Examples of work by young people from creative magazines produced at Trafford Youth Offending Services

 

Behind the Lines

Behind the newspaper lines about me

Is an all right person

If you read the paper

You would think I was a little bastard

Not the type of person to be near

 

Behind the lines that make people frightened of me

Is someone being paid to say that 

 

Behind the ASBO

There are places that I would like to go

But that ASBO stops me

From going where I always go

Takes some of my freedom from me

 

Why doesn't the paper write anything good about people?

They always print the bad stuff about every one   

Jason, sixteen.   

Face To Face

How would you like it if ya dad died in the local shop

Knowing every day ya got to walk that way

Knowing it every step of the way

Looking at the flat where he died

Knowing he got left outside

With a sign round his neck and a dog bowl

at the side

Piss take the man's gonna die

 

People think they know what it feels like inside

Sarcastic bastards I see it in their eyes

My mother thinks it's one big fucking dream

She thinks one day he'll come back on the scene

If I loose the plot if I get locked away

I wouldn't want me little sister seeing me that way

Me little sister took way

 

My dad died of smack

And people think they can have a laugh

Behind my back

They don't know how to react

Face to face

Lee, seventeen.

Now a Free Man

 

He stood alone by the raging sea

Now knowing that he was free

No longer kept under lock and key

His own man now was he

 

Now knowing that he was free

He stood alone filled with glee

His own man now was he

But he was just one of three

 

He stood alone filled with glee

By the old oak tree

But he was only one of three

When will the others flee?

 

By the old oak tree

Stood but one of three

When will the others flee?

One day he could be just like me

And stand alone and be free.


Aaron, fifteen. 

 

.

 

  


"Obviously there's been a lot of stuff going on in my life and when I can get peace and quiet I can write. In prison they take the mick, they throw your work away. When I was there my Grandad wrote me a poem and sent it in. It was basically saying you have to be a fake when you're in there. You have to be a different person. If you're soft you're going to get what's coming to you. If people got into writing they'd realise. If they wrote it down and read it back to themselves they realise who they really are."

 

Dean, seventeen.