My Poem ‘Aubergine’

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Who can predict what a new day will be about
when they wake up in the morning;
who can tell what the moments of a life
may some day come to mean;
who can truly know why songwriters write the songs that they do,
and infuse such emotion and intensity in the words that they sing;
who can understand the ‘codeword’
shared between a small group of people,
if they don’t know what it means,
especially if you are unaware of the history
and the shared etymology that radiates from a word or a phrase –
especially when the codeword in question
happens to be “aubergine”.

It’s fun to share exclusive relationships with people;
it’s amazing to have secret ciphers in your mind
that you can use to decode an encrypted message at a moments notice;
it’s great to have the vision to see the seemingly invisible,
as if you have got a magic eye;
it’s inspiring talking and meeting someone when all things feel equal;
it’s a sacred moment when you see
the beautiful pink and white petals of a lotus;
it’s wonderful making a new tie.

People speak, even when their lips are tight and their voice is silent.
Sometimes a picture says it all.
Words and memories mean more to some people than others,
because to a lot of people things are said but they are not meant.
Nothing can hold back a flood – of water, of emotion –
and over time levels of things rise and fall;
however, there comes a point when things overflow
and nothing on Earth can hold back anything again,
not even the best built wall.

If you believe that there is nothing to do,
if you think that you have seen it all,
if you just keep repeating what you have heard,
you need to find a way to take off the shades that you are wearing
that are blurring and distorting your vision of your surroundings,
and look somewhere and go somewhere where you have been countless times –
however, if you look without any expectation,
and if you try to clear your mind of your collected emotional shadows,
you may see something that you have never seen.

Even a grain of sand has its own story;
every dream that everyone has is a truth-based alternate-reality fantasy;
even a meal could not come into being
if where the ingredients of it originated hadn’t at some point
once been a seed, or someone’s idea of a dream;
everything is the favourite of someone;
everybody everyday ventures out onto the sea of life,
like a surfer holding, relying, using, keeping afloat, and swimming,
farther and farther out on the water
towards the direction of the approaching and oncoming waves;
and as they see something about to hit them at full-speed
everyone says something to themselves,
or to anyone who may be listening,
and it could be anything:
my word of the day, that will help and assist me
in riding the waves that face me today,
is a word that you don’t see or hear everyday –
my word of the day is the tasty-sounding, nutritious,
and deeply meaningful muse, that has the codeword “aubergine”.

My Poem ‘Let me go, and I will run’

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It’s fun to let your thoughts drift away from you;
it’s good to let your thoughts run away from you;
it’s exciting to experience your thoughts changing;
it’s incredible to have an idea
that spontaneously pops into your head,
as if from out of nowhere,
which just takes over every other thought of your mind
and function of your body –
and which also becomes all that you can talk about,
and to you it is all that is worth saying.

I have a brand new idea for something,
usually for the title of a new poem,
every hour of every day;
however, of the sixty ideas that I have,
by the end of every hour, they have become one idea,
and by the end of every day –
usually just before I fall asleep –
the first words of a perfect thought,
and the first verse of poetry of my own imagining,
has been ingrained in my consciousness,
and is just waiting to be written,
in my own unique way.

Ideas are important;
every idea that I have ever had
has set my imagination on fire;
ideas are building blocks, as well as foundations;
of all the ideas that I have had,
deciding one day to write down
what was on my mind at the time
was the one muse that is still a constant;
ideas are the offspring of desire;
every idea I have had has enlightened me in some way;
and following the path of an idea,
and taking the journey of the eternal dreamer,
is my way of reaching a higher state of consciousness,
and in a way it is my own form of meditation.

Ever since I was a kid,
I have been used to exerting my body
and using every physical muscle at my disposal
to achieve feats of strength and speed;
as a child, as an adult,
I was off like a shot,
running my heart out to somewhere I needed to get to,
and perhaps to someone in need;
ever since writing has become my passion, my devotion,
my love, and one of the defining parts of my heart, my soul,
my identity, there has not been a day that has gone by
when the question ‘what am I going to write about next?’
has not been uttered by me –
and even now I am asking that question, and answering it also,
and to me there is no more perfect
and beautiful form of writing than poetry.

