Thank you for visiting.

I hope the following poem will do as good a job as any essay of revealing,
at least for now, my motivation for founding The Teacher's Voice.

Andrés Castro, Managing Editor

                  

Genesis: Silent Metropolis to Matrix

                                                                                                "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times 
                                                                                                   of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." ~ Dante Alighieri.

 

In the recommendation my poet professor gave me,

poverty euphemized into humble beginnings.

His kind intentions helped land the job and yet...

humble beginnings makes poverty sound so sweet:

like chocolates or chewy caramel covered candies.

Give me a box of those assorted humble beginnings;

cut me a slice of that humble pie while you’re at it.

Pay for it? Sure, have a pocket-full of notes right here. 

Sweet adolescent years on Longfellow Ave & Freeman Street,

midnight-run-for-your-life from apocalyptic Bronx ruins,

made presidential photo opps for Reagan Carter campaigns,

were an open-mouthed dive into humble beginnings.

 

Neighborhood high school a poisonous riddle in `72,

my past of gifted child classes then ambition disappeared

behind its muddy red doors. Rushed twisted & turned

bell-to-bell one more mouse in the maze, my American

dream shrank down to that cog; if only the bravest voices

from the 60's weren't dead, wounded, or missing in action.

 

After September eleventh as my country went mad,

I walked through those muddy red doors again—

a  teacher—into no Welcome Back Kotter sit-com.

After decades of building prisons over schools,

near the block of Diallo’s forty-one bullet shower,

the façade of my high school remained standing.

Students squeeze to single file through metal detecting arches:

infantilized quotas now or later spit out prepared for no more

than to work under giant golden ones—McDaddy loves us:

prays we never know where our food really comes from.

Tradition demands we blame the victims first,

so here goes: Today’s youth has no respect for authority,

no morals, no parents worth mentioning, no self-respect,

no connection to the past, no investment in the future,

they can’t speak proper English for God’s sake,

invading hoards of illegals can't speak English at all!

OooRah! Let's build The Great North South Wall of America!

Let's reach back to the good ole days where everyone knew

their place was due to the yellow, brown, black of their skin

and the science that proved only one race is designed to rule.



Say it with me children: Empire.

The Great Pyramid Scheme goes on.



Thank you Rod Serling and Star Trek but resistance is 

futile: I was born to conform and have been assimilated.

Thank you Orwell but invest in surveillance cameras.

Silent celluloid Metropolis to computer generated Matrix,

Moloch the Machine has won; sweet Jesus, Neo has been

warped, and the Anti-Christs are multiplying exponentially;

and the Ever Readys, indeed, do finally wear out.



Two days after leaving our New Department of Ed in `04,

one of the rabble who roused wrote the following poem:

Resignation

 

It’s a cool overcast morning.

     I see the great tree outside

my third floor window

     as I type this sentence.

 

A little tribe

     of birds is chirping.
 

I need to take some

    practical steps today

and should have started

    earlier this morning,

but slept instead

    then began writing.

When the rain comes

    the branches of this old

friend get heavy.

    One thin new branch bends
close enough towards me

    so I can reach its leaves.

 

Heard rain today

    and remembered:

 

One stormy night,

   when I was all alone,

I touched those leaves
   and cried.

 

   Can you imagine?

 

 

                                           Andrés Castro