The Writer

The writer spends all day without speaking.
It is tiring to speak. He wrote some, and
Then wandered his room by himself feeling
Awful for hours until a moment - yes!
And he has written a poem and feels
Alive again like he can go on living.

The people spend all day talking
And feeling good talking. They feel
Whole like the poet felt whole only when
He had removed a part of himself and
Put it to paper. Neither essence
Knows itself as the Tribe or the Outcast.

It's funny. The writer works neither for them
Nor himself, and they live neither for him
Nor themselves (though both sometimes wish for
The other's life). The writer writes
And, like the people, has no idea of his sacrifice.

On Reading Raymond Carver and Finding Your Hair On My Sweater

And I knew I was a poet
or a poetaster when I found
one of your hairs on my sweater,
caught in the holes in the wool.

The first of them I tried to toss
thinking it was one of my own!
and then, seeing the length,
that lovely black colour

and in a dolor I looked
for the first or another,
and in finding it I had
a moment of such splendid

Being, of living right then
and then I knew I had to write it
and then I knew about me being
a poet or a poetaster and all.

So I thank you for the moment,
for real joy, and poetry for
the reflection and recognition of
the moment, and the task of its passing.

Jack Lloyd is a poet from Ontario who has recently finished a degree in English from the University of Toronto Scarborough. He has not published anything prior to Ascent Aspirations Magazine, although he has been writing for much of his life.

Email: Jack Lloyd

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