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My Poem ‘Easy’

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

The sound of a certain someone’s voice,
the need that has no choice;
the sight of a certain someone’s face,
the feeling of loving someone
in so many different ways;
the memory of a certain song,
the meaning that lasts so long;
the plans of the future,
the never-ending embrace
of a perfect lover.

Like the music of your childhood,
like the movies of your youth,
like giving a drop of blood,
like knowing without proof,
like the games that held your attention for hours,
like the tastes that you could never get enough of,
like the transcendental perfection
of the opening petals of a flower,
like the best kind of love
that feels like it has fallen from heaven above.

The easy, the free, the open, the hopeful,
the fresh, the new, the sweet, the beautiful,
the relaxed, the focus, the muse, the opus,
the great, the amazing, the fate, the exciting,
the butterfly, the moth, the smooth, the soft.

When you finally have what you have always wanted,
when you finally know beyond doubt
what you have always thought of,
dreamed about, and wished for,
when your life-long desire is standing
and looking at you on the other side of your eyelids
giving you a kiss,
then you know more than you could have ever known before –
but one thing that you know for certain
is that when things that are amazing
and life-changing are happening because of someone,
every step that you take because of them
is like dancing to the sound
of the beat of a song on a dance-floor.

There are some things that you just can’t make up;
there are some things that have the heart
and the soul of a great poet’s epic poetry;
there are some things that can be said with a look;
there are some things that mean so much,
and if you want them to be
can be so easy.

My Poem ‘America’

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

America the great;
America the amazing;
America the epic;
America, the country,
the dream, the promise,
the pride, the pursuit,
the heart, the place,
the people who will forever
be in my heart and a part of my soul,
that is always calling to me
like a beautiful hopeful light
that never stops dazzling and inspiring me.

The America I know,
the America that I have grown up with,
the America that is like no other country
in the entire world,
that is more like a collective
of fifty different countries in-one,
who are all bound to each other,
and who would not be the same
without each other,
are like the most vast cast imaginable
of the most epic Broadway show;
the America that I have watched,
listened to, and loved since I was a kid,
is a place that has everything
and anything that anyone could ever want,
and the places within America that I have visited
have to be seen to be believed.

Every state has its own dialect,
its own character, its own identity,
its own distinguishing beauty,
customs, food, and music;
every state is like a puzzle piece
that perfectly fits together with the others,
as if since the first settlers arrived
it was always meant to be;
every state will always share more with themselves
than with anywhere else,
and they will always be inextricably linked;
every state lives and breathes
the defining ideal and the founding dream
of the country that they are a part of,
and that is the freedom to be free.

The United States of America
is a country of revolution;
the United States of America
is a country with the strongest
and the most unbreakable constitution;
the United States of America
is, and will always be,
a place where every new day
can be a brand new frontier;
there are hundreds of countries
all over the world –
however, there is nowhere else
that will ever come close to being
the powerhouse of hope, innovation,
leadership, strength, drive,
determination, creativity,
and a beacon for, and to, the entire world,
like the country that is the most phenomenal
of them all, who will forever be
the United States of America.

America poem 2015

My Poem ‘The Reveler’

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

Instantly feeling the life of a party
get inside you, as the music
moves your body to the beat;
living and breathing the life
and the times of a festival,
unable to stop yourself
from moving your feet;
being at a show
and hearing band after band play epically;
losing yourself, finding yourself;
being yourself, embracing your inner-self;
feeling happy, feeling free;
the collective spirit,
emotion, ambiance, and unbridled
and unbounded liberation
is exciting beyond words;
the wondrous magic
is like breathing the air of a brand new world;
the uplifting and enlivening anti-gravity
has you feeling like you are flying like a bird;
the amazing energy penetrates
deep inside you like a sword;
the echoes of waves of sound
emanate and overcome you;
even if the rain was falling
and the sky were a blanket of clouds,
the sun would be shining
and the colour above would be bright blue.

Music is its own language;
music is its own eternal and everlasting age;
music is a force of the universe;
music is what came first;
music is living, breathing, evolving, changing,
and can mean different things
depending on the time that you are listening;
music is meant to be enjoyed and reveled in.

The stage is like a heaven of stars;
the stars of the stage are like angels and messengers;
the songs played are like magic spells of amazing power;
that which raises the heart-rate
and brings stars to everyone’s eyes
is like being in the passenger seat of a speeding car.

If you are wild at heart
and the call of the unseen and the unknown
grips you hard every time you hear it,
then you are a born traveler;
if you can see things
and feel the presence of something divine,
then you are a true believer;
if you feel that every day is a prize
and a gift, then you are always a winner;
if you know what it means to be a part
of something bigger and greater,
that connects you to all levels of nature,
then you are closer than ever to heaven of Earth,
because you are a timeless reveler.

My Poem ‘The Beach’

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

It has been a beautiful day;
it has been a day to remember
in so many ways;
the sparkling and the warm sand
beneath my feet that I am sitting on
feels amazing;
the glistening golden sea
that looks as if it could be
the surface of the sun –
because it looks in every way
like an ocean of pure energy –
is breathtaking;
as I look out and I see
the most beautiful and unbroken blue sky,
my heart skips a beat;
as I close my eyes,
I am transported in my mind
to a deserted island,
surrounded by palm trees –
in my imagination, I am a castaway
living a life free to be
whomever I want to be –
I have no worries,
I have no distractions,
I am self-sustaining
and I live off and alongside nature
and every day I walk my island paradise
and I swim in the beautiful blue sea;
I read the books that I brought with me,
and I daily write down what I see –
what I think about and what I feel
about life in my journal and diary;
I listen to the sound of the waves
and each one is like the voice of an old friend
stopping by to say ‘hello’;
I hear the music of my youth
playing from out of nowhere;
and when I think about the outside world,
and about my friends and family living their lives
far away, their faces appear
as if sculpted by the billion of grains
of sand that I see below me.

