Jacque's Toast

i stand facing a gate that opens to a new place the nervy trepidation that swelled so great before has dissipated in the excitement that arises given the immediate imminence of newness and the complete lack of control that I now await. Through the gate exists nothing, or everything. something? i do not know what exists through the gate. i will walk through, and let you know.     Written and photographed on May 20

Just as a slight introduction, it has been a busy week filled with work, writing and studying and I have spent many hours focusing on matters I generally do not devote so much time and energy to. Some of these poems are inspired by studying I've been doing, and others are from music I've listened to while writing. They're unpolished and a bit coarse, not like a diamond but like the scuffed tip of your shoe: The Clomping Animals Like church bells tinkling at a pyre, a warning is told to animals from the shire; Clomping along snout and tail, The embodiment of fundamental human failure. Dry Bursts of noise stay rooted in soil. Flowers wilt in the cracked earth. No rain, no rain and voices are dry The collapsing sound shakes nobody, And nothing speaks.                               ...

N o man is an Iland , intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent , a part of the maine ; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea , Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am in- volved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. John Donne

Wax will melt, no matter where the heat is- Water stops running, because everyone is clean. I still know what I saw and know what I seen, You can spin and spin but never face me, for tis matter of the soul and not matter of me; Not matter of the coal, but matter of what you see.

dark and tired, awake but barely the paltry rose slides off sways away, petals strippt. bones are bared, and lips are parted innocent no more, soul departed-  soul departed, body here memory discarded, no past to fear. nothing forward, but ground exists the present is skewered, i grow weary- swirls down the drain,  sinks my theory.

Delicately tapping the black and white glowing notes,  easily coaxing them from within the inner convoluted convulsions.  The sleek, shined surface of the mysterious antique,  once upon a time left forgotten, dustily staring wordlessly at the Seine,  now restored to glory by fingers of gold and a white-silvered soul. Window thrust open, notes waft to below, A crowd gathers; chanting, demanding for more –  but the delicate tapping now softens to a murmured brushing,  and the easel of notes that had lazily cascaded,  is now dipped slowly in silence. Until the faint echoes of harmony exist solely  in the time of the past and the space of the memory and a pyre of burning sound now replaces the fluid melliflocity,   you cover your ears and hide your soul, and become unsure if it ever existed,  this delicate tapping.