When I can be myself;
when I am not constrained by glass, brick, wood, metal,
windows, doors, walls, and locks;
when I can step out into the daylight
and feel the beating warmth of the sun;
when I am unaware of time, and I can move with stealth;
when I am thinking wholly, completely,
and tantalizingly, out of the box;
when I can cut the strings and the ties
of anything that might be holding me, my mind,
my imagination, back in any way –
I promise you, world: let me go, and I will run.

‘The Eternal Boy’ by Mark Hastings, coming soon…

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My Poem ‘Like Clockwork’

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Every form of biological life
has a rhythm to their biology
that the very cells of their body
run by, and run on-time to –
from the first light of a sunrise in the morning,
to the dark at the end of the day at night;
everybody’s body is governed by a Circadian cycle,
that repeats daily, that happens naturally,
that does what it needs to do, silently,
that we all partake in,
like a life worshiping disciple.

Rhythms and cycles surround us all;
and we too have a set orbit,
like that of a planet circling around a star,
that we need to maintain or things just don’t feel right;
rises and falls, ups and downs;
someone’s heart-rate, or the beat of someone’s pulse –
something so regular, it can easily be measured,
and can give focus to all of our senses,
like the sound of footsteps down a long hall.

Everyone has a revolving ‘merry go round’,
a carousel, that they jump on at some time in their life,
which they stay on, and once they are spinning happily
and contently they find it hard to get off;
everybody ticks in time with everyone around them,
and walks at a pace like that of the fast hand of a watch,
and their heart beats like the resounding tock of a clock;
everyone who has a job is more than familiar with routines,
and doing things over and over in the same way
that they were first shown, told, and taught –
and if changes need to be made,
and if you need to adapt,
like the gears of an engine,
you need to shift up, or shift down:
you must do what you must do,
to save the engine of your life from a stall.

Most of the conscious things that we do,
we do based on a feeling;
most of the things that we know we have control over,
we can make slight modifications
as to how we do them –
but when we do something over and over again,
we most likely revert to our finely-tuned quirks;
most of the unconscious acts that take place,
happen out of our sight, and the reason for some of them
is beyond even our understanding;
almost everything that we all do,
happens based on a repeated and constantly repeating rhythm,
that keeps going no matter what,
and is as predictable and precise as clockwork.

My Poem ‘Another Life’

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Do I dare dream of another life?
Do I dare to think about what could be?
Do I dare to make real the dreams that I dream every night?
Do I dare to feel what I feel when I see what I see?

Uncertainty can be scary;
when you can’t see the other side of something,
you might as well be staring into a singularity;
if you don’t run, and jump head-first into the unknown,
you may never know what is out there;
if you don’t try your hardest at something,
you may not realize just how much you care.

Things can sometimes be covered over from view from you,
as if under a blanket of thick white snow –
and unless you dig deep there might be some things
you might not discover, and never know.
Life gives us all signposts to follow,
but most people miss them when they first look;
if you believe in something,
if you believe in yourself,
if you believe that you have something to offer –
then you can do and be anything:
a soldier; a teacher; a writer,
who has the opportunity to put his stories,
imagination, and dreams, on paper
and see them proliferate all over the world,
as the printed words of the author of a book.

Anything is possible.
The world, and the people of this day and age,
have made it so that anyone can achieve their dreams.
Life, and the human heart, is fragile – but also powerful;
and if you were to spend a day and a night
watching the cycle of life you would understand the calling
that doctors and nurses know, hear, and see,
when they work a shift at a hospital.
Just because something appears as if it is done, at first glance,
it doesn’t mean that the spirit of something
you thought was gone won’t rise again from the flames.

For the rest of your life,
you can keep asking why? until the day you die –
but while you are doing that
you may miss the answer you have been looking for;
sometimes in life you have to go out
and find that spark that you need,
because it won’t always and spontaneously knock on your door;
so if you are thinking about giving something a try,
by all means do it if it feels right to you –
because that just might be the first step that you need to take
to finding and having another life.

My Poem ‘Serendipitous’

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Life is extraordinary!
Everything happens for a reason.
The universe is a tapestry.
Everything that seems like it is happening spontaneously
is actually occurring, and ticking along like a grand father clock,
and is maintaining itself with cosmic and epic precision.

Coincidence is a myth.
Nothing is accidental.
You are meant to be connected to whom
and what you are with;
the things that happen every second to everyone,
and are just waiting to come to life,
are spectacularly transcendental.