My hair is long;
my beard is substantial;
my skin is brown;
my home is a hand-built house
of cut down trees that has a roof of green
and hard-wearing leaves;
from my favourite spot,
looking out at my favourite view,
I have seen unimaginable sights:
dolphins, turtles, whales;
just off the coast, below the waves,
there is the most stunning
and beautiful coral reef.

To me, this place is heaven;
to me, this life could not be anymore perfect;
to me there is nowhere else in the entire world
where you could see the sun rise and the sun set,
and lay down on your back and see
a 360-degree view of the Milky-way galaxy’s
infinite and magnificent stars
shining their incredible and magical light,
in a place that is in every way
the definition of idyllic.

In my daydream, I look to the oncoming waves
and I see something bobbing up and down
before being washed up on the beach in front of me
and within touching distance of the toes of my feet;
I am not phased by the sight of the plastic bottle
and the evident message on a piece of paper
that is contained within –
however, when I reach down for the bottle
and I unscrew the lid and I reach in
and pull out the piece of paper,
it takes me awhile to realize
the messages’ meaning
because of how profound
the four-words of it are,
it takes a while to sink in.

I am brought back to reality in a flash!
As I look at the world, and to the sea,
everything looks even more stunning
and beautiful than it had appeared before.
Still with the message from my daydream
echoing in my mind like a bell,
I decide to write the same message
in pen on a torn-out page
from my nearby journal…
I write the same message
in the same way as it had appeared to me
only seconds before in my imagination,
and then I put the message
in an empty bottle of water
that I had brought with me earlier,
I stand up,
I run towards the ocean
and I throw my message in a bottle out
as far as I can
for someone to find in the future,
for someone to discover and read;
and then I sit back down
and I watch the sea again,
and I am again taken away
to a far-away place –
all the while, I am sitting in the sun
on the sand of this gorgeous beach.

My Poem ‘The Falcon’

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

Above my head,
soaring in the perfect, beautiful, morning, blue sky,
I see a falcon flying, hovering, floating on air,
looking, seeing, listening, hearing, feeling,
silently like a shadow, a silhouette,
passing right through the intense golden
and white light of the sun’s glare and stare.

The sight of the falcon is hypnotic;
the gift of the falcon is fantastic;
the freedom of the falcon is breathtaking;
the feeling I get from the falcon is amazing.

Watching the falcon move over the fields,
and cast a shadow over the ground below,
the spirit of the falcon looks even more incredible to behold,
because it’s colour is so dark upon the white frosty fields
that are the colour of snow.

I have always been in awe of birds,
especially “birds of prey” –
Eagles, Crows, Hawks, and in particular
the great and amazing Peregrine Falcon;
I have always felt as if I were an animal
who had reincarnated at the end of my life, in another life,
and my spirit used to be once in the body of a bird,
and I used to have feathers and wings,
and senses and instincts that were heightened and always turned on.
I have always wanted to live the life of a bird,
and fly like the wind;
I have always wanted to live free and unbounded,
and be with whom my spirit is, and has been, eternally twinned.

I envy the falcon that I see;
I empathize and I feel the beat of its heart;
I can fully imagine the exhilaration,
and how important and powerful it experiences
and feels every sensation;
I wish I had literal and physical wings,
so that I may not have to wait to go where I want to go
at any time, and fly all the time;
and if I had the choice one day about who or what
I might like to be in another future life,
I will take a second, I think, and then say
what I am thinking now:
I want to come back to life, and have the life,
and live the life of a falcon.

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 ‘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 ‘The Eternal Boy’

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

What I think is one of the most amazing things
about being a child, is that when you are a child
you have no filter;
I personally think that despite their lack of words
and vocabulary, a child is an incredible and terrific communicator.
A child is the perfect communicator,
because they never stop asking questions,
and they always have an answer or an expression for everything;
a child will say anything, cry, laugh, dance, and sing,
without any feeling of embarrassment
or thought of doing anything wrong;
a child acts and bounces around in every way
like a coiled spring;
a child feels their most joyous and free
when they are testing the limits of what they are told.

I sometimes feel like Peter Pan,
like the boy who never grew up;
I sometimes feel like I am fighting against those in life
whom do not understand me, and whom would choose
to silence me and subdue my creativity,
and keep me from flying among the clouds in my own world –
my own personal Captain Hook.
Imagination is the key,
and something that people as they grow older forget that they have;
imagination and freedom of expression
is what we are all born with.

Growing up doesn’t mean losing yourself;
growing older doesn’t mean changing your child-like disposition;
growing physically doesn’t mean forgetting the awe of magic
that you can have even as an adult;
growing emotionally doesn’t mean cutting short
your journey of wonder expedition.

There are things that not even what happens to us in life
can change or erase;
there are things that cannot be found unless you look;
there are things that are forever crystallized
on the expressions of everybody’s face;
there are things that you just can’t stop or stub;
there is a spark of life and pure happiness
that stays with you from when we are a child,
and a reminder to us all that we should
never completely grow up.