dreaming

My Poem ‘Imagine like Lennon’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dreamers never stop dreaming,
dreamers take great comfort
and they feel great joy
in the knowledge
that they are not the only ones;
imagineers never stop imagining,
and because their thoughts,
dreams, and hopes never stop coming
and flowing, miraculous new discoveries
and ideas come to light
and are allowed to shine
all over the world on the eyes
and from the hearts of countless people,
as if they were new born stars and suns.

An artist in an artist from birth;
a storyteller is a reader of other stories
by other writers, who has always felt
compelled to create stories of their own
and take people on a journey;
many artists have sought inspiration from above,
like the first drop of rain
that began all the oceans of Earth;
to be who you are meant to be in all walks of life,
and in all stages of creativity and evolution,
everybody must be able to just be.

There is a moment, there is a spark,
there is a light, that brightens the dark,
there is an instant of change,
there is a time to step back
and rethink and reinvent,
there is sometimes one perfect expression
that is beyond any and all words
that could ever fill a single page;
there must be a world within you
where you can go to that is even more
limitless and boundless than the universe,
where your inner identity can run free;
there must be an outlet for you to do what you know;
there is always someone who has a great many things
in common with you, in any and every direction
to every degree;
there is always a side to you
that you cannot completely show.

Being a poet is like being a player
of an imaginary instrument
that only you have the knowledge
and the gift to be able to play
as exquisitely as it can possibly be played;
musicians of physical instruments
are able to play their music
and give rise to vibrations
that literally can touch and speak
to the blood, the heart-beats,
and the very core and source of who someone is;
if some things were tangible,
instead of being unbelievably fragile,
and if not everything that meant the most
was not sometimes a struggle,
then there would always be something missing –
however, that is often the case
when choosing a course that is the most
untroublesome and easy;
to dare to dream is to take a chance on a risk.

Heroes are important;
music is a miracle;
every experience is a lesson;
you cannot always have, or get, what you want;
life is too phenomenal to shut yourself away from it –
to enjoy living to the fullest is essential;
greatness cannot be attained alone,
nor can you know or call yourself great –
those who truly know us are the only ones
who can describe us and tell us who we are;
to me, music is where inspiration lives
how we are all supposed to live;
to me, music is heaven, and anyone and everyone
who can feel the meaning of music
deep inside them knows how life-changing
and world-changing it is in all its infinite forms;
and that is why music is so important to me –
because it inspires me to dream like Dylan,
to think like Einstein,
and to imagine like Lennon.

My Poem ‘Children of Tomorrow’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Children always adapt to change quicker;
learning new things to a child is always easier;
children are always asking questions
in search of answers –
sometimes even from strangers;
there is no one as braver as a child,
because to them there is no such thing as danger.

Even though I am slowly growing up
I still share the same fascination
and the same keen interest in the world
and in people as I did when I was a boy;
I can still remember who I was –
what I saw, what I thought,
what I heard, what I felt –
and when I hear a child of today
ask the same questions as I did
when I was younger it fills me with joy.

A city is like a playground to a child;
to a child all the different people
and everyone’s amazing eccentricities
are both wonderful and confusing
at varying times of a given hour;
a city is like being on a great adventure,
when a child is with their parents
and guardians, and to them
it is like being out in the wild;
to a child in a city
every skyscraper is like a magical tower.

The sights and sounds of the world
echo louder and are more profound to a child
than to the ears of an adult;
as we grow older our minds and our hearts
become filled with so many memories,
feelings, and emotions that sometimes
only serve to distract you
from seeing the wonders of the world;
adults are constantly comparing,
where as children never stop seeing,
imagining, and dreaming.

Children know what it means to be alive,
and they never waste a moment to let it show;
a child knows things that some adults have forgotten
and unfortunately no longer understand and know;
children – in body, mind, and spirit –
constantly crave to be on the go;
oh what I wouldn’t give to be a child of today
and one of the lucky children of tomorrow!

My Poem ‘No Filter’

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A beautiful, gorgeous, sunny, warm morning –
with blue sky above, multiple reflections all around,
people coming and going, living, breathing,
seeing, experiencing, and music playing everywhere you are,
and a different voice for every hour that you hear.

I am sitting with a wonderful cup of coffee,
at a table next to a wall of windows
that stretch as far as the eye can see;
I am looking out at the city,
basking in the daylight of sunlight,
feeling energized and inspired
by the atmosphere of outside and inside;
I am seeing, listening, drinking,
thinking, dreaming, feeling,
and doing my favourite thing: writing poetry.

I am in plain sight, and it is as if no one can see me,
or is interested in me, or what I am doing –
nobody would ever think to approach me,
and ask me what I am writing;
however, if someone were to ask me what I am doing,
or how I was feeling, I would tell them that
the only way that I can describe how I am feeling
at this exact moment, is to say that:
I feel as if I am a bird in the sky,
hovering above the rest of the world,
not even needing to flap my wings too much
in any way at any time –
because I know that there are times
when instead of exerting yourself
with a lot of flapping about,
sometimes you can get to where you need to be
by simply using the external forces that surround you,
and using them, if you have the means,
to simply and silently glide.

As I look at the world,
the natural daylight instantly highlights the colours,
the details, the resonant aura of everything,
and the reason for things to be the way
that they click into place;
as I see the spectrum of existence and life jump out at me,
I have the biggest smile on my face;
as I look to the horizon,
and then to what I see right in front of me,
the scale and the impact that hits me
of certain things, that for some reason interest me,
instantly inspire me, and I see patterns repeating,
and shapes that have meaning;
I see and read emotions, attitudes, interests, tastes,
on the faces and in the actions of everybody,
and I am intrigued and fascinated;
and I also see things that I would change, if I could –
if I could just blink, or snap my fingers,
and change someone’s direction,
or show them another choice to make,
or an alternative to something I can see they are about to do –
however, I am merely an observer, a poet,
someone who can only say what he sees,
and express how something makes him feel,
and, though sometimes I wish I were,
I am far from omnipotent,
and that is a good thing.

Life is what it is;
the world is many things,
and is in many states of being, all at once;
some things that happen can feel like a magic trick;
everyone can believe anything they want.
Whether in the bloom of spring;
whether in the cold but beautiful light and air of winter;
whether you are doing something you have done before,
or whether you are being blessed
with the sight of something you cannot ever remember
at any time before seeing;
whether you are sitting, standing, lying, waiting,
and you have a chance, a moment, to look around
and take in life and the world,
do so if you can with perfect vision
and with no need for a filter.

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