Steemit Open Mic Week 96, Feeling is First. Original song by Nate L...

This video was shot during a street performance in the Glastown neighborhood of Vancouver during the 2018 #Escapingthetrap tour with Dr. Knucklehead & Heirloom Light Photography. The video was shot by Heirloom Light Photography.

The first verse is a poem by e.e. cummings called "since feeling is first," and the second verse is an original poem inspired by cummings' poem.

Verse 1
since feeling is first
by e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

Verse 2
We sat back to back,
Facing separate tracks.
I listened to him freestlye
Or mumble some type of poetry to himself.
He must’ve been singing Walt Whitman
Or maybe hummin’ a lil e.e. cummings,
Incoherent were his words,
But man! He was saying something.
And “since feeling is first”
I wasn’t hearing, I was feeling his words,
Unconcerned about “the syntax of things,”
I drifted away, drifted away
Into a feeling.
Until my feeling was shattered by real words.
They’ll do that to you sometimes—
“Hey man, you got a dollar? I’m four short
On the train to New Brunswick.”
I said, “Yeah, no problem,
I got you.” All the while
Thinking a man that’s so well-versed
Would have a job too,
He said, “Thank you.
I said “thank
You. Then I watched as he slowly withdrew
A brown paper bag,
Cocked it back,
And sipped a feeling he might never have.
He firmly grasped a feeling
He might never grasp.
And I cried through a laugh…
Wondered how much his feeling cost,
Wondered how much his feeling lost,
As I lost my feeling to the arrival of the train,
Yet he remained.
Perhaps we judged each other then,
But neither of us blamed.
“for life’s not a paragraph