately afterward, the officer had to contain his grief to deal with a false alarm and an irate homeowner.

Don, who was a federal marshal, could talk about responding to the shooting at Ruby Ridge, the Oklahoma City bombing, and September 11. About Oklahoma City he says, “It damn near destroyed me.”

Pete and Don are cops with 70 years of service between them. They have learned to value emotions, including tears, to deal with traumatic death. They have the exceptional goal to share this knowledge with their brother and sister officers.

Peter Cove, formerly of South Boston, is training director at Tennessee Public Safety Network, which supports officers after a critical incident. Donald Benson is Assistant Chief of Internal Affairs and Training in the Blount County Sheriff’s Office in Maryville, Tennessee.

Writing and poetry can help people heal from traumatic grief, which is the difficult grief one experiences after a sudden, violent death. “Restorative Retelling” is a therapy developed by my friend and Pongo colleague Dr. Ted Rynearson, Director of the Violent Death Bereavement Society. In a few days I am speaking at a “Restorative Retelling” conference in Memphis. Dr. Rynearson and I collaborated on several projects that produced the Pongo books "I Lost My Sense of Protection" and "I Can't Imagine Myself Any Other Place."

Today’s blog is about Thea (a pseudonym), a young widow who has used writing to deal with grief and isolation, but also to record moments of surprising and transcendent joy. Writing, and especially poetry, has been a discovery for Thea at this time. In Pongo’s first guest blog, I have included a poem and essay by Thea, who lost her husband in an accident in 2007.

Here is Thea’s poem…

Empty Space
by Thea 

Alone at the cabin
peering into
the closet
looks strange
somehow
the empty space
where his clothes
had lived.

So suddenly
he departed
I was left
with
an aching void
that pulsated
with
a primal agony.

The passage
of time
builds strength -
does heal.

Now the space
within me
is sometimes
still
when I dance
it whirls
joyfully.


And here is Thea’s essay…

“Writing has been part of my journey of healing since I lost my husband in an accident three years ago.  A former colleague of mine suggested that I start keeping a journal.  Her sister had been widowed young and journal-writing had helped her maintain her sanity.  On a couple of occasions I have felt inspired to write poetry to capture some of the moments of peace and insight that I have experienced.

“Although I haven’t maintained a daily journal writing practice, writing in my journal has been a wonderful way to record my thoughts, feelings, experiences in a way that honors both the unique and universal experiences of the bereavement/grief process.  I usually find the experience cathartic.  I write in my journal when I have intense thoughts or feelings that need to be expressed and/or recorded on paper in order to release them.  Sometimes I simply write when I have extra time; for instance, a popular time for writing is on a ferry ride.

“Writing about any feelings of sadness allows me to express and often release them in a safe way.  Since it’s been almost three years since my husband’s death, most people assume that the acceptable time period for experiencing (or at least expressing) grief has passed.  Some friends and family members have made it clear that they aren’t interested in hearing about any residual feelings of grief that I may have.  In general, I’ve found that heart-felt expressions concerning emotional pain are unwelcome except with certain friends or in specific situations (such as a grief support group).  In my journal I am free to share intimate details about my memories of my husband and feelings of pain and longing without regard for possible judgment.

“Journal writing isn’t only about expressions of pain.  Another feature of journal-writing that I love is that I can record pleasant memories or some of the serendipitous, sometimes mystical experiences that have touched my life since my husband’s death.  There have been moments when I have clearly felt and experience my husband’s presence in delightful and unexpected ways.  I have also felt that there have been instances of divine intervention in which unseen forces have intervened on my behalf to provide support or assistance with the resolution of some sort of challenging situation.  Writing about these moments allows me to honor them and preserve them in a way that they can be revisited in the future.  Memories can fade but journal entries can be re-read and re-experienced over and over.  In my journal I can also explore my feelings of hope for a new life without my husband- a life that is still very much a work in progress.

“The journal writing has also opened up a space for more freedom of expression.  I have written a few poems during quiet ferry trips, reflecting some of the solitary insights that I’ve experienced.  In the past, the inner critic usually held me back from writing poetry.  I was concerned that my poetry would be judged as silly or non-relevant and not be valued by others.   In my bereavement process I’ve learned a lot about taking care of myself and honoring my unique life experience.  Now I write for myself and the satisfaction that it gives me; it doesn’t matter whether others read or like my poetry.

