Following, I let Lennon read a spoken word piece I wrote about not being able to perform spoken word pieces. He pulled out his Seamus Heaney book afterwards and made me read the first poem. I felt cosmically connected, or something. So here is my draft and his perfect-as-is poem for the full side by side affect:
Burning by me
Mark Twain said:
The world’s greatest poet was an Irish potato farmer
Who never wrote a single letter
And died,
Tangling his decayed body with roots the way his fingers,
Knarled and knotted as tree trunks
Dug deep on dark winter days in dirt
To search for something satiating
Since the only thing he was ever given
Was hunger.
His hunger mixed fire with acid and burned
The lining of lips and stomachs so
He did not speak.
The only lines he ever wrote were composed with plows and
Furrowed deep as his grey brows when the dark secrets
He unfurled with spade and seed came sprouting
Every spring. With hands that couldn’t close any tighter
Than the width of a shovel
He dreamt of verses written in the lines of constellations,
Reading a celestial hymnal that swung on its axis
Stacking stanza on stanza of poems that
Couldn’t compete with potatoes;
With words that would never find a pen because
Paper is only good for burning
When you’re hungry.
His verses were cold as a voice withered on the back of a throat,
His tired tongue dry as grey embers.
When he died no one would remember
Any more about him than the knot in his empty belly
And the dirt beneath his nails as he dug
roots from fields and dreamt of fires he could never feel.
This was the world’s greatest poet,
Illiterate, starving for a thing he could not define.
Like him, my written legacy will never amount
To more than a sack of potatoes.
But unlike him it is fear that freezes my tongue
And while I applaud a verbal arson,
A poet who lights a crowd on fire,
I wonder, if we all breathe like dragons,
Will the smoke leave the Earth scorched,
Scarred, and begging for water?
I haven’t felt heat in so long that the ice
Is drowning me.
I can’t breathe fire when doused in water,
Swimming in insecurities I carry around like stones,
Polished smooth by my thumbs,
A weight stitched in my pockets
To insure that I never take a risk and float.
And it’s hard to maintain a fire when
I’m on a sinking boat bailing out with buckets
As waves cap the edges of a bow too short
To withstand the tempest of voices that tell me
I couldn’t shine bright enough to make a dent
In the night sky so
Why bother burning.
I’m hitting an iceberg.
It’s going to be sink or swim when this blockade
Breaks the barrier I’ve built around my voice box,
Walling off thoughts I’ve hidden in cellars,
Buried deep like gold or potatoes and even though
I’ve been told to burn down the house
I have barred myself into
It is not that easy to light matches
Without walls for striking,
To ignite candles without wicks.
But like undertakers and farmers I have a penchant for digging
So I strike shovel to ground,
Pen to paper and foot to stage.
Like paper that is only good for burning
I am learning my flint sharp tongue is actually good
For sparking.
_________________________________________________________________
Digging by Seamus Heaney
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.
Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
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