Luis Aragon carved simple santos by hand

Not everyone knows
the nature of the carving
the mind sees,
the point of the knife
sharp and inquisitive
the blade
shaving away the false
leaving only the truth.

Every man is part of the holy trinity
of Land, Flesh and God.
Crops rise from sandy soil
children and goats romp
in the simple circle of the corral.

At night, while the woman slept and
the dog snored at the threshold
It was by lamplight pale yellow like
the glow from the gates of heaven
that the carving was done.
It was then that you searched for God
through the transubstantiation of
mesquite wood.
Without knowing how,
You'd see Saint John
in a piece of mesquite.
by your knife,
Saint John would be freed
from the wood
his body inverted trapezoids
of faith that was harder than flesh
his face a grainy vision of righteous anger.

In the morning,
Saint John would have gone
given to some stranger from Santa Fe,
who had stopped to ask for directions.
The Saint no longer belonging to you,
but to God.

All your days were spent this way.
Wrestling a living from the harsh,
uncompromising earth.
Watching the flocks and grandchildren grow
and in the evening
the mad passion of your hands
recreating the bible
in scrap pieces lumber.
Until that final day, when you
fell like a wood chip
to the hard earthen floor.

You are gone now.
St. John is a prisoner
standing on display
in a plexiglass case
owned by a museum that never
gives anything away.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Luis Aragon carved simple santos by hand copyright Sept. 15, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Isle of the Immortals

(poem inspired by a Chinese Painting)

I think this mountain
was a giant once
perhaps he was in love
with an empress or
a water spirit

Why is that we love
that which is so elusive?
It is sad to love
someone who can not
love in return.

When the giant finally realized this
all he could do was sit down
and weep.
He cried and cried.
He cried so long,
he turned to stone,

He cried so much his tears flowed
like streams and waterfalls.
The land sighed
and the sea surrounded him

Trees grew like moss
on his arms and shoulders
clouds congealed in what was once
his lap.

There in those clouds
I build my house.
But some days
the pounding of my hammer
the rasping of my saw
echo strangely.

I must be careful
not to awaken him.
I must be careful
not to revive
memories of you
beloved.


Capitano Tedeschi

30

Isle of the Immortals copyright Sept. 13 2009 by Jamie Jacks

R2 D2 returned from the wars

Numbers all is numbers
numbers never lie
The tireless droid
Skywalker's gallowglass
came to the end of the galactic wars
The Evil Empire vanquished
The Dark and Light side of the Force
locked in tight harmony
D2 ran the numbers
and randomly threw itself back into time
and landed in a parallel galaxy
by an irrigation canal in almond orchard
not far from Bakersfield California
Droid disguised as an irrigation pump
something close R2D2
calculated to turning a sword into a ploughshare.
The silly humans here
still believe you can hear explosions
in the depth of space
D2's memory banks aare filled with silence
where there should have been screams

Once R2D2 spanned the universe
destroying Emperors and Death Stars
now it's regulating the flow of water
to the orchard
and attempting to model
the falling of almond blossoms
blown by a spring breeze
and erasing databanks of
distant,violent, and dire days.
Sometimes on winter nights
when the Tule fog seeps into
circuitboards seared by war
wounded, repaired, replaced
but never fully restored
the old days come back to the droid
Laser blasts
and space as cold as Vader's breath
or stranger still Princess Leah's message to Obi Wan
is warped into a strange lullaby
that sings it to serene stasis
if not actual sleep.

Thus the days go
the rains fall
the brown water flows
and the orchard blossoms
the Almonds are harvested.
D2 knows someday
they'll come to scrap this strange pump
Atoms will be recycled
Then R2D2 will be reborn
innocent, empty
to be filled with the same new numbers
to journey across time
to save the Galaxy once again
D2 knows not urgency
it knows how to wait.

Capitano Tedeschi
30.


R2D2 returned from the wars. Copyright 8/19/2010 by Jamie Jacks

Collecting for a funeral on a Friday Afternoon

It was a boiling hot
Friday afternoon
when I ventured forth
for some toing and froing

At the Gas station,
A phalanx of Ford F-150 pickups
were fueling up
readying for a weekend of
lifestyle enhancing activities.

Such as driving to mountains
whose glaciers had not yet disappeared
or towing boats to beaches
as yet unfouled by tar and oil

At the Credit Union
The lines were not as confident,
perhaps cause they were filled with
survivors and refugees
of the latest financial disaster
There to empty
their coffee cans full of near-worthless coins
in a vain attempt to stave of
personal fiscal apocalypse
Many were wondering
if they could hang on to the next pay day.

