PONGO POETRY | Cutting Myself Off From the Outside World

Pongo Poetry Project’s mission is to engage youth in writing poetry to inspire healing and growth. For over 20 years, Pongo has mentored poetry with youth at the Clark Children & Family Justice Center (CCFJC), King County’s juvenile detention facility.

Many CCFJC residents are youth of color who have endured traumatic experiences in the form of abuse, neglect, and exposure to violence. These incidents have been caused and exacerbated by community disinvestment, systemic racism, and other forms of institutional oppression. In collaboration with CCFJC staff, Pongo poetry writing offers CCFJC youth a vehicle for self-discovery and creative expression that inspires recovery and healing.

Through this special monthly column in partnership with the South Seattle Emerald, Pongo invites readers to bear witness to the pain, resilience, and creative capacity of youth whose voices and perspectives are too often relegated to the periphery. To learn more about Pongo’s work of inspiring healing and relief among youth coping with mental and emotional turmoil, register for its December poetry reading.

by a young person at CCFJC

I feel like I’ve fallen through a portal
going through things
I already went through in the past
Court stressing me out again
Wanting to get out again
It just feels like a repeat

People keep coming in
and getting out around me
Peers always getting in trouble
messing up the program
it’s like that everywhere
but it’s something I still can’t
get used to

I’ve been on good behavior
it just feels like it’s not paying off
I play the background
like keeping my nose clean
and doing what’s asked of me
hoping somehow, some way
it’ll help me in court
but maybe it’s just wishful thinking

I wish the court doesn’t give me
a lot of extra time
I wish I get out next year
I wish everybody around me
wanted to help me succeed

I’d feel there’s nothing in this world
I couldn’t do
but the only person I knew
who wanted me to succeed
isn’t here anymore

I wish I could bring him back

by a young person at CCFJC

I fall into a dream
I’m home
things keep switching up
In my dream it feels like it’s real
me being home
seeing my little brothers and my sister and my mom
when I blink, I wake up
and it’s not real
and I fall back asleep
and it starts all over
sitting on the couch
looking at my sister play
with a little phone toy
I blink in my dream and I wake up
then I fall back asleep
sometimes I end up in the same dream
sometimes I’m at my house
and I walk out a door
and it’s a whole different house
the dream goes on, then I wake up
and it’s already morning.

by a young person at CCFJC

I like to cut myself off from the outside world sometimes
main reason is when I think about stuff that goes on out there
Birthday parties and stuff, I feel like I’m missing out
Cutting myself off helps me cope with things in here.

Time goes by slower if I know everything that goes on out there.
I lose sleep over it.

Family birthday party, seeing my little cousins, aunts, uncles.
Missing out on a lot of fun.
Usually there would be a bouncy house that I’d get on with the little kids.
I would lay down and push my little cousin with my feet
He’d go flying across the bouncy house.

Time goes by slower if I know everything that goes on out there.
I lose sleep over it.

Missing out on my family having fun out there.
We would go to the lake, to the Yakima River.
Sometimes we’d bring an ice chest with sandwiches
Meet up with other families.

Time goes by slower if I know everything that goes on out there.
I lose sleep over it.

Some family from my mom’s side that would always come over and party.
Even when there wasn’t anything going on
It wouldn’t start out that way but at the end it would always look like a party.
They wouldn’t leave until three in the morning.
After one of my uncles died, they came over almost every day.
Sometimes it would be a sad thing when they’d listen to music
But mostly I remember how somebody dying would bring the family together.

Time goes by slower if I know everything that goes on out there.
I lose sleep over it.