from this week in September, 1979 (I was 34)
This Junior High School
Mrs. Affluence swings around the parking lot
and rocks the Lincoln to a halt in the circular drive
Her brow is wrinkled in the sun
Her head is balanced in one hand
whose arm angles at the elbow
to rest upon the window edge
She opens a door across the car lane
Books and kids spill over plush upholstery
They slam the door and she beeps impatience
at a pedestrian mom and her children
from this week in August, 2010 (I was 65)
I’ve been give credit
for the memory of joy
I gave to someone’s son
in a classroom thirty years ago
At one time there must have been
something actual and tangible
that was the object of that joy
I don’t know what it was
and neither does the boy
It has the same value
as a miss-remembered dream
I’ve helped my kids be miserable
by talking about a world and life
I could never deliver
I promised we would make it better
I said their efforts would be rewarded
that they would see justice grow from goodness
that co-operation would replace competition
that radiant beauty would be recognized as truth
Though I myself had known none of that
and should have said so long ago
April 25, 1969 (I was 24)
The most valuable of lessons
teaches the difference between implication
and explication
A teacher conducts a class
(the verb is a good one)
Conductors must be musicians
A decent score is necessary
(the adjective is a poor one)
It takes more to inspire great music
you gotta know how to wave your arms
April 18, 1976 (I was 31)
notes for The Poetry Class, day 39
The period was given over to a tangential topic. I explained
why I hadn’t read the four notebooks I had taken home last night.
I said a friend asked me to accompany him to the Alameda County
Courthouse Lock-up to visit one of the prisoners who was due to be
sent to Death Row, San Quentin. I described the courthouse building,
the disinfectant odor of its polished hallways and the apprehensive
atmosphere of the visiting process. I talked about the elevator ride
to the twelfth floor, the officially courteous guards, steel walls, viewing
slits, cell-like cells, echoes, the tinny sound of the visitor phones. I
told them of the crime of the prisoner I visited –pushing a guy off the
San Mateo Bridge after a drug deal gone bad. I described some of
the other visitors there. I mentioned the victims and the sense of
depression and tragedy. When I asked Rick if he met any prisoners
whose cases he had read about, he pointed out Eldridge Cleaver three
feet away at the next phone. Cleaver leaned over for a look through
our view slit. On his white overalls he had inscribed HELP in marking
pen across his right breast. Rick said many prisoners wrote prison
poetry and he was a captive audience.
April 2, 1969 (I was 24)
The principal walked through the open air patio
in a junior high-school whose architecture will be
remembered in ages hence as a representational type,
mid 20th century public education plant, California-
Ranch. As was his custom whenever he walked across
campus to the Men’s Room or to the teachers’ lunch
room for a coke, he picked up bits of litter from the
walk, from the planters, and deposited the refuse into
a waste container. This particular day he saw a
cigarette butt between the teachers’ room
and the boys’ lavatory. He thought about it, and when
he returned to the office he told his secretary to include
a notice in the daily bulletin headed Teachers Only:
Please be careful when disposing of your cigarette ends,
so students will not see them discarded on the campus
grounds. No other perpetrator occurred to him.
October 24, 1983 (I was 38)
Some Slogans from the bulletin board
of the 8th grade English class:
We are the people our parents warned us about.
Define myself in a word, why that’s absurd.
Illiteracy is nothing to write home about.
To know is to know no no.
The little I know I owe to my ignorance.
I don’t trust him, we’re friends.
The first human to hurl a curse instead of a weapon
founded civilization.
The difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don’t know and I don’t care.
Exact Change!
The vulture flies with carrion luggage.
Anything not prohibited is compulsory.
A physicist is an atom’s way of knowing about atoms.
To think I live so near the sun! It dawned on me this morning.
When my ship comes in I’ll be at the airport!
from this week in September, 2016 (I was 71)
I taught in the same public school for thirty-seven years.
I started there when I was twenty-one and left at fifty-eight.
I took an early buy out.
Most students loved me, most colleagues respected me,
the administration kept me on.
No one served the school for a longer tenure.
When I left I think they named an exit after me.
August, 23,1975 (I was 30)
MVP
The school board is Charlie O. Finley
It gets off by winning cheap
gets off on the concept of ownership
Its his farm and their system
I recognize fiscal responsibility
I understand public service
but I’m a Reggie Jackson or a Catfish Hunter
at fifteen thou a year
Man I fill the house everyday
and it’s a long season
I’m a skilled seasoned veteran
deserving some monetary recognition
Check my career stats
My work is art I’m a student of the game
I go hard in extra innings every day
from this week in July, 2014 (I was 69)
The few times I’ve done day labor
I was underpaid unless hired by a relative
and soon I learned to labor relative to the pay
If you bought my time to bore me
I accepted only because the job needed doing
If the work benefited only you
I never accepted the contract
Never found anyone who could afford me
Teaching was never like that
I often did it for nothing
and that was everything
June 18, 2011 (I was 66)
The world is so designed
to provide little beyond need
that may be gained sans treachery
Gold panned cold from mountain streams
is more surely attained by thievery
Easier to polish an idea than think it
How to be cheated a first lesson learned
to swallow pain in the heat of shame
to know rust is the heart of trust
The teacher teaches how to take
from any with any to give
and to learn our best gift is hunger
June 6, 1968 (I was 23)
Eng. 225 3cr.