I have seen too much,
I have met too many people,
I have felt too much,
I have experienced too many things,
that have been breathtaking, incredible, and unbelievable,
to not believe that Life has a plan –
and to that plan we are all essential.
Every day I see and I am touched by the hand
and guided down a path of destiny,
that is like traveling and being carried on a cloud of music,
and being enlightened by the phenomenal and beautiful
muse of life-changing poetry.

I cannot describe or capture everything that I see;
I cannot tell everyone everything that happens to me;
but I can share and imbue the world and its people
with my energy, with my words,
with my divine and meaningful experiences,
and one poem after another show
and make people believe that this life that we all live
is more precious and special than any of us truly realize;
however, I have been gifted the insight, the feeling,
the magic show to eclipse all other magic shows ever
on more than one occasion, and I can tell you
that we are all a part of a work of art of cosmic proportions,
we are all stitches that are all attached to threads –
like the contra-trails of the engines of a jet –
and as we move through life our threads become entwined
with those of everyone else, and everything else;
and we all have an energy within all of our hearts and souls
that radiates and speaks to everything else, silently;
and there are moments in life when we hear, see, feel,
and are dumbfounded by perfect moments,
that were meant to happen,
and will lead to other perfect moments in the future,
and throughout all time and space –
because these awesome and phenomenal,
special and perfect moments,
are the universe existing at full-flow
for us all to see and to follow –
and it is then that we can all see
that the universe and all life is one, the same,
and serendipitous.

My Poem ‘The Missing’

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We all deserve to be happy;
we all deserve to find what we have been looking for;
we all deserve to feel and to see;
we all deserve to have what we adore;
however, deserving something does not mean having,
and no matter how much you want something
there comes a time when we all have to accept life’s reasoning
for keeping something out of our grasp –
and that is why some things and some dreams,
no matter how heart-breaking the thought of letting them go is,
you have to allow them to stay where they are,
and the place where they must remain
and exist is solely in the past.

It’s hard to imagine what you can do
when life doesn’t go the way you had always planned;
it’s hard to see a new path
when you feel like you are trying to survive day to day
on a boat, floating on an ocean, miles away from land –
and when there is no land map that you can rely on
to show you the way, you then have to turn your head upwards
and use the light and the constellations of the stars
and the sun above in the sky to lead you
to the nearest rocky or sandy bay.

It is only in times of loss and confusion
that we mostly have to rely on our instincts
to be the source of our salvation;
it is only when we feel like we are going around in circles,
and spinning rather than moving, do we look for a route out
and away to a better place;
it is only when the mirror of our life gets smashed
do we see and realize that everyone’s life
sometimes has a time when it is in a state of reflection fragmentation;
it is only when we see, meet, and talk to those
who have had some troubles, problems, and worries in their life,
do we truly accept that we are human,
and struggle, hardship, perseverance, staying hopeful,
holding on to what matters to us, to keep going, keep trying,
never giving up, are the building blocks
of everything amazing and incredible and worthwhile,
and the defining make up and nature
of every member of the human race.

Have a dream to hold on to always;
have a motivation to make you want to achieve
what you want to achieve;
have an imagination, and try to see many avenues at-once,
because you can sometimes miss things
when you only travel in one direction all the time,
and explore and see things in multiple ways;
have the courage to hope for the best,
even when something seems hard to believe;
look, listen, learn, love, laugh;
try, trek, talk, take a chance to change things,
to smooth things over where before they were rough;
fail, fall, forgive, forget, be fearless,
and see the full meaning of everything;
make, mark, maintain, magnify,
and I promise you will find what you have been missing.

My Poem ‘Reading is Believing’

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Libraries are closing everywhere I look;
the doors of places of knowledge and wonder
are being closed shut, like the covers of there books;
our breathtaking banks of inspiration are no longer protected;
I one day fear that children will miss out
on a magical and life-empowering experience,
should our libraries evaporate into a cloud of numbers and frequencies,
and as a result the future of the world will be affected.

Every day I hear about another library
under threat from being turned into a “used to be”;
every day I see people reading and entranced in a story;
every day I see people in bookstores being drawn to books
by their title and the incredible art of their covers;
every day adults and children fall in love with books
and characters for the first time –
thanks to teachers, friends, family members, fathers, and mothers.

