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