Ideas

My Poem ‘The Gift of Ideas’

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

Ideas are like a tower;
thoughts have a structure;
dreams are like a castle of clouds;
wishes are like a beach
of long-forgotten shells;
memories are like photographs
that have faded over time;
old photo-albums
are like old songs
that remind you of people
and places from your life.

Eyes open; flowers blossom;
light shines; heart-rates rise;
life grows; the dark is exposed;
the clouds part;
a miracle becomes real
as the music starts –
and like the composer of an orchestra,
you put together the pieces of picture:
sometimes the music is loud,
sometimes the instruments are distinctive,
sometimes the players are both known
and unknown –
perhaps just one face in a crowd;
sometimes, most of the time,
what comes seemingly from the most random
reasons and places
are the most impressive,
even to the dreamer of the dream –
because they are so wonderfully inventive.

Things are not always obvious;
the seemingly unconnected
may have more in common with one-another
than they appear;
just like people,
some things sometimes speak
with a similar-sounding voice;
sometimes even a thing of extreme beauty
can bring someone to tears.

Ideas can be like a lost puppy
that you find walking the streets
without an owner;
ideas about people and things
sometimes change and can be
like the highs, the lows,
and the speeds of a roller-coaster
that go in every direction
before finally coming to a rest;
ideas can be like reconnecting
with a long-lost sister or brother;
ideas are one of life’s
most amazing and incredible gifts.

My Poem ‘The Confidence of Man’

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

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.

My Poem ‘Eudaemonic’

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

A simple act of kindness
can give you an upbeat feeling;
a new arrival can instantly make you smile;
a message in a bottle is always a thrill;
a new idea is like a newborn child.

Watching a child grow before your eyes
is like going back in time
and seeing your early life
acted out in front of you;
watching a plant grow and then wilt
does not have as much of an impact
on some people as it should;
watching an animal grow so quickly,
be so active, however only live a short life
in comparison to a human being
can be a joyous but sometimes
incredibly hard thing to do;
watching the world change around you
makes you wish frequently
that if it were possible
to live inside a single special moment forever,
if you could you would.

Some days go by fast,
some days go by slow;
the art of happiness
is to make something last;
the art of acceptance
is to not worry too much
about what you do not know;
some days are filled with fireworks;
some days are spent in reflection;
some days are so perfect
that you could swear
that there were some invisible inner-workings
making everything in life run like clockwork;
some days you are just waiting
for something to grab your attention;
the art of life is to live.

There are words in every language
that are rarely used,
but still exist;
there are faces hidden behind masks
that not everybody are able to see;
there are people who win;
there are people who lose,
but who never stop
and never give in;
there are unique pieces of art
created solely to be one of a kind
and temporary – like graffiti –
that in time will fade from view
and be covered over and forgotten –
but the fact that even one person
knew about them and remembers them
makes the artist that made them
more of a magician than anything else,
because they were able to make the once seen
the thing of a person’s dreams.

What keeps me upbeat is love;
what keeps me writing is hope;
what keeps me smiling only I could think of;
what keeps me from not retreating is never doubting;
what I have always known is that
if you try to silence your doubts,
if you try to see past the illusion of walls
that sometimes feel like they surround you
that can almost feel like a prison cell,
if you try to come to terms with the fact
that not everything that happens to you
is not always all your fault –
then one day you may wake up
with a smile on your face
and realize that all is good
and all will be well.

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My Poem ‘Fever’

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

There are places in space,
there are moments in time,
there are faces, there are rhymes,
there are things that happen,
there are people who are who they are,
there are things that draw your attention,
there are an infinite number of multi-coloured stars
that brighten, enliven, and make your life feel
as if it is complete,
there are links that form
that give strength to weak.

Some may look at the landscape of a war-zone
and see desolation and a reason to doubt
the longevity of life on our planet,
while another person looking at the same sight
may see it as an opportunity to rebuild
and to reinvigorate, and to heal old wounds
and to put long-lasting hope into the mortar
and the stone of the newly relaid foundations
and draw lines of inter-connectivity
into the very blueprints of what is being rebuilt.

Anything can happen at any moment;
anybody can imagine anything
when their senses are brought to life,
like a spark to a fire;
even a single word can have lasting importance;
even a single glance and a look
can quickly evolve into desire.

A flash of light and colour;
the touch on your skin of a gust of wind;
the sound of a voice that always pulls you into
a magical world of wonder;
the feeling of euphoria that true love brings;
the way that things are,
the way that the many faces of the universe inter-work,
the way that even the smallest of actions
can have the most life-changing of powers,
is what will always be as things are forever –
and that is why it is always important
to cherish, to take care, and to kindle an idea,
because it does not take much in the right hands
for a single thought and dream
to take over and spread like a fever.

My Poem ‘Energy’

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

The life-giving light
and heat of the sun
that fills us all with energy,
zest, and drive –
like a solar-powered battery;
the rush of adrenaline
that courses through our veins
and gives us the stamina
and the vigor to keep going;
the inspiration that writes itself
in verses of poetry;
the motivation that keeps
the constant creation of new ideas flowing.

