When you want to do
something for someone
whom you love, but you can’t –
you can be made to feel powerless…
when someone whom you love
more than anything is in pain,
you can feel so unbelievably out of touch…
when you want to help someone
in any way that you can,
but whatever you do
could never be enough –
we, I fall to my knees
and I hold my hands together
and I pray to God…
I pray that those whom I love
will be healed and have their pain taken away –
I speak out-loud and I think of the one
who I will give all my hope,
and I promise to be there for them
when they feel at their lowest
and their most lost…
it’s agony to watch…
it’s hard to see…
it’s something that I would not wish
on my worst-enemy:
the sight, the image, the reality,
of somebody for whom
you would do anything for
struggling to speak
and feeling as if they
might at any moment collapse to the floor…
Why must this happen, God?
Why put someone through something so torturous?
Why cannot your angels help
those in need – is it truly necessary
for those in pain to ask?
Our time on Earth is precious,
and we all have choices to make –
but when we are struck-down
by something suddenly and painfully
we do not get a choice in that…
everybody whom I have known
to have given so much
throughout their life
are those who are hurting the most…
If I could be anybody,
if I could do anything,
I would choose to be a healer of people –
so that I could revitalise a person’s life
and remake them anew…
there is no reason for anybody
to suffer needlessly…
I pray to God that my loved-ones
will one day live a life
in peace and free of pain…
is it too much to ask
that those whom I love
may live without fear and be happy?
Please, God – I beg you…
we all need your healing love right now,
now more than ever…
life is a beautiful gift,
and to me it should not be wasted
on those who think that everything is a game…
Dear God, please heal those whom I love –
I would give anything, I would do anything…
this I promise, this I pray.
God
My Poem ’50 year-old Revolver’
I’m sitting here in my kitchen,
at the kitchen table,
with The Beatles’ “Revolver”
playing on my record-player
and a Smith&Wesson
lying next to my still cold bottle of beer…
the house is quiet…
I am sitting almost in complete darkness,
but for the light of the fluorescent-light above my head…
I am thinking about my life –
what happened to screw-up my world so bad…
I am planning by the end of the night
to end it all – and by that I mean
I plan to be dead…
I just can’t take the pain of the heart-break any longer –
I don’t have any-more fight left in me…
this isn’t the first night that I have sat like this
in the dark with a gun in front of me,
but tonight I know is the night
when the stetson of death
that I have been trying on now for a while just feels right.
I am a washed-cowboy…
I am a man planning to ride off
into the sunset and never come back…
I have seen sights and I have been through a lot
since I was a boy –
living without a daddy since I was five,
dropping our of school, making a living
doing what other people wanted me to do,
drinking myself under more tables than I can remember
in bars in each-and-every-one of the fifty states,
surviving a heart-attack…
loving, hurting, pretty-much earning a living
doing things that even I can’t find the words
capable of describing what has slowly but surely
earned me a one-way ticket to hell…
if my life has been a dream this entire time
it has been a nightmare from beginning to end…
my fate was already signed, sealed,
and delivered a long time ago –
there was never any question of how,
just the ultimate question of when?
I always loved The Beatles,
and I have done since I saw them
on Ed Sullivan in ’65 –
I used to wake up every morning for a year
with the words to “Good Day Sunshine”
echoing in my ears…
any-time that I was feeling low,
I would recite the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby” in my head
and instantly I would smile and feel more alive…
I haven’t listened to a vinyl-copy
of a Beatles record since 1985 –
but over the years I have heard and listened
to The Beatles’ music wherever,
and in whichever town I came to rest,
and every time I did I would throwback
a glass of J.D. and relive the brief happy times
that I remember from my life.
Death is like the Taxman
that you spend your entire life
trying to hide and run from;
I have been seeing the signs leading me
to where I now sit all my life –
Here, There, and Everywhere –
and when the moment of me sitting here
with my Pa’s Revolver that he left for me,
and The Beatles album that I remember the most of all
playing and it’s songs echoing all around me,
now feels like the moment when I am
going to do no more For No One else but me –
and I Want To Tell You that at this moment
I know that nothing and no one
this time is going to stop me.
And then, I wake up…
And as I lift up my head,
and as I open my eyes again,
I look out my window and I see the sun rise…
and I feel a hand upon my shoulder,
and I hear a voice telling me that
Tomorrow Never Knows who any of us will be,
but God did not ever do anything for no reason
and that if I just hold on a little longer
I would one day be saved and find true peace.
I had always been a believer –
I even remember sitting across a table
and sharing a beer with the Devil-himself
in Vegas in September of 2001…
I have seen and I have heard people pray for their lives –
but God never once spoke to me directly:
but maybe he is now?