On the way to Starbucks
while waiting at a red light
I saw an old man
hatless in the summer sun
with a hand painted coardboard sign
asking for donations
for a "Funeral Ambulance"
whatever that was
Silly old geezer thinks I,
Even the ancient Greeks knew
that trips to the after life
can't be paid for with checks or credit cards
or a little bit of spare change.

I didn't give the hatless
old geezer any change
and drove off in my pickup
thinking that standing on the corner with
a cardboard sign asking for change
was a hell of a hard way to pay for
a six pack, pint of vodka,
or to pay for transportation
for a funeral.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

collecting for a funeral on a Friday afternoon copyright July 27, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Not really human anymore

Not really human anymore
No heartbeat only
a gravitational pulse
No blood only
a silicon solution coursing through
permeable strata
No ribs and bones, only
beams of sandstone
No skin, only
a sheath of opaque micah.

Life is lived in speed geologic.
it takes aeons to move a millimeter
A tectonic migration trudging along,
trudging alone, ignoring and
never learning from disaster or decay.

He never listens. Why?
Others stopped listening to him aeons ago.
Now he communicates through
petroglyphs scratched on igneous rock
in a fossil of a language
no one cares to decipher

Pity that, for once
these crude scratching had great powers
could cause the rain to fall from desert sky
trick the deer to pause before the hunter's obsidian arrow

Now? Now,
sandstorms have scoured and eroded sedentary stone
moss devours the glyphs etched in granite
Few notice. Fewer care

A wandering geologist sometimes will take
a sample from the crumbling monument
An amateur archeologist still attempts to decipher
the magic runes scraped on a rock face

He no longer wonders
why they bother.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Not really human anymore copyright July 7, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

Apocalypse by key stroke

In the incestuous online world
most blissfully unaware of the danger
ignorant of the evil eyes watching
on computer terminals in
Moscow, Terehan, Pyonyang and Bejing.

Deep in their wired lairs
these Fifth Generation spiders
brew the poisons
that will paralyze or devour
anything connected to the internet.

No B-52s will be needed to drop
these bombs on their unsuspecting
targets--You, me, us.
All of us with an internet connection
an I-Phone, a copier, a nuclear submarine
have a bullseye painted on our foreheads

No bullets need fired for you to die
The malelevolence that has been bred
in the polyhedonic minds of these digital vipers
are poisons so toxic they can
make airplanes fall from the sky
nuclear missiles explode in their North Dakota silos

your execution could be caused
by a hack into the electric grid
while you lie senseless on an operating table
power failure during a heart bypass
or incineration by atom bomb
makes no difference
you are still dead.

Do not ask if????
Better to ask how or when?
Or what if anything might be done?

But you might be asking in vain
No politician will dare tell you
the nature of this peril
No corporate leader wants to pay the costs
Truthfulness is not the 21st century American way.

Imagine it for a moment--
The world ended not by a cascade of atom bombs
but with a keystroke

No one is worried because
no one really wants
to know.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

Apocalypse by key stroke. Copyright July 2, 2010 by Jamie Jacks

he still thinks he can bite

My head aches
as if I've come down with some
acute, critical and wasting illnes
Has a fever scorched or
burned out
the cells that archive both
memory and common sense?
I feel like I've lost the ability
to differentiate reality
from illusion

I think I am seeing that science
has no importance anymore.
It is as disgusting as a
sexually transmitted disease.
Facts, like wise, have no power
and are overwhelmed, drowned
by a flood of plausible and oft-repeated lies.

Examples abound.
An aging beauty queen makes millions of $$$
uttering lies and sheer nonsense.
Such is her charisma she hopes to replace
the Electoral College with a swimsuit competition.
Meanwhile a non-plumber not-named Joe
stomps down the corridors of the
Mega-temple of Conservative, Christian power
ranting like a bald-headed Jeremiah
because the promised book deal and the TV gig
haven't come through.
Finally saddest of all the aged war-hero
the self-styled Maverick gelds himself
so he can cling to the trappings of political power.

Such lies lurk like a cancer.
A signal in the bones that
some of my cells,
damned to immortality,
have formed into a venonmous spider
that feeds on silk swathed pieces
of my brain and heart.
I am paralyzed by their gnawing.
The real world , glittering in the morning sun
beyond my grasp.
I have become an endangered species
no longer relevant.
A bit player in someone else's story.
An exhibit in alien museum or zoo
hidden behind a sign that says
"Please don't feed this animal."
He's old, fat, and toothles
and he still thinks he can bite.

Capitano Tedeschi

30

He still thinks he can bite copyright May 13, 2009 by Jamie Jacks