Every performer is a character…
everyone who performs on a stage,
on a screen, to a camera, to a microphone,
from a speaker has to adopt a persona…
every actor, every singer, every politician,
every comedian, every personality,
every person known for doing something
or for being somebody has to embody
a certain magic and emanate a certain gravity
in order to make their audience
fall under their spell…
everybody who has a gift
and who has this hunger within
to craft something of their own creation
and their own imagination
that they want to share with other people –
something that people like,
something that people understand,
something that people respond to
and empathize with – is an artist
with a heart and a soul deeper
than the deepest well…
everybody who plays at being someone
for a long time naturally has moments
when the character that they play
seeps into and starts to influence
the actions and the boards walked
by a performer during the moments
when they are being who they really are,
behind the mask of the character that they portray,
when they are doing the day to day
activities of real life…
every performer sometimes has moments
when they find it hard to see the dividing line
between one side of their personality and the others –
which can ultimately lead to moments when performers
look in the mirror and they ask themselves: who am I?
every performer wears a costume,
every performer has their own voice,
every performer longs to dive into a world
and be someone else – even if it is for a short time –
and every performer has their own back-story,
as well as the story that they tell themselves
within their mind which they are at the centre of…
every performer is a magician –
even if they do not directly advertise
that they perform magic…
every performer is an artist of an art…
every performer is constantly a student
and a teacher of those who follow them
and to those who they are walking
in the footprints of who are sometimes
so influential to a performer
that their performances are considered mythic…
every performer – no matter who they are –
in order to continue to do what they do
and to continue to love how they choose to live
often times have to play and practice at
being someone else and at having to act out
the performance at being the person
at the centre of the art their act.
Month: March 2019
My Poem “Night-Shift”
You can see more things
that make people tick,
you can see a completely
different way of life,
you can learn more about
how people live,
you can find out so much
about the world when
the sun has gone down
and the dark veil of the night-sky
both descends and rises –
especially if you work somewhere
and you are constantly
seeing people come and go:
whether it is a place where people meet,
like a coffee shop or a bar, or somewhere where people
go to get well like a hospital…
people who work a night-shift
sometimes see more than people
working a day-shift do…
it seems to me that you see more
about what makes humanity who and what it is
when you see them at their most vulnerable –
when their judgement and when their preconceptions
are impaired, and they are able to relax into
an experience with people who they
want to be around…
some people who work a night-shift
see the highest of highs and the lowest of lows –
they see and they encounter people
who have chosen to do things
that they knew would cause themselves
or others a great deal of harm…
some people see things,
some people hear things,
some people feel things at night
that sometimes follow them into their dreams
and haunt the hours of the day when they are awake…
some people actually like working
when everybody else in the surrounding area
is normally sleeping…
some people actually enjoy the job that they do
and their fellow “night-owls” that they work with…
some people working during the night
and encountering all the drives, vices,
and the people who choose to live their lives
under the shine of moonlight
rather than the golden halo of sunlight
is what gives them a reason to keep living…
for some people there is no other time
that they feel more alive
and are the most active
than while witnessing the constantly
revolving door of new faces
and unexpected occurrences that show
themselves and arise while they are
working on a night-shift.
Happy World Poetry Day!
