experience

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.

My Poem ‘Board Life’

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

Backpack on their back,
baseball cap on back-to-front,
wearing a black hooded-sweatshirt,
skating, standing, talking with one-another-
young, like-minded, boys and girls;
young, similarly-dressed, men and women-
weaving quickly and easily
through the city streets and paths,
getting from place to place,
enjoying themselves, laughing, joking,
smiling, having fun,
jumping, chasing, doing tricks,
doing whatever they want,
and going where they want to go,
by board and by foot,
nothing seems to slow them down-
they are all doing something that they genuinely love.

Seeing so many people with the same interest,
wearing nearly the same colour and design and style of clothing,
I have a momentary flashback to when I was a kid:
when I too had my own skateboard.
I didn’t take skateboarding as seriously as some of my friends did,
but I do remember loving the experience of learning to keep my balance,
changing direction, and when going fast
learning the art of knowing how not to fall.
I didn’t go far on my skateboard,
I probably only went up and down my road,
or maybe around the black;
I didn’t ride around with other skateboarders,
or do too many tricks, or flicks,
and I never felt the sensation of being weightless for a few seconds
after skating down a ramp and going ‘over the top’.

To be a skateboarder, you can be anybody, you can be from anywhere,
and you can speak with any accent,
and still share a common tongue,
with your fellow ‘boarders that doesn’t need to be explained;
to be a skateboarder,
there isn’t a particular code that you have to live by;
to be a skateboarder, you can be yourself,
as well as being a member of a club
in which everyone is one and the same;
to be a skateboarder, means never to have a day
when you think that you have a bored life,
because you are free to go anywhere –
because you live a ‘board life’.

My Poem ‘Elements’

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

Out in the elements,
wrapped up in a big coat
to keep out the cold of the wind;
outside, walking, experiencing a wave of deja vu,
as if doing something that you once dreamed;
the leaves fall all around you;
birds fly from tree to tree;
people off on an adventure race past you
in cars and on bikes;
as you make the most of every moment of freedom
that are so precious,
but you don’t realize how much
until they fade away,
as the light of the day begins to dim.

You can only, truly, speak with clarity
when describing, sharing, and reliving,
an experience that either just happened,
or when recalling the details and the emotions
of a memory that have become the paradise of your life and mind;
you can make things up as you go along,
but there is nothing better than to draw
from that which you already know,
from which you could never be blind.

Earth did not just flash into being in an instant;
the world did not become what it is over night;
even nature was once young and innocent, like an infant;
the beauty of the universe was something that was there
at the moment of creation, but it could not be seen,
felt, perceived, reflected upon,
until the rise, the evolution,
and the question of origins was asked,
by the first of infinite forms of intelligent life.

The smell of a newborn baby;
the aroma of a beautiful flower coming into bloom;
watching someone float in space free of gravity;
seeing the light of the sun at dawn;
glimpsing the light of a full-moon
through the window of a room;
the heart-pounding rush of jumping off a cliff
and flying instead of falling;
thinking about every new horizon and possibility
as an adventure, as well as a calling.

A gift, a present;
a lift; a season of significance;
an important time; a beautiful moment;
a peace of you never to be left behind;
a confluence of life, fate, destiny, karma,
thought, emotion, and reality,
and its connected and miraculous elements.