The Hunger of Jack Bowen/ A Poet's Toil

 

 

           Jack Bowen was a conjurer of sorts. He’d always known, in his heart, that he was not on the level of others, for better or for worse. Jack’s hunger was such that though he may have tried tirelessly to satiate it, there would never be fulfillment. There never could be a satisfaction for the needs and wants of a man such as Jack. He thought himself vulgar and abrasive, and with the greatest of effort expended endless energy in his vain attempts to conceal it. Though his command and power with the word was mystical in nature and origin, the ear of his peers was not, or so he thought.

           A day came when Jack Bowen figured that indeed he must resign himself to achieving a level of domesticity and acceptability, but it was not this day, not yet. His notebooks began to fill with his words until they began to overflow with his incantations and spells that seemed almost to awaken the spirits of a thousand dead poets who would guide Jack and give him their treasured counsel. Still, Jack hungered for more. He longed to be rid of his temporal constraints so that he could commit wholly to his task and invite the possession of his body by the immortal essence of a hundred greater men; men so great that surely they couldn’t possibly exist in the same time and place as Jack Bowen. Day and night, Jack wrote tirelessly until his right hand ceased to work and he had to learn to write anew with his left.

          All Jack hungered for was the recognition of his genius; however, his hunger was a corrosive and blinding influence that meant the death of him. Not knowing this, Jack labored furiously into the night, and chanting his most sacred verbiage and in rescuing language from the depths of his soul, Jack channeled this through his pen and committed them on to paper. In his last bid to quell the pains of hunger that now seemed to spread to his stomach, Jack flung his pen across the room where it bounced of his door and onto the floor at the entrance to his room. It was on that night at that very moment that Jack Bowen, unknowingly, commended his body and his soul to the great beyond. Jack laid his head onto his folded arms, which were folded on his desk, and died.

         There are those that say Jack’s death was the result of a broken heart, or a self-sacrificed soul, whatever that means. There are even some who say his toil was for naught, for what was gained? But I say that Jack Bowen died of something so much more the obvious and significantly less poetic. I say that Jack Bowen died of mere starvation. He should have eaten more and not denied his body the necessary nourishment that it so clearly needed. What a stupid man Jack Bowen was! One should never overlook their body’s most basic needs for that of the soul’s.

 

 

The Hunger of Jack Bowen /A Poet’s Toil

Reviews

[Dianne]

Hmm, very true, and a lesson many of us need to learn even yet.

I'm going to make a formatting comment. At this length it isn't yet crucial, but as your stories get a little bit longer it makes it easier to read on the screen if there is more white space. I recommend that you add a blank line between paragraphs. The comment I hear from writers more than anything else is that no one will take the time to read their stories, books... The real problem is that it is just very intimidating to open a page and see no breaks, no place to rest your eyes or your mind.