I have spent my entire life
running the roads and seeing every wonder
of color to be found in the United States of America –
but it wasn’t until the moment when I was woken up
and saved by the light that greeted me this morning,
after the life that I had been living ended,
and I decided to take my life into my own hands
and walk away from all that I had ever known –
leaving behind what I knew
had been holding me back like an anchor:
my old house, my record-player, my life,
and my daddy’s fully-loaded
50 year-old revolver.
My Poem ‘God’s work’
God works in mysterious ways…
with light came life
at the beginning of the universe…
to god seven billion years
could be the same as seven of our solar days…
life is precious…
god’s creations are now more distant
than they were at the beginning of everything…
everybody on Earth has a role to play
in the grand design that god set forth
before the universe exploded into existence
with the biggest of bangs…
like everything in life
no thing is any-thing without trust…
we may not realize it,
but everything happens for a reason:
accidents happen, mistakes are made –
however, every-thing and everyone
is bound to a master-plan
too unfathomable to anyone but it’s architect;
the universe is complex –
but what else would you expect
from an idea such as the universe,
literally the most divine garden
of limitless, beautiful, and varied
example of life ever imagined:
what gift, what blessing,
what answer hidden in plain-sight
within a question being asked
could be more perfect?
Two worlds are never the same;
two lives, though seemingly-close,
always live on either-side of a divide;
the two eyes of someone’s face
is like the light of the stars
that we see sparkling from afar
in the vast darkness of space;
the two ears, the two lungs,
the two arms, the two hands,
the two legs, the two feet that many,
however not all, are born with –
the signature physical characteristics
of the human body remind us all
that we are still all of one world,
one Earth, and one of a kind.
We all come to a belief in something
from different directions;
for some, the path to the truth of what life is
can be short, it can be long, it can be easy,
and sometimes it can be incredibly hard;
there are people who believe
in many things in this life –
and when they say that they believe in something,
or someone, I know and I believe
that they are telling the truth with every word;
we all come face-to-face with things in our lives
that we can’t understand –
sometimes the journey to find the answers you seek
cannot simply be reached by driving somewhere in a car;
the human heart, the human soul, the human consciousness,
the human dreams, are all keys to the door
that lead to the gates of heaven –
and I believe that each and every one of us,
no matter how big or how small we believe we are
in the cosmic jig-saw of life
can make no mistake in believing
that we are all doing god’s work.
My Poem ‘The God of Sleep’
It’s a shame that I can’t write
while I am dreaming,
just as I dream while I am writing –
because I know that what I imagine at night
would eclipse, and does, any and all
that I put into words in the sunshine
of the day-light…
fragments of my thoughts of the night before
remain in the morning, sometimes,
like the wreckage of a ship
that has run-aground on a beach –
but they are only pieces of a whole
and there are holes now
where unrecoverable dream-moments
used to appear so clear and so real,
but which are now lost
on an ocean of wonder and wishes
being carried out of reach.
Sometimes we have the same dream
over-and-over again,
and each time we imagine them
we remember more about them when we wake up;
why we all dream is still a question
that nobody can give a distinctive
and a correct answer to –
however, I believe the question of why we dream
is on-par with the question:
why do we fall in love?
We love because we must;
we dream because we are unable to stem the tides
of our imagination and our emotional flood;
we wade deep into a dream
when we are doing something in it
that means something to us;
when we dream we are hearing
and we are being pulled-under a spell,
after having been sprinkled by Morpheus’ dream-dust.
I often wonder what I do not remember
about the times that have now returned
to the ether of infinite time, depth, and colour;
like some people who remember their dreams,
I too wonder what they mean;
I often wonder what would happen
if all of our dreams and their content
were to become real and we could share
every detail of our dreams with one-another;
I have always believed that our dreams
are our doorways to a greater world –
a world that knows no bounds
and has no fixed borders,
and I believe that each time we dream,
when and where night and day meet,
we are being given a gift to hold-on to
and do with it what we will
by ‘Hypnos’ himself, the god of sleep.
My Poem ‘No comparison’
I’ve walked the Earth…
I’ve searched the stars…
I’ve been waiting to be
with you all my life…
I’ve seen love in the eyes of others –
but I have never seen a love
as breathtaking as ours.
It began before we met…
it started when our heart’s
first began beating…
it started when we were born
of our parents under the sunlight
that constantly shines down
upon our beautiful planet…
it all began before even
the first birds began tweeting.
You and I, me and you –
we are one of a kind,
we are unbelievably special…
we make new music together
every time we speak…
we fall in love with each other
over and over again…
we would not be the same people
without each other,
nor would we be as happy as can be…
we are one and the same,
and that is something
that could only we could ever understand.
