Sunset Bike Ride

There was a bashful moon tonight,
almost full, but a day or two shy of boasting about it.
I went for a bike ride
just before it got dark.

The sun had set.  The street lights had yet to come on.
I rode side streets in my neighborhood to be safe.
My legs had a life life of their own,
they pumped and pumped madly
as if driven by anger  or frustration.

I flew past the McMansions
where God's Elect
sheltered behind their iron gates
(the gate code being Ronald Reagan's B-Day).

 As I streaked by,
blackbirds  tutted and flew into the trees.
I heard a cricket sing and then crickets joined in chorus.
Terriers yapped, their owners oblivious to their warnings.

Twenty-six minutes later I was home.
As I reached my house
an  ice cream truck played "Music Box Dancer,"
like a tocsin for the end of the day.

I was home marveling at the madness
that had gripped part of my body,
trying to understand why I had done
 what I had just done.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Sunset Bike Ride copyright July 30, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Rep. Issa Lead's America In Prayer

Ronald Reagan Official Portrait 

"Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is floating legislation that would name most U.S. coastal waters after former President Ronald Reagan.

Issa reintroduced his bill Wednesday to rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.

The late Reagan, a Californian like Issa, established the EEZ with a 1983 presidential proclamation that declared the nation’s sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting and conserving offshore resources, including energy.

Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has introduced the bill multiple times in past sessions of Congress.

Under the proposal, references to the EEZ in U.S. laws, regulations, maps and other documents would carry Reagan’s name."

Issa ended his announcement with a  prayer the Creator of the Universe in the hopes that he'll use his influence to allow him to rename the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. With head bowed Rep. Issa prayed:

Ronald Reagan, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our tax cuts, school prayer and AR-15 Assault Rifles.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive won't forgive them that trespass against us including but not limited too:
Gays, women, the liberal media, Democrats, Democrat Party, Environmentalists, Mexicans (legal and illegal, African  Americans especially that Kenyan Anti-Colonialist, who pretends to be President, the poor, the non-white, non-southern and Muslims including that Kenyan Anti-Colonialist, who pretends to be President and anybody who is different from us.
And lead us not into temptation, like advocating for actual conservative principles that you actually advocated, like raising taxes, and gay rights.
But deliver us from evil, including but not limited to Evolution, All religions except Christianity except Catholicism which is a Papist cult, helping the poor, working to improve the planet's environment, advocating alternative energy, cuts in military spending.
For thine is the kingdom, including but not limited to gate communities, country clubs that don't allow anybody listed above, Disneyland, Israel, Arab oil, off shore tax havens, and Swiss Bank Accounts.

The power, and the glory, Wall Street, Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the Koch Brothers

For ever and ever.

Amen.


Capitano Tedeschi


30

Rep. Issa Lead's America In Prayer Copyright July 24, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is floating legislation that would name most U.S. coastal waters after former President Ronald Reagan. Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/238881-issa-name-us-coast-after-president-reagan

Ronald Reagan Official Portrait source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Official_Portrait_of_President_Reagan_1981.jpg. Government document public domain.

Channeling Dame Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie, Source: Flanker from Wikipedia

It's been a good day. Hardest part was the 2 hours I spent in the Ford Dealer's waiting room, listening to a woman chew gum.

 The old darling must have been wearing dentures that had been castanets in a previous life. It was click, click, click, click, click, click for 120 minutes. Always at the same pace, an insistent, unavoidable chomping noise that carried for at least 30 feet in all directions. There was no escaping it, no way to politely make her stop. 

I was channeling Dame Agatha Christie by the end of the first hour, experimenting with various types of poisons and explosive devices to put the woman out of my misery. Cruel of me I know. But still that's how my mind works. 

So I plotted and planned, planned and plotted. Chewing gum coated with arsenic? That's pure Dame Agatha. But that would have taken several sticks and they way she was chomping on that one piece, I would have died before the arsenic had done its work. Cyanide? Way too quick. Plastic explosive? That might have worked but would have required some type of fuse which would have resulted in a piece of chewing gum the size of a pound of cheese. No one in their right mind would have accepted a piece of gum the size of a pound of cheese from a total stranger.