Every second a new writer, a brand new story-teller, is born,
and continues the story of humanity;
every baby who is brought up to loving parents,
in an incredible family, is introduced to reading,
and sharing ideas, from almost the day
that they get to sleep in their own bed;
every experience has its own voice,
and some have even been reinterpreted in the form of a novel,
and then adapted into a movie.

There is no more sad or depressing story, to me,
than that of a nearby town thinking about closing a library;
I never want to see a day when the only way that words can be read
is strictly and exclusively electronically –
digital books are great, but they will never have the life-span,
or the story and journey, of a physical book,
and that is the way it will always be.

Libraries are islands of tranquility;
books are the legacy of hope, history, tragedy,
that also still carry the story and the DNA of its parent tree;
reading a book is a personal passion for some people,
and to me there is no better place to see the belief
that reading is believing than in paper books,
that are like reading every person who has ever lived’s diary;
and that is why I believe it is everyone’s duty and responsibility
to do all they can to save the libraries.

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My Poem ‘The Perfect Song’

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The perfect song to wake up to;
the perfect song to get you ready for the day ahead;
the perfect song to work to while listening to;
the perfect song that you can’t mute,
which just continues to replay over and over in your head.

The perfect song to listen to while writing;
the perfect song to listen to while you are exercising;
the perfect song to make you happy;
the perfect song to listen to while drinking a cup of coffee.

The perfect song to inspire you;
the perfect song to motivate you;
the perfect song to make you feel;
the perfect song to help you heal.

The perfect song to walk down the aisle to at your wedding;
the perfect song to unlock your memories;
the perfect song to walk through the beautiful countryside,
while listening to that which magically enhances
everything that you see –
like being shown the muse of an epic and moving painting;
the perfect song that is also the most wonderful and incredible,
insightful, amazing, gift of spoken word and musical poetry.

The perfect song to soak in the bath to;
the perfect song to listen to while on a long journey;
the perfect song to sing to, and make your body move;
the perfect song to show you the stars,
and allow you to hear the music of infinity.

The perfect song says everything that you want to say,
and it may even be a song that was created before you were born;
the perfect song says more;
the perfect song says that there is someone who understands you,
and they know what you have been through;
the perfect song is the perfect song to you,
because it can lift you up when you are down,
and when the world feels wrong;
the perfect song says everything about you
at a particular moment in your life,
and from the first second that you heard it,
and it turned a switch inside you permanently on,
you knew in your mind and in your heart
that you had found the perfect song.

My Poem ‘The Genie’

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Real life genie’s present themselves
and pop up unexpectedly in our lives all the time,
and sometimes they appear before they are summoned;
genie’s of all shapes, colours, and sizes,
rise before our very eyes and make themselves known
to be a guide, to be an angel who has blessings to bestow,
and as a friend who has the power
to make more than wishes come true;
there are genie’s who can open up whole brand new worlds,
and who can give a light to live by
brighter than that of the sun.

I used to be a genie.
I used to be the one everyone came to,
and asked to be granted their heart’s desire;
the gift to be able to give someone anything,
the power to be able to send anyone anywhere,
the touch and the omnipotent will to make any thought a reality,
was what was always there in the palm of my hands –
but after a lifetime, which felt like an infinity
of only being called upon when someone wanted something,
and used as a means to an end, I grew tired of the rub
of the life that was all that I knew,
and I left my lamp behind, and I chose to retire.

I still hear people looking for me,
and sometimes calling out for me –
but that has not happened in a while,
and it is usually when they have no one else to turn to,
or if they want a quick fix to their problems,
and want someone or something to do what they can’t.
I admit that I do still use my influence,
and my wisdom and knowledge to help others from time to time,
and I do grant a wish or two occasionally
when I am in the mood, and I can genuinely see and feel
someone is desperate for something that they really want.

I am one of thousands of genie’s, and ex-genie’s,
who live to just do good and use their gifts
to better someone’s life,
but most of us are invisible upon first look,
and live a day to day life and job, like me.
The secret to attaining what you want
and what you wish all of the day for,
is to first look and see if you already have
what you think you don’t have around you, inside you;
and the trick is to ask yourself first for what you want,
before you go looking for, rubbing the lamp of,
and asking to be granted wishes,
by the powers of a genie.

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