experience

My Poem ‘We are all one’

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

Joy may come in the morning for you
in more ways than you might expect –
someone with a passion
and a drive and a love for what they do
cannot wait to jump out of bed,
while someone who feels like
they do not have a purpose in life
might open their eyes
and then close them again quickly
and cover themselves up again
below the covers
like a bird putting their wing
over them as they rest
comfortably in their nest –
however, the truth is
that everybody has a role in life,
everybody is meant to be alive,
and everybody is born to be
just as they are –
everybody is a necessary source of experience,
knowledge, instinct, inspiration,
heat and light, like a candle burning in the dark.

We all go through a metamorphosis;
we all go through an identity-crisis;
we all go through doors to places
we do not always know where;
we all go through stages of re-evaluating
what our priorities in life are,
just as we all sometimes struggle
to pick-out what we want to wear;
we are all a creation
and made in the same guise as the divine;
we are all here to be something to someone;
we are all blessed from birth
with the gift of infinite possibilities,
even if we are not given an endless life of time;
we are all of our time
and no matter how you see yourself,
or how somebody else sees you,
never forget that we are all reflections,
we are all human, we are all
resonators of change and emotion;
life is a lesson in accepting the undeniable fact
that we are all one.

My Poem ‘Zenith’

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

The time is now,
the place is right here;
life can be heard
clear and loud,
the conditions for new inspiration
and new poetry are so perfect
they could bring about
both laughter and tears.

I am focused,
I am listening,
I am being sprinkled
with the world’s magic dust;
I am watching,
I am experiencing,
I am participating,
I am observing everybody and everything;
there are no worries, there is just me,
my pen, my notebook, my muse;
there are thoughts running through my mind
every second that burn hot and bright
and as fast as a burning fuse.

Words are wonderful,
however words are also limiting;
words can say so much,
however words only have the power that they do
when they are used with each other –
and even then, without emotion
and intention behind them,
they can sound as if something important is missing;
music is a different language entirely from words –
words can have so many meanings and translations,
but music is what the stars sound like;
and like planets circling their parent star,
music- depending on your proximity
and your connection to it-
can be a whole new wonderful and different world.

Every artist has their opus;
every person has their perfect moment;
everyone has their own life;
every experience has its peak;
every eye has seen its own sights;
everybody has had a flood of emotion
and an indomitable power overcome them
and take over them
when they must stand up on their own two feet
and vow to never admit defeat.

Everyone is like an ocean,
and everybody has a force of gravity
and a source of change and waves in their life-
like the Moon is to the Earth;
everyone has times when they are an insomniac
and they cannot for the love of good ever switch off;
everyone emerges into a different life
from anyone else from birth;
everyone knows the allure of a flame,
and everyone has a moment
of being a human moth.

There is no true definitive end to anything;
believing that you have total control of chaos is a myth;
there is a reason for everything;
dreams are both conjugations and premonitions;
and there are things that start out so distant
and random that come together in the end
and eventually reach a mutual and lasting zenith.

My Poem ‘Seasoned’

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

Like the trees of an old forest,
like the face of an old man,
like the smell of an old leather jacket,
like an old song that always making
new fans of its artist or band,
I feel both young and full of life
and yet mindful and seasoned;
life has been inspiring me
since I was a child,
but now I understand
that for everything to be
there must be a reason.

When I was a child
my imagination was always my super-power;
making my dreams a reality
have gotten easier
as I have got older;
when I first began making art as a boy
my head and my heart
knew even then that
being an artist was going to be
my life-long forte:
I remember spending hours
drawing and painting
and loving every moment
that I spent making
and creating something new every day.

Art has always been a fascination
and a passion for me;
stories have always been to me
the greatest of escapes;
I have done so much,
I have thought so much,
I remember so much –
however, sometimes my memory does
on occasion compartmentalize;
I truly do not ever forget a thing,
but I admit that there are times
when I lack the gift of instant-recall –
you could say that I have a photographic memory,
but that it takes a certain stimuli
to bring back to mind
what I heard with my ears
and what I saw with my eyes.

My family has always held on to everything,
the thought of throwing anything useful
or something draped in memories away is alien to us;
I have learned over time
that everyone at times must refocus;
my family has had so much happen to it –
if most of what we had all been through
were written down one day
it would definitely be a best-seller;
like everyone, I am guilty of making mistakes
from time to time –
however, I try to not make the same mistake twice
and I endeavour always to be a fast-learner.