I finally settled on gum that contained some type of powerful adhesive that would have eventually welded her false teeth shut. A very humane option you'd all agree. I then realized if I could invent such an adhesive I'd be a millionaire. As a millionaire, I would have sent the chauffer to the Jaguar dealership across the alley and he'd been sitting in the Jaguar waiting room and I would have avoided the gum chewer altogether. 

Life's funny like that. 

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Channeling Dame Agatha Christie copyright July 25, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Picture Source: Flanker from Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agatha_Christie.png. Used by permissions of Creative Commons license.

Spanish Galleon

I've been working on the photos from my trip. The picture of these wall tiles was taken in the Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri on June 6, 2012. I took the with a disposable camera (My digital camera having been lost, perhaps stolen). Given the fact that my hand shakes, I'm partially color blind, and I had no way to really control the quality of the photo, it came out quite well.

After editing in Microsoft Photo Editor, I am pleased with my enhancements.  

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Spanish Galleon text copyright July 11, 2012 by Jamie Jacks
Photo copyright July 11, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Armstrong Cleaners

I took this photo in early June of 2012. It's a suite of shops at 4018 State Line Road in Kansas City Kansas.  Roughly 28 years ago I was driving with my mother and when my car passed this building, she said.

"Oh, that so that's where it was."
"What?"
"That's were uncle Clovis had his dry cleaning store" she said.

Clovis was her uncle Clovis Armstrong. Clovis was one of those uncles no one talks about. From what I know of Clovis, he was terrible drunk.

So I asked mom, "Clovis had a drying cleaning store?"
"Yes," she said.  "He wasn't drinking during that particular time. But then he married that woman. When he and she started having problems, he started drinking again and lost the business."

Mom told me a little more about Clovis. He was a World War 2 veteran and a hopeless alcoholic. When ever he'd get drunk he'd go home to his mother, who would take him in, allow him to drink and berate him for being an alcoholic.

My mother died in 2002. Going through her papers, I found a business card that said. "Armstrong Cleaners 4018 State Line, WE 7200 "Not How Cheap but How Good." On the back of the card was the slogan "If our work pleases you tell your friends, if not tell us. To please you pleases us."

Look at the picture, reading the slogan on the business card, it seems to me that Clovis' sad ghost still wanders.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Armstrong Dry Cleaners copyright by Jamie Jacks July 9, 2012. Photograph: Shops on State Line Road copyright July 9, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Apocalypse postponed

Beyond the earthquakes
of suffering
petty squabbles
and strife

Beyond the reach
of the cold north wind
that brings only sorrow
and no rain

To a place
where like wounded bear
I stagger
seeking Utopia, bliss, immortality

There is no such place
because wherever I go
strife follows
like a sarcastic, sticky shadow

Still with an old friend
drinking an infusion
of companionship
and coffee

We talk of basketball
his dog, Otis
the ever-muddy
chocolate lab

The building feels
the earthquake but barely shudders
the cold winds bring
the joy of much needed rain

The end of the world
is postponed it's
only Saturday
for Christ's sake

德國隊隊長

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Apocalypse postponed copyright Feb. 19, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Waiting for the New World Order

Waiting.
Waiting for the gospel's promises
set forth in Revelation's prophecies
to manifest themselves.

Waiting.
Waiting while the stench decay keeps rising
from those festering Gomorrah's
New York City and San Francisco.

Waiting.
Waiting while rapists, murderers, Mexicans,
secular humanists, and yoga practitioners
cavort like swine and use every method
imaginable to glorify and spread their so-called "lifestyles."

Waiting.
No, yearning for the tribulation,
when the faithful and virtuous
are gathered together and sheltered
from the end of times
by the Holy Spirit and a loving Jesus.

Waiting.
Waiting for this world to be cleansed,
engulfed in a series of Vesuvius-like eruptions
that fill the sky with suffocating ash
cover the land with molten lava
to burn and bury
the sinners and all their works.

