Mad Jack's Legacy

this book's been sitting in files for about 10 years now while i decided what to do with it. i finally decided to use an amazon kindle program to publish it as an ebook. this is the result.

When i was back in high school or college, some 50 years ago, i wrote a little character sketch in poetry form about a fellow named Mad Jack. He was a small town eccentric known for a few things. He fed a flock of pigeons every day in the park. He never, ever spoke. He wore an oversized overcoat every day no matter the weather and he made a rustling sound like a bag full of dried leaves whenever he moved. Everyone in the town knew him by sight, but nobody really knew him personally. The poem didn't really go anywhere, but i really liked the character. So the poem sat in my files unfinished.

Fast forward about 30 years. Life went on, full of ups and downs. During one very down period, i decided to escape the world by taking a long hot bath, so i filled the tub, dimmed the lights, put on some music and lay down to relax. My mind went drifting as i lay there and somehow it ended up thinking about Mad Jack. And before i knew it, i knew Mad Jack's story. I knew his secrets and i knew how to tell his story. So i took the next few years putting the story into book form. Mad Jack, though he never spoke, was secretly a prolific writer. All my old writing became Mad Jack's. My good times became his. My bad times also became his. I wove Jack's story between poems and essays. I also found a way to weave my wife's photography into the story. Though much of the poetry and thoughts are from me, Jack took on a life of his own and his story is definitely not mine.

Once the book was finished i tried the traditional publishing method. I found a literary agent who was interested in the book, but just as we started working together she got ill and had to drop all new projects. That disappointment was followed by my own series of illnesses. Publishing became very low on my priority list. So Mad Jack sat in files again for another 10 years. Finally, this year i decided to publish Jack's story using a self publishing site provided by amazon. This is the result. If you should decide to buy the book (which i highly recommend) you may recognize a poem or two that you've read here. you can find the book on amazon. here's a link to where you can get the book if you're interested:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F6Y8PKV/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1530625376&sr=1-3&keywords=mad+jack

Author's Note

if you should buy the book, you'll find in a few places the indentation and line breaks are screwed up. it doesn't interfere with the meaning, it just messes with the aesthetics of the poetry. something didn't translate the line breaks correctly, a problem between my word processing program and the publishing program. i wasn't techy enough to fix it all.