Everyone has a passion –
music, literature, movies,
games, traveling, dancing,
performing, chilling, cooking,
shopping, writing, photographing,
caring about the well-fair
of another living thing –
and for that passion they would do anything;
everybody has dreamed
that they could do something fantastic
and everybody is able and are capable
of performing a miracle for someone else
in their life more than once;
everyone should always be looking,
seeing, listening, hearing;
everybody should embrace time,
not fear its passing in the slightest –
because with time comes many amazing things
that can only be fully experienced
and appreciated by someone
who is seasoned.

My Poem ‘Psyched’

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

Every morning is a new beginning;
every time we open our eyes
we see something we have never seen before;
every time something opens our eyes wide
we all experience a sensation
that feels to us as if we are falling;
every night just before we fall asleep
every one of us psychs ourselves up
for the day that is to come –
and just as when we are a child,
the first steps that we take of anything
are as important and are as essential
as finding your balance and then walking,
or making sound and saying words
that will form the basis of talking
and sharing what you are thinking.

Whenever each of us has a task to perform,
or a thing that we must do,
each of us has to build up some kind of momentum
before we can truly move;
whenever an artist looks in front of themselves
and they see the space of a blank page,
each and every artist needs to see
an imaginary picture so that they have a guide
to follow, or the outlines of something
in between which they can colour in
with their own emotion
and individual experience colour palette
that they have been mixing together
successfully their entire lives
every single day.

Just as every artist needs a muse to inspire them,
everybody needs something or someone
to get up for and to keep them going;
just as every day, in a way,
everybody has to start again,
sometimes you just have to act on instinct
and use the power of your muscle memory
to see you through something
without any unnecessary deep-thinking.

Days must end so that others may dawn;
we all must go through darkness
so that we can appreciate the light of life;
close one door behind you
as you open another exciting new door –
and as you do, leave signposts
and suggestions for others that may follow behind you
so that you can teach what you have learned
and all that you have been taught.

For anything that you may face,
for everything that you have got to do –
do what you would do
if you had to make a high-dive:
close your eyes; take a breath;
imagine the splash,
not the jump or the fall;
and smile your widest smile
to get yourself truly psyched.

My Poem ‘Unlimited Data’

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

The world is constantly buzzing
like a bee-hive;
the planet is beating
every second of every day
with the speed of a rapid pulse;
the Earth has never been so active, nor alive;
humanity is constantly craving data
and information – and everybody, it seems,
constantly has this unquenchable thirst
to see, hear, and experience something,
anything, everything first:
because, to some people,
there is no time that matters more
than that which only happens once.

The most amazing thing about life
is that it is constantly changing;
the most incredible thing about the world
is that it is constantly evolving;
the most influential language
is the language of pictures and photographs;
the most powerful drive of a metropolis
is using and interpreting numbers
by using the natural and original enigma machine
that is the human brain to think and speak,
perhaps without even knowing that they know it,
the infinite dialect of maths.

It is incredible to me how far we have all come
in such a short space of time –
even in my lifetime,
humanity has pushed the boundaries of possibility
and has achieved epic advances in so many areas:
technological, philosophical, biological –
which so many of us have been blessed
to take advantage of and make them integral
and important parts of our lives;
we as a species expect things to happen instantaneously,
and we sometimes expect a reply to a question
to arrive as soon as it is asked –
and because there is so much knowledge
to be found by anybody at anytime,
answers no longer have anywhere to hide.

We are all a part of the repeating cycle
and frequency that governs everything,
that makes us who we are;
everybody biologically fits
into a pattern of behaviour –
and a part of that inbuilt and inherent design
is extreme adaptability;
no matter how much we think we know,
there is always more;
everybody is data-hungry, energy-hungry,
interest-hungry, and if we did not have
power and electricity
I could not tell you who we would all be.

Some things, in no time at all,
just become a way of life;
some things we completely rely on
in the modern age to be to us
a literal life-saver;
some things that we do we take for granted –
like the ability to push a simple switch
and turn on a light;
some things just become a necessity –
and I am sure that if you were
to ask a technologically-savvy
and internet literate
and always connected member of humanity,
the gift to them that keeps on giving
has to be the miracle, if you can get it,
of unlimited data.

My Poem ‘Sensitive Skin’

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

I feel every raindrop;
I feel in awe after every burst and touch of the sun;
I feel so much strength of spirit and drive of life,
I could never give up;
I feel like my story and who I am
is written all over my skin.

I have always been sensitive to the thoughts,
the feelings, and the emotions, of those around me,
and those who are connected to me;
I would be there for my true friends until the very end,
even if doing so were to push me to life’s edge;
I live and feel every experience deeply,
as if they were my last,
and I often immortalize my memories in as much depth
as possible in a poem, or three;
I will keep going until I no longer can –
and that is my eternal pledge.