Energy can be felt;
energy can be sensed;
energy can be our richest source of wealth;
energy cannot be fenced;
energy has a spirit;
energy never dies;
energy has no true limit;
energy is everywhere –
it is abundant first thing in the morning at sunrise,
it can be seen when snow is falling silently at night;
energy can turn into tears
and can be tasted when someone cries.

Love is the energy of the gods and the heavens;
light is the energy of the stars;
memory and magic is the energy that enchants
an entire life and gives nature
and the universe its essence;
imagination is the energy that allows us
to travel to different worlds
and imagine the human race one day
living on another planet,
perhaps even Mars.

Our thoughts create waves
in the ocean of energy
that connects every shore on Earth;
our emotions can change
our entire perspective of life;
our relationships with people and things
are constantly changing, evolving,
and are in different stages of rebirth –
even when the sun is in the sky,
it can sometimes be hard to realize
if it is in fact day or whether it is night.

Energy comes in many forms;
hope is the energy
that is always ringing my doorbell,
and knocking at my front-door;
the energy of purpose,
the feeling of belonging,
the source and the muse of the artist,
can grow to become as important
as the blood being pumped
by your heart around your body;
wherever you go, wherever you look,
whatever you instantly ‘just know’,
whatever you touch,
is a fountain, a volcano,
and is like a magnet
that is constantly drawing people and life to it,
that is like a lightning-rod
and a furnace of unbelievable
and incredible energy.

My Poem ‘Cogito ergo sum’

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

When I wake up every morning,
I know that I am poet,
and I want to be a writer;
when I see something,
I am inspired by an idea,
I become, I feel, and I connect,
with what fills and stimulates
my mind and my consciousness;
I take what has been inspired into being
and I run with it all the way
to the end of my imagination;
I find a way to connect the dots
in an imaginative way,
and express what I see
with undivided focus.

I can look at the world
and see any reality that I can imagine;
I can hear a song
and dream of a place, while still awake;
I can see something,
and then get this rush of excitement
deep inside me, that overflows from me,
that feels like I am
about to take a leap from a mountain;
I can feel things
that no one in the world,
no matter how good an actor they were,
could ever fake.

If I were not a writer,
I do not know who I would be;
if I did not write poetry,
I would not be me;
if I were not inspired
and excited about the world
as much as I am,
I think I would be missing a piece of my soul;
if I did not give myself fully
and wholeheartedly to what was right in front of me,
and what made me feel free,
then I would never know or remember
the feeling of the sun on my skin,
and every rainy day
would always be one that was cold.

The first place to start from,
and the first person to know,
is always the place,
and is always the person,
that you know better than anywhere, or anyone,
and you can always rely on the first instinct
and the first thought that comes to your mind;
there is no place you can go
and not see the person in the mirror,
from whom you can never hide;
if you want to know who to be,
if you want to know what to do,
if you want to have faith in something, or someone,
but you just can’t decide what to believe, or who –
close your eyes, know yourself,
and recite to yourself
one of my favourite, and one of the most profound,
latin phrases you could ever know the meaning of:
cogito ergo sum.

My Poem ‘Let me go, and I will run’

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

It’s fun to let your thoughts drift away from you;
it’s good to let your thoughts run away from you;
it’s exciting to experience your thoughts changing;
it’s incredible to have an idea
that spontaneously pops into your head,
as if from out of nowhere,
which just takes over every other thought of your mind
and function of your body –
and which also becomes all that you can talk about,
and to you it is all that is worth saying.

I have a brand new idea for something,
usually for the title of a new poem,
every hour of every day;
however, of the sixty ideas that I have,
by the end of every hour, they have become one idea,
and by the end of every day –
usually just before I fall asleep –
the first words of a perfect thought,
and the first verse of poetry of my own imagining,
has been ingrained in my consciousness,
and is just waiting to be written,
in my own unique way.

Ideas are important;
every idea that I have ever had
has set my imagination on fire;
ideas are building blocks, as well as foundations;
of all the ideas that I have had,
deciding one day to write down
what was on my mind at the time
was the one muse that is still a constant;
ideas are the offspring of desire;
every idea I have had has enlightened me in some way;
and following the path of an idea,
and taking the journey of the eternal dreamer,
is my way of reaching a higher state of consciousness,
and in a way it is my own form of meditation.

Ever since I was a kid,
I have been used to exerting my body
and using every physical muscle at my disposal
to achieve feats of strength and speed;
as a child, as an adult,
I was off like a shot,
running my heart out to somewhere I needed to get to,
and perhaps to someone in need;
ever since writing has become my passion, my devotion,
my love, and one of the defining parts of my heart, my soul,
my identity, there has not been a day that has gone by
when the question ‘what am I going to write about next?’
has not been uttered by me –
and even now I am asking that question, and answering it also,
and to me there is no more perfect
and beautiful form of writing than poetry.

When I can be myself;
when I am not constrained by glass, brick, wood, metal,
windows, doors, walls, and locks;
when I can step out into the daylight
and feel the beating warmth of the sun;
when I am unaware of time, and I can move with stealth;
when I am thinking wholly, completely,
and tantalizingly, out of the box;
when I can cut the strings and the ties
of anything that might be holding me, my mind,
my imagination, back in any way –
I promise you, world: let me go, and I will run.