Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XL)

I was awoken this morning by screams from the street. A woman moans. She wants to go home. She calls to her mother, “I want to go home.” What terrors beset her? Why is she crying? She wants to go home.

Is silence an option? Will words respond to the ways and woes of the world?

In 1986, the Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players rushed into print many instant publications. My week was scheduled so that I visited a different social service agency each day. On Tuesdays I visited Educational Alliance’s Project Contact. At the time, it was housed in a large loft on Lafayette Street near Astor Place. Students came for outpatient substance abuse treatment, high school classes and counseling.

The Waterways Project was offered as part of the public school's Offsite Educational Services’ arts and literacy initiatives. It also fit with Project Contact’s multi-disciplinary approach to treatment. Pity, fears and joys were expressed in lines of poetry.

From Contact Charisma (1986)
Broken Dreams by Robbi

Dreams are a part of the future, past and present.
The past sets off pain and feelings that are sent.
They are thoughts of broken dreams.
The winds of love say, “I’ll dress you in the morn,
so you can conquer life
and all its strife.
I’ll rest you in the evening,
so that things are good
and done right.
I’ll quench you with with love,
so you never have to thirst again.”
But, I have struggled with strife.
I was dressed in mistrust and deception.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
I pleaded, “Wind why do you do me so?
I thought we were a team?”
The wind did not answer.
I turned and walked. I knew
it was just another broken dream.

Students published pieces to help their peers address past traumas and cope with the present:

“Father, do you see what I am going through?
Sometimes it is hard to say how I feel about you.
The boy in me still feels the pain; the trouble you have caused...
There is no one to blame.”

“Come to me with eyes most discerning.
Acknowledge what has happened.
Don’t lose sight of lessons past.
Don’t allow negative distracting thoughts to last.”

Students wrote computer pen pal letters to students in other programs.

“My hobbies are girls, basketball, bicycle riding, and partying.”

“I just finished going hysterical, because I never knew a person who would like poems. Being that I come from Brooklyn, you don’t normally hear things like that. You know what I mean? I really would like to see one of your poems; and in turn I will show you a couple of my own.”