“As the third anniversary of my husband’s death approaches I feel a greater sense of peace and confidence.  The first two anniversaries were extremely difficult for me.  Writing has definitely helped me to come to terms with this tremendous loss.   My Buddhist teachers have often explained that the realm of human experience is characterized by both pleasure and pain, loss and gain, as well as joy and sorrow.  It’s clear to me that the writing process can help us to explore the very experiences that make us human.”

This essay is about the rewards of Pongo’s work. I hope more of you will help people to heal through self-expression. When you climb that mountain with someone, through a fog of pain to a clearer summit, there’s pride in the achievement, and closeness in the transformative moment you share.

As I’ve mentioned in this blog, choreographer Pat Graney has been creating performances in women’s prisons, with dance, writing, and art, for 15 years, as long as I’ve been working with youth in juvenile detention. I had the privilege of contributing to the writing component of Pat’s “Keeping the Faith” (KTF) this spring at Mission Creek Corrections Center.

There were two performances of KTF on Friday, May 7, and Saturday, May 8. That Friday, the performance was scheduled for 7:00 pm. At 5:00, Pat was still immersed in her creative process, making changes to the dances, waiting on costumes, and sorting through a one-foot stack of paper to choose final edited writing for the women to read. The women, who had never participated in a creative project before, much less an intensive personal and public experience like this, were walking around in shock.

Then at 7:00 the performance began. The audience was divided into two groups, one of family members and Pat’s guests and the other of fellow prisoners. The women danced and in between read their painful personal stories (many written with former prisoner Shannon Pena) and their poetry. The women cried, they addressed their families, the guests cried, the fellow prisoners cheered.

And afterward the women said that their lives had been changed.

The weekend was one of the most emotional experiences of my life. I was a very proud contributor. I wrote a poem and shared it with the women over an ice cream cake at our cast party a few days later.


Thanks for the Rose
by Richard Gold 

To the women of Mission Creek Corrections Center 

Thanks for giving me a rose
after your Saturday performance.
I was happy to help you with your writing.

You know this,
but when the audience cried and applauded you,
it was not because of the painful subjects of your writing,
about being betrayed by incestuous fathers,
or about being brought low by drugs,
or about your shame at letting down your children.
When the audience cried and applauded you,
it was because you were honest
at a level that exposed the deepest part of yourselves,
the deepest hurt that includes the deepest love.

Thanks for giving me a rose.
You gave me much more.

I was so overwhelmed by your performance
that I asked Pat if I could follow her
on the drive home.

I was so affected
that after I followed Pat to the highway,
instead of continuing home,
I followed her
when she drove off to get gas.

Thanks for giving me a rose.

This is what I want to tell you
as my good-bye.

I was so overwhelmed by your performance
that I was careless with the rose.
Sorry.
I threw my jacket over it in the back of the car.

When I remembered it on Sunday night,
I thought the rose was ruined.
It was bent over and the leaves were distorted.
But I trimmed the stem and put the rose
in water.

When I woke up on Monday morning,
the rose was beautiful,
and the first thing I thought of
was you.

I met with Shaun recently in a café near the beach in West Seattle. When I walked in, he was sitting at an empty table with his bible open in front of him. I could see that the text was filled with post-it notes and annotations, lines were underlined and highlighted, and several worn pages were ripped. Shaun and I placed our orders and soon surrounded his bible with coffee and cinnamon rolls.

Shaun McMichael has been with Pongo for three years, from his final years at Seattle Pacific University, a Christian university, to his first full-time job, working as a counselor at a residential psychiatric facility for adolescents.

Shaun is one of a fantastic group of Pongo volunteers. And because I’m interested in ideas, I set up this meeting to ask him how his beliefs, different from my own, have informed his work with Pongo. Through Pongo, Shaun has facilitated poetry about trauma from youth in foster care and in the state psychiatric hospital. Here’s a poem that Shaun facilitated with a youth in transition out of foster care. Shaun later put the poem to music to sing at the young man’s poetry assembly.

Afraid of Being Inside the House with Strangers
by a young man transitioning out of foster care, age 17

I’m in a crowd.
It’s confusing to tell who’s who;
They look like strangers.
I don’t know how to feel
With that many people in one room —
Scared, unsure of what
To do except hide.
They look at me
Like I did something suspicious,
Like I blew up a house.
I want to take
My skateboard and ride as far
As I can
And hope nobody sees me.