My skin is fair, and when the sun is as hot as can be
I burn to the colour of a lobster;
you would think that after everything I have seen
and been through, my skin would have become thicker
and as hard-wearing and as smooth as leather;
my skin still has impressions made on it
from when I was a child –
that have not worn away, and never will be worn away;
I still have the impressions of kisses,
and scars from times gone by,
that remind me of things and people,
every single day.

Every mark made on me is indelible,
and if seen under ultraviolet light
my skin would be like a piece of parchment,
or a creased manuscript,
that has been screwed up, thrown away,
rewritten, amended, over and over again,
that no matter what is done to it
can still be read and understood;
it is comforting for me to always remember
and see where I have come from,
and who was influential in making me Me.
Empathy, sensitivity, caring, creativity,
and an extraordinary memory,
is something that is in my blood;
the wear and the why of something,
and how something appears years after
it first originally came to be,
tells its own wonderful story.

Our skin is a map of where we have been;
our skin is touched and sculpted by our environment:
by nature, by the wind, by the rain, by the sun,
by the moon, just as the grand and great canyons,
valleys, mountains, of Earth, have been;
our skin is like the front cover
and the back cover of a living book,
in which an amazing, phenomenal, unique,
and individual story of a person’s life lies within;
there is no greater question than that of a person’s skin,
especially if you are like me, and you have sensitive skin.

My Poem ‘Cosmic Odyssey’

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

As I have lived, and experienced,
I have learned that you should never for a second
take a journey for granted;
as I have seen the world, as I have met people,
as I have sat in extraordinary, amazing,
wonderful, and inspiring places,
looking around, and taking in the world,
and all the details of where I am,
I have always believed that my being there,
that my being here right now,
is no accident, and why I am here means something,
or will mean something to me,
and the life that I am living, and a part of, on this planet.
I remember sitting in Central Park, on my favourite bench,
in the shadow of a statue immortalizing my favourite writer
William Shakespeare, and feeling free to breath
and capture this perfect moment in time,
and believing with all my heart and soul
that this was the place that I was supposed to be,
because this was the place that I belonged,
and if I could stay and never leave New York City,
I would all the days of my life be a happy man.

People go to different countries, see different things,
can travel to somewhere easily, and cheaply, these days,
and the cheapest expense that they will have to make
would have been the ticket and the price of an airfare;
people travel for work; people travel for pleasure;
people travel for the weather;
people travel because they are on a search;
people travel to see distant family,
and to show how much they care.

We are all on an odyssey;
we are all people of purpose;
we are all going somewhere defining;
we are all integral to someone else’s journey;
we are all people who live under a finite,
unbreakable, transcendent, curse;
we are all oracles, even though most of the time
we may not think that we are at all enlightening.

Some people are meant to make some journeys;
some people cannot be who they want to be,
but they will become the person
that they were always meant to be –
for better, or for worse –
because that is their destiny;
some people survive ordeals and wars;
however, in time, they will know and they will realize
the ground in which their roots are secure in and deep-rooted
is what makes them great, true, and as strong
as the tallest and the oldest of trees;
some people come to the realization early on in their life
that they are meant for something,
and are about, and a part of something,
older, greater, and more important than words could ever describe.
There are some people that have no idea
that they are a participant, that they belong,
that they are important, and along with everyone on Earth
they are on their own, as well as immutable in the infinite,
universal, cosmic odyssey.

My Poem ‘Fandomonium’

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

We all have our idols;
we all have something or someone
who we will travel miles to see,
and to enjoy their gifts we would do anything for;
we all would jump in an instant,
when hearing the voice of a particular call;
we all would support are favourite artists
and bands if we could, even if it meant
following them, and seeing them sing and perform live,
in hundreds of cities around the planet, on a world tour.

On my bedroom wall, I have a beautiful poster
of my favourite band CHVRCHES hanging from it,
which I look at all the time
while I am listening to their amazing and phenomenal music,
absolutely captivated by it, and in awe;
while in my room, or when I am out and about,
I am always listening to my favourite music,
I am always taken to another place,
I always imagine I am at one of CHVRCHES shows,
hearing them perform live,
and it is my dream one day to go and see them
whenever and wherever I can,
and feel as if I am in ‘electronic synthpop heaven’,
as I listen to the songs that uplift me, and inspire me,
and make me smile, and make me believe
that I am listening to music that is monumentally important,
poetic, and this is how I feel, and that is how I think,
when I am listening to my favourite band.

