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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

The Poets of YTC

by

20120205

"If you want to get girl­friends, you have to be able to write po­et­ry," I told my CXC Eng­lish lan­guage class at the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC). "No, Miss," Kendell laughed. "No, what?" I asked. "Girls don't want boys who write po­ems," said Sher­win and Ash­ton. "Girls want guys who have mon­ey and things to give them," they said. "Girls want clothes and cell phones. Nice things. Lots of things." I knew they would say this be­cause al­most all of my stu­dents had writ­ten about the pres­sures they had felt to come up with lav­ish gifts for girls when they were out­side of the in­sti­tu­tion.

The more I talked about writ­ing po­et­ry, the more many of my stu­dents laughed ner­vous­ly. Kevon, al­ways will­ing to try any­thing, lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly and beamed one of those "I'll sup­port you, Miss" smiles. Of course he couldn't ad­mit to that. Olton, al­ways op­ti­mistic, was game for the chal­lenge. Marc loves to write so he was more than will­ing to tack­le po­et­ry. I was al­ways re­luc­tant to push my stu­dents to emo­tion­al ex­tremes, but I was adamant about giv­ing po­et­ry a try. "Clear­ly, you are not meet­ing the right type of girls," I said. "The girls I know would love to have po­ems writ­ten for them. That's the type of girl you have to look for when you get out of here." That was sober­ing thought.

Writ­ing po­et­ry is not my forte, so I asked Mervyn Tay­lor to teach that les­son. Mervyn is a re­tired Eng­lish teacher who taught in chal­leng­ing New York schools. He has pub­lished sev­er­al books of po­et­ry, and he's one of my favourite po­ets. The "lads" were sub­dued and guard­ed when Mervyn came to class. Ja­mai had sent a mes­sage he was sick, and he wasn't com­ing to class. I sent a mes­sage back that I would come in­side their "dorms" and get him. Re­luc­tant­ly, Jah­mai came, but he would not look at me for the en­tire class. Sher­win turned away from Mervyn for the en­tire class. I de­cid­ed not to push him. Kheelon kept chew­ing on the in­side of his mouth and glanc­ing at me. Kheelon had se­cret­ly con­fessed that he want­ed to write po­et­ry be­cause he had been read­ing a book of Tu­pac Shakur's lyrics. They all warmed up to po­et­ry when Mervyn told them to write an erot­ic po­em "but it can't be vul­gar or ex­plic­it," he said. "You have to cap­ture love with­out be­ing graph­ic." Then, they had to write po­ems about home. Here are three of the po­ems I col­lect­ed on that day:

I met her once

I met her once

By a store watch­ing a pair of shoes,

"Good af­ter­noon" I greet­ed,

"Hi" she replied,

My heart raced

She an­swered, she did.

"Are you buy­ing those?

"Nah I just eye­ing them;

"They're nice, huh?"

"Yeah. They would look good with

my dress."

"White dress?"

"Ba­by blue"

"Cool"

We hit if off,

Names ex­changed;

Num­bers passed

Now I'm here

3 months, 7 days af­ter.

She's look­ing at me writ­ing

"That your di­ary?" she asked.

"Yeah" I replied

"Write down it was fan­tas­tic."

It was fan­tas­tic!

I met her once,

I loved her ever since.

Marc

Heav­en

The bright paint on the walls,

Over­pow­ers your sense of time

In­side the walls, Christ­mas nev­er ends

The pic­tures on the walls are no strangers,

There is a new one that rep­re­sents

some­one vul­ner­a­ble to dan­ger

The spir­its of the peo­ple are like cats,

pleas­ant, but in­no­cent­ly mis­chie­vous.

The queen in this place is the one who does all the

hard work; she wash­es and cooks and sees

about us all, she is wor­shipped and adored,

Pic­tur­ing a place like this with­out rest,

gives the im­pres­sion that here will be tir­ing

But here you can find com­fort­able rest.

The rooms are warm, and the beds are cozy

In this heav­en,

so just like kings and queens, we sleep roy­al­ly.

In the morn­ing, noon and night, any

hunger can be sat­is­fied. With food of all kinds,

com­ing from a place smelling like a bak­ery

and fine restau­rants com­bined.

Wel­come to my home.

Jah­mai

I live

I live in a place

That has 2 lifestyles

The gang­ster life where

They rob and kill peo­ple

And the good life

Where peo­ple care and love each oth­er

A place where you can hear the breeze pass­ing by

And smell an un­known per­son's meal

from right around the cor­ner

Church choirs sing loud un­til heav­en comes down

Dif­fer­ent av­enues and dif­fer­ent streets

Where ca­reers build and tal­ents soar

You will bounce in­to those

Whose lives are like a blank, crum­pled up pa­per

Wait­ing to be dis­card­ed

You may have heard the name be­fore

But not what's in it

On­ly I know be­cause that's where I live

Sweet Mal­abar

Olton

When class end­ed, they smiled-a dif­fer­ent smile from the ini­tial ner­vous ones. These smiles con­veyed re­lief and the hap­pi­ness that comes from reach­ing deep in­side and dis­cov­er­ing some­thing new-like love or the mean­ing of home.

Next week: An out­ing gone awry changes how my stu­dents and I feel about each oth­er, and on Feb­ru­ary 28, the shock­ing and sur­pris­ing CXC re­sults.


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