Hurting young men put pen to rage

"Don't ask me to write again," he snapped at me one night. "I don't write. It's a mistake I'm in here. My lawyer is going to get me out. Next week, I won't be here. It's a mistake."

The day before, there had been another newspaper article about Frank. The evidence against him was solid. The prosecutor had gotten his way. Frank would be spending at least a year in the hall before his trial. Then, he would be tried and sentenced as an adult.

For several sessions after that, I didn't see him at all. Staff had their reasons for locking him down in his room: He wasn't following the rules, wasn't getting along with the other kids. He mad-dogged everyone, went off at the slightest provocation. He drained the already weary staff of energy and humor. The details of his crime and of his life had leaked out and the other young men were using them against him.

Whenever Frank was out of his room, they taunted him. They began writing poems with thinly veiled references to his shocking life. Of course, I refused to publish them. In Frank, the white, black and brown kids had found an equal opportunity scapegoat.

"I feel bad and everything, but it's chaos when he's around," one staffer, a particularly caring and patient woman, told me. "But he brings a lot of this on himself. I've never met one like him. The other kids, I always see hope. There's a sweetness in them. Frank's different. He's a really scary kid."

A couple of weeks ago, as I was walking across the basketball court into the workshop room, I heard a voice calling me: "Hey, you. Writer lady." I followed the voice to a barred window. I couldn't see him, could only hear him. "I wrote a poem. Read it. Tell me if it'll get in the paper."

Staff allowed Frank to slip the poem under his door and I felt his eyes through the small window as I was reading it. It was jarring, raw, even by juvenile hall standards. "Do you understand?" he asked. "Do you know what I'm writing about?"

I didn't and I did. Taken as a whole, the poem didn't make a lot of sense, but individual phrases -- "luxurious darkness," "untrusting fear," "suffering into emptiness" -- held so much pain that I felt my eyes brim with tears.

Last week when I got to the hall, I was eager to show Frank that his poem had made it to print. Staff wasn't sure I should be allowed to talk to him. For the past few hours, he had been screaming and pounding at the door. The medical staff had placed him on suicide watch. It was a really bad week, a staffer told me. "He's really melting down."

They finally agreed to let me see him because he knew it was Friday night and he had been asking for me. When they unlocked his door, I felt myself recoil involuntarily. Frank was shirtless and folded into a fetal position, his tattoo of a dagger bold on his arm. He was sobbing uncontrollably like only little kids can sob. He was rubbing his eyes with hands that were black and blue, swollen from trying to punch his way out of his room. "Take them! Take all of them!"

Sheets of paper were scattered everywhere.

"Poems! I can write poems all day!"

I felt limp and useless in the face of such misery. I sat on the cement floor of his small room and silently gathered up the papers. It was something to do. I noticed I was holding them gently, as if they would fall apart or explode at the slightest breeze. There were a dozen of them, many decorated with montages of photos clipped from magazines. Pictures of wounded children, a menagerie of skulls, missiles and bombs exploding.

Next to a picture of a man being shot, Frank had written: "This is my thought. A guy getting shot. He must be happy. No more worries." On another paper: "Today, I hope I don't hurt the staff. All I want to do is make them laugh." Next to a picture of a mushroom cloud: "This is my mind in a riot. With all my anger, I shut out the quiet. Why?"

"Why do you do this?" he blurted at me.

"Do what?"

"Write. Why do you tell me to write? I write and it's still there. The pain is still there. Fear! It doesn't go away. What good does writing do?"

That is the question, isn't it? I thought of all the answers that I have given to other kids who have asked this same question, the answer to why I am here on Friday nights. I thought of the answers that I give myself when I wonder why I am spending a good part of my life in front of a keyboard.

I could have told Frank that writing can help sort through the chaos of your own mind. It can bring order to a world that so often feels like it is whirling out of control. I could have told him that in writing, you can be as angry as you want, full of hatred that goes inward and outward. It's better not to hate so much, but if you have to hate, go ahead and hate on paper. Paper doesn't bleed.

I could have told him that writing is a way to say to the world: I exist. And everything I feel, you have felt to some degree at some time in your life. I could have said writing makes you not so alone.

But none of these were the answer that Frank was so desperate to hear. He wanted his writing to save him, to release him immediately. I know that it is possible, but there are no guarantees. He would need to make the leap from ranting to truly writing, from blasting outward to looking inward. It was not time to tell him that he would need more time and that he would feel more pain and more fear.

I didn't know what to say. So that's what I said. "I don't know why you should keep writing. I just know it's what you have right now. So keep writing."

He didn't say anything. He watched me make his papers into a neat pile. "You'll read them?" he asked.

"I'll read them," I said. "And I'll see you next week."

• View blog reactions