Happy World Poetry Day, everybody! I have been writing poetry for over 11 years now, I have been publishing poetry books with my amazing publisher Zeloo Media for 7 years now, and in all that time I have written hundreds and hundreds of poems about absolutely everything – from Love to Life, from Birth to Death, about people still alive and well, and about those who we have sadly lost – and for me it has been a rollercoaster ride of inspiration and discovery during which I have learned a lot about life, the world, people, and myself. Writing is one of the most amazing expressions that an artist can commit to, and over time – like a musician – what you write changes and evolves, as does the writer in the process. I have changed, what I write about has changed – but what has never changed, and never will, is my passion for poetry. I was introduced to poetry by reading William Shakespeare’s sonnets – and after I read them all I was inspired to try my hand at writing my own poetry, and the rest (as they say) is history! I am a writer, and I will always be a poet… and over the years I have been fortunate to meet other poets and writers who are amazing in their own right. I write almost every day, everywhere I can… and I know for sure that when you are blessed with any kind of a gift I believe that you have to use your gift and practice your art every day to keep the instrument of your creativity sharp – even if you only write within your mind, in your dreams, on your phone, or in a notebook. I love writing! I love being a writer! I love writing poetry! And for me every day is World Poetry Day! But today is officially World Poetry Day – so, to everybody reading this, I would just like to say Happy World Poetry Day! 😊✏✒🖋🖊📝🗒📖
-Mark
“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
-Martha Graham
My Poem “Never Stop Reaching”
Most dreamers, most writers,
most artists, like me,
often reach beyond what they know
in order to imagine, to see,
and to understand things
that they do not know,
have never experienced,
and have never seen –
sometimes you just have to,
sometimes you just have to
take a leap of imagination
into another world
equipped with as much knowledge
and first-hand accounts from people
who have been through
what you want to say
and let what you have heard
play out throughout your mind
and be interpreted with your own
internal voice and your artistic echo chamber,
and then share with your own
artistic license in the way
that a poet does…
no two people will have
the exact same thing to say about the same something –
unless they are experiencing a moment
of true and unfiltered synchronicity –
because, most of the time,
our memories and our experiences
have their own unique and predetermined
say on how we will personally
react to a given situation…
everybody finds their own truth
in their own time…
everybody finds their own gifts
in their own way…
everybody finds their own identity
in the mirror the more that they
find people who inspire them
and give them an answer to
what and why they are who they are
and how they should be living their life…
everybody finds their own discipline to practice,
their own doctrine to follow,
their own natural medicine to heal their own
unseen scars, the more that they
make strides down paths
that they do not know the end of…
everybody who is adventurous
is like a child – no matter how old they are –
because they know that sometimes
you have to reach the edge of something,
sometimes you have to leap
into the unknown without thinking,
and no matter what you are doing
you should never stop reaching.
My Poem “Good Omens”
The sun was shining
when I woke up this morning,
but as time went by
the clouds began to gather
and the raindrops started to fall…
it had been raining for days –
but I actually believed
that today would be the day
when spring would finally begin
and everybody could once again
enjoy the experience of walking tall
under the light of the sun
that has always been somewhat
of a universal draw…
just as I and everybody
had come to the conclusion
that the end of time was upon us
and that it was potentially
going to rain for another
forty days and forty nights, or more,
spontaneously a bright burst of sunlight
parted the dark clouds
and shined down from above –
like witnessing a miracle happening,
or like watching a thought,
an idea, or a dreaming coming true…
as soon as everybody saw the sun shining
and usher in a bright blue sky almost immediately,
I instantly saw smiles appear on people’s faces
and the clouds above people’s heads lift –
as if the sunlight that everybody had witnessed
inspired a feeling of hope and optimism,
and a definitive change in the collective mood…
it’s amazing what the gift of sunlight can do…
it’s incredible to watch wet paths
and deep puddles of water evaporate
before your eyes and make
even the most shy of people
want to laugh and sing…
it is breathtaking to see something –
that may seem random to someone else –
and to interpret it as if it were
a sign of a higher power
and a reminder to always expect the unexpected…
even when all that you hear
and all that you see makes your mind
wander to all the things in the world
that make people dwell upon
the fear of the doom and gloom
that seeks to cast a shadow over the world –
like when the sun is obscured by the moon –
it is always important to think,
to hope for, and to look for all
the positive lights that are there to be found,
even on a morning of dark clouds and raindrops
you can find small, but significant, good omens.
My Poem “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day”
Cheers, everybody!
Today is the day!
