Images of hell

AT KING COUNTY Juvenile Detention on First Hill, a 13-year-old named Kevin and a 51-year-old volunteer poet named Richard Gold sit in a classroom, in desks jammed too close together. School is mandatory for every one of the 162 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 who are housed here on the day I visit, but this one-on-one session is no ordinary class.

For the past three years, Richard has come here to help kids write poetry. It's a simple idea, with low overhead. He says he's not so much trying to change the kids—who've been sent here for committing crimes such as drug offenses, violence, and prostitution—as hoping to create a fundamental shift in the way parents, teachers, and judges view young offenders.

"These kids' lives are chaotic," Richard says. "You think they're confident, assertive, aggressive, but basically they are very, very scared. They are heartbroken."

In the classroom, posters of Miles Davis, Che Guevara, and Jimi Hendrix hang on the walls above Richard and Kevin as they work. The room is packed with computers, the result of a recent grant, and a nearby screen saver personalized to read "Tight Stuff" flashes as Richard and Kevin talk.

Kevin is less than five feet tall and wears the detention center uniform, a navy shirt and drawstring trousers.

"Damn, my ass is going to boot camp, one, two, three, one . . . ," Kevin says; soon a judge will decide if he'll be sent to a camp or face more time in detention. He flips nervously through a book of poems by kids in juvey that Richard has given him. "Forty-five days then I'm out. The lawyer said if they took it to trial and lost I was looking at one to two years." Kevin points to one of the poems in the book. "Getting Out the Gang, man, that's right. That's exactly it." As he bends to read it, his face slackens. He looks like any little boy reading a school assignment.

"Images from your life, then," Richard says to Kevin to recapture his attention. He has only 50 minutes with the boy. Richard likes to create an entire poem per session. He then types the poems at the detention center library. Three copies goes to the child and one remains in Richard's files to be considered for publication.

"What comes to your mind when I say that, images from your life?"

"The first time I was arrested, they came to my house 20 cops deep," Kevin says. "I come out with a knife. Ooooo, they were about ready to shoot the hell out of me. That's a mistake I'll never make again—never seen so many guns pointed at my head." (Richard declines to let me ask what Kevin's crime was; he wants the kids to be taken at face value.)

Richard writes furiously. He has learned the power of dictation. He provides the structure—line breaks, stanzas—on which the kids can hang their feelings. "OK, now shut that one down. We need a different image, something else important in your life."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, something about your family."

"I'm a criminal."

Richard hesitates. "I'm not hearing you're a criminal," he says slowly. "I'm hearing your life is hell."

"You got that right."

"So let's call this, not images of life," Richard scratches out the title he has written in his notebook. "But Images of Hell."

Images of Hell

The first time I got arrested
They must've come about 20 cars deep
Stupid me,
Why'd I go outside
With a knife
That's a mistake
I'll never make again
All those guns pointed at my head
Guns coming
From every direction

The session continues. Richard has to keep pulling back Kevin's attention, but they work well together. Some of the kids prefer to rap rather than write poetry, and some are very good, Richard says, but that isn't what he's trying to accomplish. He says it's blowing smoke, and he's trying to clear the smoke to get to the cinders.

Kevin talks about an ass-whipping he got once. He says his "booty cheeks were all red." He cannot believe Richard writes this down word for word and stands up to watch him do so.

The first time I got
Kicked out of school
I didn't want to go home
Cause when they called my grandma
All I heard was screaming and yelling
My uncle came to school
I got an ass-whipping
Ice would not make it better
My butt was hot
Booty cheeks all red

After spending the last three years working behind locked doors, Richard is now determined to get the story of these kids out to the public. He self-publishes the teens' poetry in paperback journals through his own company, Pongo Publishing. He sends the books to judges, teachers, libraries. This year, he'll set up a stall at Bumbershoot and sell them.

"Teens in general are not being heard," Richard explains. "It's especially a problem that these teens feel like they don't have a voice. The way I serve them is not by giving advice. I take dictation and just let them express their emotions."