This episode is a part of Mark’s “A Journey Through Poetry” – a personal reflection of his life as a poet, a writer, and a author – in which he recites a different poem from every one of his poetry collections. In this episode Mark recites his poem ‘Forever Dreamer’, from his poetry collection Poet of the Sphere, and he gives some insight and some context into why he was inspired to write this poem in particular.
dreamer
My Poem “Explorer”
Whenever I look up at the stars,
whenever I look towards the peak of a mountain,
whenever I look at an image of The Moon or Mars,
something within me is always awakened,
something within calls upon me
to want to venture towards the unknown,
something within longs to drive me to go
where I have never been before,
and I cannot stop myself from setting out
upon an open road -
one that might see me jump inside a cockpit,
one that might see me climb a rock face,
one that might see me put on a spacesuit
and be launched upon a rocket and into space.
I have always wondered what we will find above the clouds,
I have always been curious about
what lives below the surface of the sea,
I have always been fascinated by
what artists create and why,
and I have always been inspired by
the universe of countless points of life
and the possibilities that await us on
the journey of the future that humanity
will never cease to be enriched by
as we reach higher, farther, and faster
than even our dreams could imagine…
I have always been a dreamer -
but I am also someone who gravitates towards
and likes to be surrounded by people
who are not afraid to be themselves
and who know they are different from
the majority of people they know,
because they are who influence and inspire me
to never stop doing what I do.
Exploration comes in many forms…
the reasons why we are all here
and why we want to be interconnected
so irrevocably to one another
speaks to something about us all
that manifests itself in the ways
that we seek out and look for answers,
because we are presented with a reality
that makes us feel like we are in a mindset
in which everything we thought we knew
is now in question and must be explored…
since I was a child, I have been walking through forests,
I have been following the trail of discovery,
I have been watching the world and its people
and I have seen change happen
within the blink of an eye,
and as time has gone on I have become
increasingly more interested
in decoding the mysterious messages
left behind by nature and by our ancestors
who wished for us to understand what
we can achieve if we don’t stop pushing forwards
in whatever direction we want to go -
however what we might uncover might not be what, nor where,
we expected to find what have been unconsciously looking for.
I have never let anything, nor anybody,
stop me from being who I have always felt I should be:
someone who feels at home while outdoors;
someone who can be happy and content
while delving into my own thoughts
and wondering what I will do
with what will inevitably emerge
from the event of creation in my imagination;
someone who always remembers where I have been -
which is why I seldom feel lost;
someone who never stops finding something,
or someone, to be inspired by;
someone who can go somewhere
and repeatedly be struck by a deep
and profound feeling of awe.
I have always been, and I always will be,
someone who is a voyager,
someone who is a discoverer,
someone who is a wanderer,
someone who is the definition of an explorer.
A Poem A Day #403: My Dream
A Poem A Day #297: Dreams
A Poem A Day #3: Forever Dreamer
My Poem “Getting Ahead of Myself”
As a child, I always looked to the future…
as a child, when I imagined what would be,
I was always sure that things would turn out
like they were predicted to
in films and in television shows
that I watched which depicted
a world to come when anything
and everything was possible:
including vacations on the Moon,
underwater cities, and, of course, time-travel.
As a child, I was always hopeful
of a bright and inspirational tomorrow –
because looking immediately
for the positive of any situation
for me has always been in my nature…
as a child, I was like Luke Skywalker,
in the Star Wars movies:
always looking to the horizon
and always believing that anybody –
even someone as seemingly
bad as Darth Vader could be
redeemed and returned
from the dark side to the light.
As a child, fantasy worlds
drew me to them, because
what I saw and who I saw
had this magic to them
that had aspects to them
that were incredibly enthralling –
including: quests, adventures,
and other realities that seemed
wonderfully exciting.
As a child, real life was somewhere
where I interacted with my family,
where I hung out with my friends,
where I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
and where there wasn’t such things
as flying cars, teleporters,
jet-packs, and robots who
looked as human as anybody I knew –
but I knew that one day all those
things that the television showed me
would come true one day.
As an adult, when I look around
at the world of the present –
while simultaneously reflecting
back upon the past and at what I used
to believe would be a reality
when I was all grown-up –
there are times when I genuinely
have to ask myself,
in the words of Freddie Mercury:
“Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?”
