Thank you for visiting.
Choosing poetry over prose, I hope the following will do as good a job as any essay of revealing, at least for now, my personal motivation for launching The Teacher's Voice.
Andrés Castro, Founder & Managing Editor
Genesis Poem: Silent Metropolis to Matrix
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 a chocolate or chewy caramel covered candy.
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 poverty 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.
Nearby high school a poisonous riddle in `72,
my past of gifted child classes, my ambition
disappeared behind its muddy red doors. Rushed
twisted & turned bell-to-bell like a mouse through
a maze, my American dream shrank down to a cog –
the most righteous brave voices from the 60’s gone.
After September eleventh as my country went mad,
I walked through those muddy red doors again—
a teacher—in no Welcome Back Kotter sit-com.
After decades of building prisons over schools,
near Diallo’s cold forty-one bullet blood shower,
the façade of a high school remained standing.
Students crowd to single file through metal detecting arches,
most sooner or later spit out prepared for little more
than to work under giant golden ones—McDaddy loves us
and 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
there place was due to the yellow, brown, black of their skin
and all 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, sooner or later, do run out.