It’s because of you
that my heart feels like
it is beating a thousand times a second…
it’s because of you
that nothing could ever compare…
it’s because of you
that I believe that for each
and every one of us God has a plan…
it’s because of you
that I look at your picture
at all hours of the day
and I dream of being with you
over and over again
within every timeless moment that I stare.
I have never loved anyone like I love you…
I have never thanked God more for anything
than I do when I thank him for you…
you have been the most beautiful to me
since the first picture that I saw of you…
because you are my passion,
because you are my obsession,
because you are my addiction,
because in all the world,
because on all the planets
that circle those distant lights of perfection,
there is nothing and no one
as gorgeous, nor as amazing, as you…
because, Melissa, to me, to you,
there is no comparison.
My Poem ‘The devil is in the details’
When god smiles, rejoice…
when the devil smiles, run…
when angels save a life,
sing with all your voice…
when demons possess someone,
the only weapon against them
is to pray and summon
the light of heaven
to drive them back to hell
from where they are supposed to be
imprisoned, and fight the fear
of an endless night with hope
like that of sunlight.
When we think of hell
we think of flames…
when we think of heaven
we think of unwavering faith…
when we think of the devil
we think of evil…
when we think of god
we think of love.
Day and night, light and dark, good and bad –
an entire universe in-balance with itself,
that occasionally becomes imbalanced, by design;
just as every story has two sides to it,
what every story also has is a middle-ground –
a ‘grey state’ that exists
between every word of every line;
everything and everyone has a purpose –
some people have to dance with the devil
in order to get through life;
everything and everyone sometimes has to fight,
but you can rest assured that whenever you need one
there will always be an angel
in your corner and by your side.
When a single beam of light
passes through a seemingly-transparent prism of glass,
that single flash transforms
into a spectrum of many colours –
the same layers of reality
that the entire world is made up of,
from the most super-giant of stars
to the smallest particles of ash –
and when you see that rainbow
you are seeing the pigment
of everything and everyone
in the universe’s skin and eye-colour.
Questions beg for answers –
however, even fallen angels know
that some things are sometimes best left unsaid;
there would be no life
if there were not also temptation –
however, everybody has to learn a lesson
about the true meaning of life,
though some lessons
you can only learn the meaning of
before you rise and leave your body behind
to lie in peace in its last bed.
Light began everything…
darkness will always exist –
it must according to divine will…
finding an equilibrium with all things
and with all people is all about living…
just as god is in the details of everything,
so is the devil.
My Poem ‘I live for him’
Our life has a meaning…
we live for a reason…
nothing can stop us
from fulfilling our destiny –
not even dying…
we should never stop hoping
and believing in the power
of god and heaven –
and there is no better example,
nor a more shining star
of a blessed and saved angel,
that I have ever heard of
than that of the story
of Isabella “Izzie” Cochran…
Izzie died, Izzie went to heaven –
Izzie was with Jesus the entire time,
and she was returned to life
and to the arms of her loving family,
because it was not her time
to live among the angels
and stay in the presence of the divine,
because she has a life-long purpose
to spread the word of the one
who watches over all of us,
and to be a reason for others
to believe in miracles.
Blessings can come as profound surprises…
prophecies can be played out
when you least expect them to be…
one person can bring together a world divided…
it is amazing who you can see
when you look into infinity
and a single star guides you
to the place and to the person
where and with whom you are meant to be.
There is only so much that can be written…
there is only so much that can be shared…
there is only so much that can be understood
about our reason to be here
on Earth as a child of heaven…
there is only so much in life that we can all take –
however, as the bible teaches us,
we are all only given that which we are able to bear.
It is incredibly inspiring,
it is spiritually reinvigorating,
it is a life-redefining reminder
to never stop believing,
it is beyond imagining
to have been given a gift
and to know with all your heart
that the love that binds
each and every-one throughout creation
is the reason why children are born,
why the world keeps turning,
why we are given what we are given,
and why the beautiful gift
who is Izabella “Izzie” Cochran
died and was brought back to life…
because her purpose –
that which Jesus told her
when she saw him
next to a white horse in heaven –
was to live and to live for him.
My Poem ‘The Ten Thousand’
Every birth is a miracle…
every child is an angel…
every baby is beautiful…
every newborn is wonderful,
and it is every parents responsibility
to provide and to give without question
the love and the support that their children
need more than anything else in the entire world.
Every child is born to the parents
whom they are born to for a reason…
some parents don’t even plan to be parents –
however, I am sure that not even
Mary and Joseph knew how to be the best parents
to the young Jesus,
but they did the best that they could,
and it is not every day
that you are chosen to be
the adoptive parents of God’s son
through immaculate conception.
In my opinion, every parent of every child
is the beginning, but not the end…
in my opinion, the best parents
care so much for their children
and their well-being,
and they show their love for their children naturally –
while others try too-hard
and in the end they have to pretend.