As I have grown older
and as I have seen and experienced
even more of the world,
my instant impulse to imagine
possibilities before they happen
is still my immediate instinct –
and though there have indeed
been times in my life when my belief
that the world is innately hopeful
and optimistic has been tested,
I will never be convinced by
anything or by anybody
to stop reaching for that which
seemingly lies upon a higher shelf of life,
and I will never stop being someone
who naturally and occasionally
gets ahead of himself.
My Poem “Synchronicity”
Hope for the best…
be the best at what you do…
look for the best in everything…
make the best of what comes to you.
Every day is a test…
every day is a puzzle…
every day is both simple and complex…
every day is one of an infinite number
in the age of the universe –
and yet every day is special in some way,
shape, or form, because every day is not
the same as any other…
every day is as precious
and as ephemeral and as transient
as a dream or a bubble.
In this life, you have to be prepared
for the unexpected – but, at the same time,
be flexible and mindful that whatever plans
you make may need some slight adjustments
along the way in order to make them
come to fruition…
in this life, you sometimes have to use
your intuition about something
in order to give you the much needed
motivation to not be disheartened
by the negative voices
that are sometimes directed
in your direction.
Being a dreamer does not mean
that you live in a fantasy –
every idea that ever became
a reality was once the dream
and the wish of someone with a vision
of a world that they could one day
influence and leave their mark upon.
Being human means that you sometimes
have to see the end before the beginning,
you have to leap before you look,
you have to let your mind wander
and let your thoughts influence your actions,
you have to fall on your face,
get back up, and never stop
believing in the good that can come
from following and using your inner
search engine of inspiration –
filled with a life-time of moments,
images, sounds, and feelings –
that is your life and has the power
to influence the course of your life
far into the future and give you
the answer, the truth, the path,
the direction that will one day
synchronize and symbolize
every moment of your life.
My Poem “Touched”
I am no one special,
I am but a poet, a writer, a dreamer,
an optimist, a hopeful romantic –
however, there have been times in my life
when I have felt truly touched and honored
that something that I wrote or created
touched someone else
so much so that they wanted
to share that which I expressed from my mind,
from my heart, and from my soul,
at a fundamental moment in their lives
because it meant something to them:
a friend of mine once asked me if they could
have a poem that I wrote read
at their wedding ceremony,
I was once asked to write a poem
that would ultimately inspire the creation
of a brand new song,
and just recently a poem that I wrote
and I recorded myself reciting 10 years prior
was incorporated into a song
that I must admit to listening to all the time…
I am no one special –
I never have been someone who
has ever had a natural talent
to sing about from the rooftops –
but I have always had a way with words,
I have always had a love of language,
and I have always believed that words
should flow when they are read
and they should enter a person’s consciousness
in the same way that music does…
I am no one special –
I have been told that
I used to be a bit of narcissist
when I was younger –
however, these days, I do not
pat myself on the back as much as I used to,
and even though I believe that
I have learned a lot as I have lived,
I still think that there is
so much more to life that I have to learn…
I am no one special, I am no angel –
however, I just hope that people will
remember me long after my body has turned to dust…
I am no one special, I have made mistakes –
but I must admit that no matter
what happens to me, and where I end up,
I can honestly say that I really did
try my best throughout my life
to be the best person that I could be,
and I will always be eternally grateful
to everybody who has given me the gift
of touch and who has enabled me to be
someone who has made a difference
by making people feel
as if they have been touched.
My Poem “The Old Mark”
There is a man looking at me
before my eyes…
there is a man looking at me
who I do not recognize…
there is a man looking at me
who has my memories…
there is a man looking back at me
as I look at them who has been
growing within me for years…
there is a man who has lived
every day with me, and I realize
now that we are eye to eye who they are…
there is a man who is as close
as can be to me
who used to be nothing more
than a shadowy figure on the horizon…
there is a man who looks like a man,
but who also seems so alien to me
that for all I know
he could have come from Mars…
there is a man who was once young
and unscarred by life, by people, and by himself,
but who is who I see now in X-ray
and for all his faults…
I see myself as I once was, and as I am now –
one and the same, a man of light and a man of dark…
I see the young dreamer,
and the old Mark.
Mark The Poet 