PONGO POETRY: Home Base | South Seattle Emerald

Pongo Poetry Project’s mission is to engage youth in creating poetry to encourage healing and expansion. For more than 20 decades, Pongo has mentored poetry with little ones at the Youngster Research Procedure Heart (CSTC), the only condition-run psychiatric hospital for youth in Washington State. A lot of CSTC youth are coping with intense psychological, behavioral, and mental well being issues. Somewhere around 40{b7726b155559ecb8df5a7b76be8a8eedc6d9273dceed3be216d264102f39a013} of youth get there at CSTC possessing been court docket purchased to get procedure nevertheless, by the close of their continue to be, most youth citizens turn into voluntary individuals. Pongo thinks there is electricity in artistic expression, and articulating one’s discomfort to an empathetic viewers. Through this specific regular column in partnership with the South Seattle Emerald, Pongo invites audience to bear witness to the agony, resilience, and resourceful potential of youth whose voices and views are also usually relegated to the periphery. For an prospect to understand Pongo’s trauma-informed strategies for facilitating personal, therapeutic poetry in your classroom, therapeutic exercise, or local community place, join their coaching on Oct. 23.

At times I Experience LIKE

By a young individual, age 16

In some cases I feel like dying
Mainly because I want the suffering to go absent

Occasionally I experience like employing medications
Simply because it numbs me

Often I sense like thieving
Simply because I can have command

In some cases I feel like purging
Simply because I imagine I’m fat

From time to time I feel like intercourse is enjoy
Mainly because which is what I’ve been told

In some cases I feel like all those people occasionally
consider above me

But I simply cannot permit people occasions consider in excess of me
I have to acquire around me

Dwelling Foundation

By a youthful individual, age 15

The property base of me
is my heart.
My household foundation is wherever
I see every little thing and anyone
and I help all people there
when anyone desires aid.

I’m the best at serving to with
being a great listener
of their struggles.

Struggles under no circumstances conclude,
each individual struggle is distinct.
I inform them that I really do not realize absolutely,
but that I have been by a similar situation.

Discomfort would make us who you are.
Pain does not determine me,
it helps make me more powerful for who I am.
It assists us improve.

YOUR SELF 

by a pupil at CSTC, age 17

This is the area that confirmed me the way.
Equality is All.
The size of your chest, the curves of the entire body,
the ridges, the roughness—do not tell
or define who you are.
You might see other folks and think I want their seems!
I want to be them.
Why do you want the appears to be of somebody you are not?
Continue to keep your everyday living. Live your lifestyle! Lifetime is stunning.
You are gorgeous and appears aren’t us.
The heart is us. The deep emotions some others really do not have.
The power of our will to be us. Use it! Adore it. Like you.
You are you. Really do not be ashamed.
Be on your own. Love on your own, then other folks will observe.
Others will really like you way too.
This place is inside your coronary heart.
This spot is the spot of you.
Everyday living! Preserve hold and reside.

Focused to my instructor.

🎨 Showcased illustration by Alexa Strabuk 譚文曠.

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