I do it.
Once I leave, I feel free —
Happy, not afraid.
The roads are dark,
And rainy
And open.
There are people,
But it’s not as crammed
As in that house.
Riding a skateboard
Down a hill —
It’s like a first time
Riding a bike,
That rush of wind
Feels so good
But not as crammed
As in that house
Where there’s no wind.

*****
At the coffee shop I learned that, relevant to his work with Pongo, Shaun’s Christian faith is expressed through love, imagination, and revelation…

For Shaun, love means comforting the poor in spirit, and is well expressed by listening to suffering kids, within a safe and caring relationship. As someone who has worked with adolescents in a therapeutic setting, Shaun understands that love is also a complicated gift that may require adult skills of patience, encouragement, and limit-setting.

Imagination enables Shaun to understand the metaphors of religious teaching. Imagination also helps Shaun to teach metaphor to suffering kids, as a resource for their creative insight. For example, Shaun describes a young author who wrote about Pokemon, and who eventually expressed a wish to use Pokemon powers to bring back the mother who had abandoned him. Like love, imagination can be a challenge as well, where a caregiver is challenged to imagine that a struggling individual is only a blink away from a breakthrough in her healing.

Shaun thinks of revelation in the broad sense of an unveiling. Revelation is the capacity to expose a truth that is elusive, difficult, or even painfully obvious. In this sense, revelation is a natural outcome of honest creative expression, and is the goal of Shaun’s personal writing. For Pongo’s authors, revelation through writing is a step on their path to healing.

I came away from our conversation appreciating that Christianity is a solid and unwavering framework for Shaun’s life, and that within that framework Shaun challenges himself actively and with humility. He looks within his own heart as he explores and commits to religious teaching. Shaun’s principles are unified by a desire to do good through service and to creatively seek the truth. He aspires to live his principles in every aspect of his life, while he is not comfortable, complacent, or self-satisfied. I’m grateful that he brought this effort to Pongo.

Though Pongo is completely focused on the youth in our program, there have been a few surprising times when the teens have taken care of me. I appreciate it, but I also think it shows a talent in them.

I remember working with a young man in juvenile detention who was gang involved. He wrote about feeling forced to be a man, in the gang way, by carrying a gun on the streets and dealing drugs. He wrote about not knowing any other life. On a deeper level, he wrote about not having a dad, about struggles with loneliness.  He had been suspicious of the writing at first, and we talked for a long time before we began. But when we were done, as he was leaving, he turned to me and said, “It’s very nice of you, sir, to take your time to help young people.”

Once I was leading a poetry workshop with a large group of youth at the state psychiatric hospital. After a nice beginning, they wanted to move on from the writing activities that I had brought. They wanted to write on their own, about issues that were very much on their minds. They worked quietly. And as they finished I would call individuals forward to read. While each person read, the other youth would pause, listen, and applaud, and then continue with their own work. Though I rarely become emotional while working with kids, the writing in this session was so poignant, dealing with suicidal feelings, that I started to cry. The group was calm and quiet, and one teen walked to the back of the room to get me a box of tissues. And we carried on.

It’s stating the obvious to talk about distressed teens and their ability to care. I don’t want my words to have the opposite effect from what I intend, by implying that this caring is special. A very powerful theme in the writing of abused and neglected teens, for example, is the suffering of their siblings. It’s just that, amidst the distractions that can occur in relationships between adults and youth, I find it useful to remind myself sometimes that teens’ ability to care is a source of their resilience and a foundation for good dialogue.

I remember six years ago in juvenile detention when I was introducing Pongo to a group. A young man who had previously worked with Pongo was enthusiastically describing his own writing skill and his expectation of becoming a rich and successful poet. I tried to explain that people don’t get rich from poetry, that poetry is a great way to help yourself and others. The young man insisted he would become famous, and rich. I was in some kind of mood that day, and I humorlessly persisted in saying no. I persisted. Finally I explained, as an illustration, that poetry had always been important to me, but that I had just published my first book of poetry, and I was 55.

The detention teens got excited in a way I didn’t expect. “You just published a book. Good for you!” They applauded me. “Good for you!”

Recently a friend told me that her father had sexually abused her as a child, and later she said, “But of course I still love him.”

And it was hard for me to appreciate the inevitability of that love.

Many victims of childhood abuse maintain relationships with their abusers, as well as with the enablers of that abuse. Personally, I want to be angry at the people who have hurt me, though I can’t always. And when I don’t reject the people who have hurt me, I don’t like myself. There is a certain limbo in which some of us find ourselves, where we need connection but don’t trust, where we push away but don’t reject. And we can maintain relationships in that way, though not without a cost.