The too young professor of English
PhD Stanford
studied cynicism in tweed
now professes Shakespeare polysyllabically
and organically of course
abhors the theatre
and women educators
of both sexes
fluctuates between
Tillyard and G.W. Knight
Flying Dutchman and Newports
and discusses The Winter’s Tale
the night of Bobby Kennedy’s death.
from this week in April, 1969 (I was 24)
One of my students told me his father
thinks I’m a twenty-four year old adolescent. Who
better to teach eighth-graders than an adolescent
with a college education and at least bright enough to
deceive the State Department of Teacher Credentialing?
March 9, 1976 (I was 31)
notes for The 8th Grade Poetry Class, day 19
I told them we had reached a plateau, everything up to now was,
more or less, introduction. We were beginning to push out to new levels
of understanding poetic concepts. I reminded them how many came in
thinking poetry was just writing in rhyme. I compared rhyme to a
carpenter’s hammer, useful, but not the only tool in the box. I stretched
the comparison to other carpentry tools. We talked alliteration, simile,
metaphor and personification. We talked tongue twisters. I made a
distinction between playing with tools and building a house, a bird house.
I asked how many had written in their notebooks in the past week.
Bells rang. A voice over the intercom, “This is a disaster drill.” We
assumed duck and cover position along walls away from windows. We
sat in darkness and listened to the voice tell us what we would do if
this were an earthquake or other disaster. We were told to evacuate
and we assembled outside at our designated area until the all-clear bell. The
disaster was over in eight minutes.
We talked about chaos, eternity, and measuring the universe.
Eventually we got back to Margaret Chilton’s poem “Premonitions.” They
identified metaphors, similes, alliterations and personifications. It did not
take them long to get into the poem nor to appreciate the humor.
Even more slogans from the bulletin board
–posted over my teaching years
I refuse to have a battle of wits
with an unarmed person.
If it don’t make sense
it’ll never make dollars
Children should be beaten once a day
If you don’t know why, they do.
Hug your kids at home
belt them in the car
The hand is quicker than the eye
but only the nose runs
The first human to hurl a curse instead of a weapon
founded civilization
Never fall for a tennis player
to them love means nothing
Keep an open mind
and people will fill it with garbage.
*
HALLOWEEN TREAT! johnkallio.com
Go to AUDIO page, Listen to my rendition of
Aquainted With The Night by Robert Frost
more slogans from the 8th Grade bulletin board
–posted over my teaching years
Give me ambiguity, or give me something else
Time wounds all heels
Truth is the first casualty in any conflict
We are united by our doubts, divided by our convictions
When it comes to helping you some people stop at nothing
A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on
I used to be lost in the shuffle until
I started shuffling along with the lost
Consistency requires you to be
as ignorant today as you were yesterday
I’ve done so much with so little for so long
I can now do anything with nothing.
In communism man feeds upon man
in capitalism it’s the other way around.
HALLOWEEN TRICK OR TREAT?
johnkallio.com Go to AUDIO page,
Listen to my rendition of
Aquainted With The Night by Robert Frost
September 30, 2017 (I was 72)
Back in the day
when I’d write late at night
I thought it would awaken insight
to the noire side its atmosphere and feeling
melancholic melodies played solo
depressive cigarettes and whiskey
to capture an uncertain mood
encountering more than doubt
maelstroms of swirling discontent
with light at a table a roof overhead
and a bed to sleep it off
It was an imagined venture
back when I knew I’d awaken young
energized by the unreality of it all
September 25 –posted over teaching years
Slogans from the 8th Grade Bulletin Board
Brother, can you paradigm?
If you don’t execute ideas, they die.
Only the ephemeral is of lasting value.
Ignorance is the mother of admiration.
Insanity is hereditary. You can get it from your kids.
Does war determine who is right or who is left?
Media…sounds like a convention of spiritualists.
That was Zen, this is Tao.
Half a bubble off plumb
When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional
Reality is the refuge of those who lack imagination.
One man’s karma runs over another man’s dogma.
Eat all that you kill. Love all that you eat.
It is not possible to step into the same river twice.
Water is stationary; earth flows uphill.
That’ll be the day I’ll be skating with the devil!
Never try to teach a pig to sing;
it wastes your time and frustrates the pig
from this week in September, 1979 (I was 34)
This Junior High School
Affluence swings around the parking lot
and rocks to a halt in the circular drive
Her brow is wrinkled in the sun
Her head is balanced in one hand
whose arm angles at the elbow
to rest upon the window edge
She opens a door across the car lane
Books and kids spill over plush upholstery
They slam the door and she beeps impatience
at the pedestrians and their children
from this week of August 7, 2010 (I was 65)
I’ve been given credit
for the memory of joy
I gave to someone’s son
in a classroom thirty years ago
At one time there must have been
something actual and tangible
that was the object of that joy
I don’t know what it was
and neither does the boy
It has the same value
as a miss-remembered dream
I’ve helped my kids be miserable
by talking about a world and life
I could never deliver
I promised we would make it better
I said their efforts would be rewarded
that they would see justice grow from goodness
that co-operation would replace competition
that radiant beauty would be recognized as truth
Though I myself had known none of that
and should have said so long ago
July 27, 2014 (I was 69)
The brief times I’ve done day labor
I was underpaid unless hired by a relative
and soon I learned to labor relative to the pay
If you bought my time to bore me
I accepted because I thought the job needed doing
If the work benefited only you
I never took the contract
Never found anyone who could afford me
Teaching was never like that
I often did it for nothing
and that was everything
