Associated Press

MACON, Ga. - A 16-year-old high school student was suspended for several days after he wrote violent poems with titles like "Twisted Revenge."

Matt Kinsey of Rutland High School showed his poetry journal to a teacher on Nov. 11, and the teacher took the journal to administrators, who sent Kinsey and his younger brother home after reading the poems. The boys had to sign a nonviolence pledge Wednesday to return to school.

School officials wouldn't comment on the suspension, citing student privacy laws. Kinsey and his parents shared the story, and the poems, with The Macon Telegraph.

Kinsey told the newspaper that his dark, brooding poetry was seen as an implicit threat to school safety.

"They just overreacted to it," he said. "It's dramatic representations of non-existent situations."

Kinsey said he was questioned on his thoughts about murder, suicide and Columbine, the Colorado school massacre in which 12 students and a teacher were killed.

Matt Kinsey's younger brother, Killian Kinsey, also was sent home. Two days before, 14-year-old Killian had drawn attention with a comment he made in class after he went to the office to call home sick, said his mother, Melissa Holland.

When Killian Kinsey returned, another student told him, "You look like you're about to kill somebody," Holland said. Then, they said Killian Kinsey replied, "Well, it would relieve some stress."

Copies of Matt's poems, given to The Telegraph, refer to blood and death. One line of the poem that Matt said upset a teacher reads, "Now I got back at them/This they soon will see." Neither school nor students are explicitly mentioned.

To return to school, the brothers signed behavior contracts Wednesday barring them from "communication that pertains to causing harm to myself or others" or discussing "acts of a violent nature that will cause another individual to feel unsafe or threatened in any way."