We know from the Bible
where Jesus was born and to whom…
we know where Jesus died
and where he rose to heaven…
we know that Jesus died
for each and every one of us,
but no-one could ever know
what exactly Jesus thought about
why he was on Earth when he was a child –
however, when he saw the signs
of what was about to come
and what he had to do,
I am sure that he knew…
we know that Jesus was divine,
but he too was mortal
and could not have left this life
in any other way than like a human.
Some couples pray for the gift of a child…
some people become parents naturally
and biologically, and some are chosen
to be the guardians and the protectors
of a child by the hand of destiny and fate…
some couples’ journey to parenthood
can be long and hard,
but unbelievably worth-while…
some people become a parent early
and some become parents late…
some couples only choose their child’s name
after they have been born,
while some have had the same names picked out
for months before they even knew the sex of their baby…
some parents watch their children grow
and become amazing individuals
of whom they could not be more proud…
some couples know what it means
to have been born into a one-of-a-kind family…
some parents unfortunately out-live their children
and even have to watch as their child
breathes their last breath –
and it is to them that Angels come
to help them through the heart-break that they feel,
because to the ears of the divine
the sound of even a single falling tear of a parent
is as loud as that of ten thousand.
My Poem ‘I am’
Words are powerful;
song and prayer elevate the words
from a book and give them new life;
words are what makes something
more amazing and more magical;
when spoken from the heart
and with a true explosion
of passion and feeling
words and language become spirit and light –
they become energy,
and even on a cloudy day
can make the world shiny and bright.
The divine is always listening;
there are angels in every place on Earth
constantly waiting;
the creator of all is always creating;
there is a voice that is constantly speaking.
None of us is every truly alone;
the one true believer walks among us
and does not rule in heaven
on top of a throne;
some people in need find asking for help
the hardest thing in the entire world;
every day the barriers and the borders
of both heaven and hell become blurred
with those that they share
with our world here on Earth.
When the light of creation first shone
upon the face of the Earth
that for the longest time
had been veiled in shadow…
when God gave humanity their chance
to be fruitful in the universe’ after-glow…
when the first words were spoken
and their meaning and their message
grew and spread like the vines of a rain-forest…
when the almighty blessed everyone
with the gift of choice…
everything and everybody became the variables,
the equations, the questions,
as well as the answers,
to the most epic of tests.
I believe that when the universe sparked into being,
when the first stars were born,
when the first galaxies were formed,
when the first planets gave rise
to the first intelligent minds
and to the first open eyes
who were able to see and understand
what language is and what some words truly mean…
with that birth of consciousness
followed something…
and every day, on every planet,
the lord of heaven tells us all in our own way
that even though they are the creator
and the way of all,
each of us are meant to find
our own way in our own time,
and no matter what
know how lucky we are
to have been given the life that we know –
and through Him, I know that I am.
My Poem ‘The Confidence of Man’
Everything needs a centre;
everyone needs a soul;
every world revolves around
a deep and distant light
that calls towards
what lies at their core;
everything in life
plays its essential role.
Having faith and holding-on to faith,
especially in people,
can be testing sometimes
on so many levels;
even God once questioned his own actions
in creating humanity,
according to Genesis in The Bible,
and sort to start anew
with a world-wide flood
after he was disappointed
that Adam and Eve disobeyed him
and listened instead to the words
of a serpent devil.
The entire history of Earth,
and the history of the human race,
is filled with tests of character,
spirit, and heart;
since the beginning of time,
life and light,
the entire universe has been a balance
of the Alpha and the Omega –
the first and the last;
even if your first attempt at something
is a failure and it does not resemble
the original blue-print that you had in mind,
it does not mean that the next time you try
to capture the lightning of an idea again
and bring it to life
it will not be better than you imagined,
and perhaps was always meant
to have not worked out the first time around
because it needed an additional surge
of energy and determination
so as to give it a new lease of life.
There is no such thing as failure,
there are only stepping stones
to the other side of a river;
there is no such thing as the wrong way to walk,
there is only going forwards or going backwards;
there is no such thing as bad timing,
because all that is meant to happen and when
will happen no matter what –
and whether you stand still, or not,
the Earth will keep spinning.
Life is about lying down
and then getting back up stronger than ever;
weaved into the very fabric
of the reality of the world,
there is a beginning, an end,
a meaning, and a plan;
life is meant to be shared
and lived together;
though we all may be imperfect
when we compare ourselves to other people,
the majority of humanity is,
in my humble opinion,
perfect in their imperfectness –
and just as no two people
were ever born to be exactly the same as each other,
to me it would be a failure in and of itself
to ever doubt or lose any kind of confidence
in any woman or any man.
Mark The Poet 