Today is Saint Patrick’s Day –
and some of the best ways
that you may wish to choose
to remember and to pay tribute to
the fifth century patron Saint of Ireland
might be to wear something green,
to find yourself a shamrock,
to venture into a town or a city
and enjoy a Saint Patrick’s Day parade,
or to visit an Irish bar
and consume a dark and heavy
pint of Guinness, perhaps?
A shamrock has always been closely associated
with Saint Patrick, and also with luck –
and it is sometimes claimed that
Saint Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock
as a way to teach people about the holy trinity
at the centre of Christianity –
the father, the son, and the holy ghost –
and of course the shamrock has long
been thought of and considered a symbol of
the regenerative power of nature
and it’s indomitable resilience.
There are many legends and traditions
that surround Saint Patrick, his life,
and his importance in Irish history
and culture, that have spread
and are well known all around the world –
and every year people gather together,
they wear green, they maybe drink some Irish ale,
they feast, they sing, they dance,
they embrace the gifts that
the island of Ireland has given us,
and people remember the apostle of Ireland,
Saint Patrick, on the day of his death,
and they pay tribute in their own way
to the great missionary and man of the people,
who may have been born in Roman Britain
but who will always be considered
Ireland’s most famous Irishman.
So, find yourself a shamrock,
wear something green, eat, drink,
be merry, and remember Saint Patrick
today, March the 17th, and have a
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, everybody!
☘🍀 🇮🇪
My Poem “It’s all relative”
Life on Earth, time on Earth,
is individually relative to everybody
and everything alive on this planet…
the way that anybody or any thing
perceives and interacts with the world
is always dependent upon
who they are, what they are,
and where they come from…
Life on another planet,
the way that time is perceived
on another world orbiting around another star,
in another solar system,
in another part of the galaxy,
is always going to be different
in comparison to how we see things here…
Life in another galaxy,
when seen from the unique
vantage point of a radically different
celestial body, if someone were looking up
to their version of the night sky
with their own sense of sight
or through their version
of an intergalactic telescope,
would be the same as a microscopic
organism looking at a macroscopic form of life…
Life in another universe
might not be defined, nor bound,
by the same laws of nature as we have here on Earth –
so anything or anyone living
on their own version of a planet,
a moon, in their own version of a galaxy,
would be unlike anything
that we could ever quantify,
because more than likely
another universe would have their own
definitions of life, reality,
and what constitutes science…
Life for an omnipotent and omnipresent
divine being, such as God,
and the way that they would
undoubtedly observer and perceive
mortal beings with a limited life-span –
such as humanity – would be akin
to someone walking past
and looking through the glass
of an ant-farm, a maze, or an aquarium –
because life and existence
and the way that it is perceived,
interpreted, and analyzed
is always relative.
Two years ago: ‘The Wolf In Me’
My book ‘The Wolf In Me’ came out two years ago this week, and I am still so proud of it and myself for writing it – because it was the first long form of fiction that I got published. Before ‘The Wolf In Me’, I had written hundreds and hundreds of poems and many short-stories – which ‘The Wolf In Me’ was supposed to be; however, when I was writing it, I just kept writing and writing and writing… because the story of Olivia Hunter and the Wolf compelled me to do so – to keep writing until I reached the end of this first chapter of her story. And who knows, there could be a second or a third chapter? We shall see! But, for now, ‘The Wolf In Me’ to me is a story of one woman/one werewolf’s journey and their struggle to survive through all the extraordinary, inexplicable, and supernatural entanglements that are thrown at them, not to mention the daily struggles of real life: losing your identity, finding an identity, bereavement, losing control, finding the strength within to carry on. ‘The Wolf In Me’ is the story of a woman who won’t give up no matter what, and it is a story that is close to my heart. Occasionally-dark, but full of strength and heart – that is how I would describe this first story of Olivia Hunter, which you can buy from Amazon today for the bargain price of $2.77 for the paperback and $1.25 for the Kindle version! Follow this link to get yourself a copy of ‘The Wolf In Me’ from Amazon.com! Enjoy! And say hello to Olivia for me when you meet her! 😊
markthepoet.me 