Waiting.
Waiting for the second coming of the Messiah,
the re-population
of the New Eden, the New Jerusalem
where the streets are clean and safe
where you can drive your Chevy Suburban
or Cadillac to the grocery store
or to church without being screamed at
by the tree-huggers or abortionists.

Waiting.
Waiting for the New World Order
where the American flag flies
and gold coins are real money.
Where everyone is protected
by the heroes of 9/11, the contractors provided by
Blackwater, Haliburton and Fox News.
Where the children go to school
to study the bible and learn to fear the rod
so they'll act like little angels
Where people don't talk
on their cell phones
during the Ronald Reagan Film Festival
or snicker when told that 6,000 years ago
the cave men rode dinosaurs
Where everyone sings along when
Chuck Norris sings all four verses of "America the Beautiful"
accompanied by Mike Huckabee
jamming on Elvis's electric guitar.

Waiting.
Waiting for the day
that God and Rush Limbaugh have promised


Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Waiting for the New World Order copyright Feb. 16, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Hoping to hang on

Sighs of sorrow escape
so often, they seem to be
the melody of some long forgotten song.

The pain is
constant as an incurable cough,
resilient as rust on
long buried iron.

In such a state,
time goes
slow as geologic history

The byproducts of delusion
are pent up deep
in some small, infinite cavity
of the body,

where anemic blood
tries nourish the unseen tissues
that function as the wellspring
of the soul

An observer might believe
that I am unaware of
these inner things

that I am ignorant
of the daily vexations
that accumulate
like delinquent debts

until they become
unbearable
until they become
unutterable

There is no choice
just keep going
praying for
working for
some type of transcendence
hoping to hang on til
the miracle happens

what else can one do?

Capitano Tedeschi

Hoping to hang on copyright 26 January 2012 by Jamie Jacks

things Sleepwalkers know

The cost of obsession
keeps rising
regardless of previous experience
or the onset of old age.

There are things
Sleepwalkers know but
can not tell you

Things you might
see peripherally in a dream
that later appear
in the distorted restructuring of dreaming
known as waking life

Obsession, the loss
of sensible inhibition
a susceptibility to swings of emotion

For example
the 57-year-old Bakersfield housewife
who discovers the skin care secret
that maker her look 20 years younger

She sheds her skin like a snake
and becomes the nubile goddess
the vision that all men desire.

Then she finds herself one day
trapped in a tomb tight as the flue
of a chimney
suffocated in the drunken pursuit of love

Or,
regard the California driver
who discovers the simple driving tip
that insurers don't want you know.
Safety guaranteed you might think
But no,

He drives down dark, forgotten boulevards
and abandoned housing tracks
filled with the wooden skeletons of half-constructed homes.

He gives a ride to a stranger
whose deviance is rewarded
Serendipity is the constant companion
of the deranged.

The pale moon rises, and by
moon set, he has disappeared
bloodstained gravel the only
reminder that he was present at all
on this planet.

There are procedures for tracking
the consequences of delusion
the outcomes of obsession.

Armed with such knowledge,
you should be able to chart
the outcomes and
learn to avoid bad decisions.

No the weakness remains triumphant.
in spite of one's best effort
to stay self-contained, stay apart, stay free.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

things Sleepwalkers know copyright 20 January 2012 by Jamie Jacks

not a spiritually advanced way to begin one's morning

This morning
I wonder why I feel the cold
so much.

It seems to have settled, in the
semipermeable membranes between
my joints.

The blood in my fingers
courses like winter rain
chilling even the warmest regions
of my torso and thighs.
My first two steps
inform me that
ice crystals are lodged
in my ankles and insteps

There is pain
but worse
I have to ask why?
Or say "Fuck You Pain" or
just plain "Fuck You" in general

Would that there were some
aversive therapy to
keep me from wondering,
bar me, block me
from trying to assemble
a cognitive model or
narrative commentary
that tries to make meaing from
my daily confrontation
with my body

enduring being and movement
I once so blithely
dismissed or ignored.

Let's face it starting the day
with a "Fuck You" is not a
spiritually advanced way
to begins one's morning.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

not a spiritually advanced way to begin one's morning copyright 18 January 2012 by Jamie Jacks