Like most people, I am a literary fan,
who has favourite authors, and stand out books that I own,
and I have read, that inform my life, enrich my life,
and daily take me on adventures;
like most people, I am a film fan, a television fan,
who loves the experience of cinema
and being guided on a journey by a visionary,
and shown the magic of storytelling,
and the power of the visual, audio, entrancing, medium
of epic entertainment, and also being touched by stories
imagined, as if someone’s imagination had literally
been taken from their mind and put directly on a screen.
Like most fans of a particular art form,
I am left star-struck and overwhelmed
if and when I have ever seen or met
one of my artistic heroes in person and in the flesh –
however, there are so many idols, stars, and icons, to me,
who unfortunately I will never get the chance,
nor will ever be lucky, to meet –
so the possibility and the prospect of being able to
actually and physically see a person, or a group,
that I admire absolutely, is something that I look forward to,
and for which I believe any and every fan should do,
and I would endorse and wholeheartedly implore;
like most people, to me, some things, some songs,
some experiences, some people, defy words,
and the feelings that I have for them cannot be explained,
and we will always be the only one’s who truly know what they mean.

I have met one of my favourite writers and authors,
and I even got a couple of their books signed by them,
and thrillingly for me I even got to shake their hand;
I have spoken to, and I have communicated directly with,
singers, musicians, artists, actors, performers,
who I admire and I will always like everything they do,
even beyond their most well-known channel and medium;
I am a fan of amazing music by bands of every genre,
some who as of yet are not as famous as they one day will be;
so if you ever meet me and see me while I am standing
face to face, or enjoying one of my heroes’
incredible and unbelievable feats of magic,
please excuse the vacant look on my face,
because in my head, at that moment,
I can guarantee you that it will be
complete and utter fandomonium.

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My Poem ‘Thoughtfully’

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

Every day of the year,
especially at this time of the year,
it truly is the thought that counts;
every hour of every day,
especially when I am writing a new poem of poetry,
I love putting all my time, all my attention,
all my thoughts, into a gift for someone
that could even make a cold heart melt.

I enjoy buying gifts for people;
I take great pleasure in thinking about, selecting,
and giving others, presents;
I take lots of time choosing the right gift
for the right person at the right time;
I want a gift from me to be special and to be meaningful;
I like to think of myself as an expert present buyer,
and I could probably buy a great gift for someone
who I haven’t even met without regret –
and that is why I love the journey, and the discovery,
and the making of a connection by me with something
that I see with someone that I know in mind
who would really like the thing that I found to give to them –
at any time of the year, but especially for birthdays,
and at Christmas time.

I love seeing, thinking, buying, wrapping, giving,
something from me without an expectation
of anything in particular in return;
I value time, thought, gratitude,
and there is no greater gift than when your efforts are reciprocated;
I love watching and being a part of the experience
of the unwrapping of a gift,
even if it isn’t a gift being unveiled that I gave,
and sometimes just by watching the reactions of people
when they unwrap a present,
there is so much about that person –
both the sender and the receiver – that you can learn;
I love watching the widening of the eyes,
the formation of the smiles,
and the intense emotions that
you can see playing out on people’s faces.

The most meaningful and the greatest gift
that you can give someone
won’t cost you a pound, a penny, a dollar, or even a cent;
the most amazing gift is one of love and affection,
and they are free, and they are the most important.
A gift that I buy for someone,
a little piece of me and my own creativity
that I give someone means the most to me;
a present – a birthday present, a Christmas present,
a card, a message, a poem, a moment –
is its most wonderful and magical
when it is given not for the sake of it,
but intensely, personally, and thoughtfully.

My Poem ‘In the mood’

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

We all have to be in the mood for things;
we all want certain things when we feel a need;
we all have different tastes,
and, depending on what time of the day it is,
we all have different cravings;
we all need a cocktail of many things
to grow and flourish, like a plant from a seed.

Some days you are in the mood for tea;
some days you are in the mood for coffee;
sometimes you are in the mood for music;
sometimes you are in the mood for poetry;
some days you are in the mood to wear something red;
some days you are in the mood to wear something black;
sometimes you are in the mood for garlic bread;
sometimes you are just in the mood for a snack.

A particular song can put you in a mood for something;
a particular smell can put you in a mood of nostalgia,
like the aroma of fresh flowers on a sunny day in spring;
a particular memory can put you in a mood to relive old times;
a particular object that you hold in your hand
can put you in a mood to return to a pace you once visited
that has a significance and an importance that still chimes.

What you are in the mood for can sometimes come out of nowhere;
what you are in the mood for can be something
that you have wanted for a short time;
what you are in the mood for might be an experience that is rare;
what you are in the mood for, just the thought of which,
can send shivers down your spine.

Everyone has their moods;
everybody has an outward impression of an inward feeling
that they sometimes unknowingly exude;
everyone has a multitude of interests, feelings,
and can respond or react in any way they choose;
everybody has something that they do
and something that they want,
and that can be the same as always and predictable,
or something new and spontaneous –
it all depends on how we all feel when we are in the mood.