I think many of us, in addition to Pongo’s authors, get caught up in that bind.

Like Pongo’s authors, maybe we all struggle unconsciously with losses and desires that make us guarded and ambivalent. (And maybe we all struggle in a way that can make us guarded and ambivalent toward Pongo’s authors themselves.)

The thought I have is this: Even if we don’t have the extremes of suffering of Pongo authors, we still have our kernel of human sorrow that needs to be recognized. As adults, without thinking about it, don’t we yearn for the child-like ideal of support, comfort, and specialness? As adults, life challenges us to survive, develop, and assume responsibility, in obscurity. Honestly, if we relax and contemplate, isn’t it natural to feel some alienation in our adult roles? And aren’t most of us alienated by our own mortality?

On the other hand, as poetry shows us, the recognition of our shared vulnerability offers us relief, if we bravely accept our own vulnerable state.

So, Pongo’s authors are terribly important companions. Their deep suffering makes them forerunners on profound philosophical issues. They help everyone to understand essential struggles of loss, love, and ambivalence in life. Our empathy for them, and for one another, is our opportunity for healing.

*****
I just put some poems on this web site from Pongo’s recent project in juvenile detention. Here is one of them…

Ice Cream Man
by a young woman in juvenile detention, age 16

I just thought you should know
that sometimes I’m afraid of you
I don’t mind you rep’ing the gangs
but sometimes when I look into your eyes
I see violence against me
I see violence against your grandma
and it hurts me inside

I just thought you should know
I want to work in here someday
helping kids that went through what I went through
help them understand why I ran away from home
because my parents beat me
because the stress in my life made me do something stupid
I was the girl who stopped going to school
I was the girl who stopped listening to her parents
who started drinking and smoking

I just thought you should know
that one side of me wants to be with you
                                       and one side of me does not
and the side that does not is confused
feels like a lost sheep

I just thought you should know
I see myself with a happy family
in a park, Oakland, CA, eating barbecued lamb
next to the swimming pool while dads play tennis
and moms talk and serve food
and all the Tongan people speak to the ice cream man

I just thought you should know
I’m tired of seeing what people do on the streets
and I’m tired of being a part of it

I just thought you should know
I want to say hello again to the ice cream man

Writing poetry can be an unexpected good. And for people in distress, isn’t it wonderful that the world contains unexpected good. When Pongo had its finale at the psych hospital on March 22, the teens were happy and excited to read their work, which was often about loss, anger, and self-destructive feelings. Yet poetry made the young people feel better.

People who have suffered the deepest losses may suffer a cascading series of tragedies, from abuse and neglect in childhood to rape, drug addiction, illness, being a survivor of a violent death. People in distress can also make poor choices that add to their losses.

But what difference does writing poetry make after life-altering tragedy? What is this unexpected good?

There are several features of the good. One feature is that poetry writing objectifies experience. There is a transformative moment in which people can see that something terrible has happened to them – but with more clarity and without an obliterating sense of shame. A second feature of this good is that writing is a communal and affecting experience. There is a transformative moment in which people recognize that their vulnerability is shared. In this second transformation, listeners participate as well as writers.

These thoughts provide the context for announcing Pongo’s first winner of the Pongo Poetry Prize. It is a poem about sex addiction. I value the author’s writing and her openness on a very personal but very human topic. This poem was written on the Pongo web site using the activity Addicted.

Addicted
by a young woman, age 16 

I am addicted.
I am addicted to Sex.
In my addiction, my life is filled with only thinking about sex.
In my addiction, I am glad to feel loved and needed.

I am addicted.
I am addicted to Sex.
In my addiction, I hate to think about that they don’t really love me.
In my addiction, the real me becomes hidden and ignored.

I am addicted.
I am addicted to Sex.
In my addiction, betrayals of myself come in the form of moaning and scratches.
In my addiction, I struggle to feel real.

I am addicted.
I am addicted to Sex.
In my addition, I am hiding my true needing of LOVE.
In my addiction, I’m in a constant battle with myself.

I am addicted.


The Pongo Poetry Prize is presented quarterly to a poem submitted on our web site by a young person. There is a $50 award. Please encourage young authors to submit their creative work! You may click on the following links to read this quarter’s Honorable Mention poems, as well.

The Sick Boy
Emotions Lost in a Musician's Fingertips
Thanks to Mom (Stings Like an Eel)