rescue

Photo by Sonny Sixteen on Pexels

rescue these teachers
from flushing all their lessons
down the toilet,
in their bathrooms of
boring old outdated instruction…
what? you heard me,
these textbooks
won’t read themselves
get to it, now — 
take the chalk now, child,
and solve these little complicated
math equations before
the bell rings, before the birds sing,
before your time is all up,
it’s 1995 and we still need
someone’s little hands to clap
the erasers outside, in the schoolyard,
and the machine in the
janitor’s closet that sucks
out all the dust that won’t clap out,
well, it kinda smells like disgusting must,
it’s catholic school, and the priests
are all listening to football on the radio
and the wine tastes kind of sour
when you steal a sip, but the host tastes good
and father so-and-so has a funny accent,
but he’s the best one, he makes people laugh
and spelling is kind of hard, but you’re smart
so you last till the end in the spelling bees
and you also get the Mensa question like
all the time and the other kids are jealous
because you solve these mind-boggling riddles
and get to eat a lollypop from the teacher’s stash
and you get all the vocab questions right
because you’re a little writer in the making,
yes, and your little heart is always quaking
with fear and anxiety because you don’t like
doing book reports while standing in front
of a class full of crusty idiot boys and girls
who are all going to be sales reps and managers
and front desk attendants at hotels
and mechanical engineers and office workers
for box companies and shit like that,
at least the library is quiet and the computer
teacher lets you play those fun games
on the old Macintosh, and you also like
to mess around in Paint, because you’re
a creative little fiend, and the book fair
is next week, and that’s something to look
forward to, so don’t forget to ask your mom
for a little extra money to spend on a little
window to another world
where things and people are so much more
interesting than all of what’s going on around you

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Garbage Notes:

This is part recollection of my days attending Catholic elementary school in the 90s, back in good old New Jersey. And also it’s part general commentary on the limitations of the modern education system.

I think most kids don’t want to be there. They’d rather learn in other ways. Maybe more hands-on. Maybe doing their own thing. Be independent. I don’t know. Everyone’s different. Everyone learns in unique ways. But our rigid systems tend to squeeze all the uniqueness out of people. And there’s not enough emphasis on creativity. All the focus is on how to get a job and be a good follower.

I actually liked school, though. But mostly for the learning part—and the books. They offered a nice escape from reality. I didn’t actually like the whole being there part. I liked sorta daydreaming, you know?

I didn’t enjoy waking up early like a good little soldier. I didn’t like standing in line and having assigned seats and wearing a stiff uniform. I hated the gossip and the teasing. It bothered me how loud and obnoxious all the other kids were. And get this: I actually was convinced there was something wrong with me because I enjoyed peace and quiet. Because I wasn’t as “outgoing” as everyone else.

I know better now.

I did well in school—got good grades for the most part. But that’s only because most of it came easy to me. Because their way of quantifying intelligence was roughly in the same ballpark as where mine fell. But you’re a fool if you think academic tests measure every kind of intelligence.

Certainly, I had my weaknesses. I was always pretty shitty at math. I remember I bombed a math exam so hard I actually cried, and the teacher was like what’s the matter? And I was just like, I don’t know any of this. And she just looked at me without a clue about what to say.

I suppose it could have been worse. I look back on it now and think about how there were some kids who failed all the subjects. All the exams. Some kids stopped going. Other kids got kicked out. Drop-outs abound. That’s life. But people find other ways to survive. Humans are resilient like that. Doing well in school isn’t everything. There are many paths to success.

We live in an absurd world where education itself is kind of an empty promise. There’s not enough training on how to be an actual adult. And there’s even less fostering of the creative mind. Everyone around me at a young age dissuaded me from artistic pursuits. I was always (subtly, invisibly) nudged in the direction of more pragmatic topics.

And look what happened. I intentionally chose to stay in school for, like, EVER, and look at all the good it did me. I ended up a lost poet. I’m not rich. I post stuff on Substack and pray that people send me money. Pray… haha, I suppose that’s another thing they taught me.

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Franco Amati 2025

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