inspiration

My Poem “Alexa”

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

In this day and age,
we all have access
to knowledge and information
like never before…
at this point in time,
and at any time of the day or the night,
everybody can reach out,
touch, tap, and use their voices
to acquire the gift of a response,
the answer to a question,
the thrill of discovery and understanding…
doors that were once closed are opening,
access is finally being granted by the insightful
to those who always found it hard
being that kid at the back of the class
in school who was afraid
to raise their hand for fear of being
ridiculed for asking a “dumb question”.

Questions are important –
most of the time, in my opinion,
questions are more important than answers…
Questions, inquiries, wanderings,
looking, listening, and asking
why such a thing is the way that it is
and where something or someone came from
are the steps that need to be taken
by everyone with a curious mind
in order to stimulate and rejuvenate
wonder into their lives.

Our access to knowledge, images,
and multiple ways of communication
has never been so accessible:
we carry both the keys, the doorways,
the portals, and the windows
to the worlds within worlds
that interconnect the majority
of human life on this planet
in the form of mobile
receivers and transmitters
which we carry around with us
and we can interact with,
share a conversation with,
and inquire to,
which have become our guides
to a wealth of information,
inspiration, art, music, places,
and which have become
the artificial intelligences
that we use on a daily basis
to assist us in bringing order to our lives,
which we can even call to attention
by uttering a single word to awaken them –
such as “Siri”, “Google”,
“Cortana”, or “Alexa”.

My Poem “The Idea Hunter”

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

No one knows where ideas come from
nor where ideas will lead…
no one knows what an idea will do
nor what it will be until it is free…
no one knows who will be
the originator of an idea –
however, once an idea becomes something
that can verbalized, physical and “real”,
then an idea has a tendency to spread
like wild fire until it is captured
and it morphs into a form
that can be easily described.

No one knows how an idea
will change the world…
no one knows how an idea
will change a person…
no one knows how ideas take on a life
of their own the way that they do,
but when they do run away with themselves
ideas can sometimes have the gift
of finding a way to scale over walls,
to penetrate through solid stone,
to lift people into the stratosphere,
to free people of their fears,
to colour a person’s dreams
with all the hues of the rainbow.

For as long as I have been alive –
especially since I have been
expressing myself through poetry –
I have been venturing to places,
I have been meeting people,
I have been climbing high,
I have been digging deep,
I have been an imbiber of life,
in awe of the universe of wonder
in which I am a constant idea hunter.

My Poem “Artistic Heroes”

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

I am definitely no John Lennon,
Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Bob Dylan,
Michelangelo, or Vincent van Gogh –
however, they are some of the poets
of music, words, colours,
prolific and deep expression
who are among the members
of some of my artistic heroes.

I am no Shakespeare,
Stephen King, or Neil Gaiman –
however, I am also an author
and a writer who wants to
inspire, to enlighten, to entertain,
and to take the readers of my poetry,
my stories, and the characters
who I have written about
and described, on a journey
that they will never forget
which is unquestionably
a pure creation of my own
varied and constantly
curious wandering imagination.

I am no Albert Einstein,
Stephen Hawking, or Elon Musk –
however, I too think about things
and I wonder why things are the way
that they are and if there are
answers to the questions
that many people daily ask,
like: What is the true nature of life?
Is time-travel possible?
Who or what created
the universe, and why?
Will people one day be living,
breathing, existing, and communicating
every day of their life solely
within the illusion of a simulation?

At my heart, I am a dreamer…
at my best, I am an optimist…
at my most inspired,
I am a man without regret,
without reservation,
without any kind of fear of the unknown,
nor without any worry that
I will one day lose my life-long
obsession with discovering
as much knowledge and inspiration
from the depths and the frontiers
of this limitless universe as I possibly can –
and one day I hope that I will get to meet
all of my artistic heroes in one place
and swop stories with them
about the road that they all took
to get them from where their story began
to the place where they were inspiring
the dreams of many and colouring
the consciousness of the world’s
imagination.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
– Albert Einstein

My Poem “Speaking Freely

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

It’s so great to be able
to breathe again…
it’s so great to be able
to talk again…
it’s so great to be able
to walk around freely
and be inspired
by what I see again…
it’s so great to be able
to have the opportunity
and the precious gift of time
to weave a new rhyme
with the ink from my pen again –
because I have missed being able
to breathe unhindered,
I have missed being able
to express myself with a stream
of unbroken speech,
I have missed going on a walkabout
to nowhere in particular
and silently picking up ideas and observations
about everything along the way…
I have missed doing what I love to do –
no matter where I am
or the current mood I am in –
and the past time of the poet
and the blessing of the tranquil:
the dream of being able to influence
the world in more ways
than could ever be known.

My Poem “Multicolored”

Mark Hastings life, music, Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Everybody is an individual,
a person, a spectrum of many colours
throughout their life…
no one can help what body they are born into…
everybody constantly hopes to be able
to one day express themselves
in the way that they want to
without feeling abnormal and as if
who they are on the outside
is not meant to fit in with
how the world is, how it is meant to be,
and how it is meant to look…
no one has the right to be able
to tell anyone that they cannot
be who and what they want to be.

Music is life, life is music –
and people in all their many colours
and with all their individualistic
facets are who make the music of life
as rich as it is, and without all
the many pioneers of individualism
and the proponents of staying true
to what you believe
then the world as we know it would not exist.

The best of humanity, the icons of history
who will be revered forever,
the ground-breakers who knew
even before they learned how to talk
that they were special, different,
anomalous, and exceptional
because they saw the world
and the question posed to them
without the jadedness of a dark cloud
of preconceptions hanging over them –
they are the ones who have always been
responsible for giving our world
the gift of pure inspiration,
ingenuity, and innovation
in the many levels of every day life
that different people live upon.

The best stories ever written
are of extraordinary people
overcoming a stereotypical boundary
that ultimately leads everybody
who learns of their story
to be inspired and choose to emulate them
and follow in their footsteps…
I believe that if you are someone
who is “different” from everybody else
then you should feel proud…
monsters, trolls, and bullies are different
and they are treated differently –
which is why people who suffer
from being singled out
often plague others with the same toxicity
as they are daily exposed to.

In my opinion, if you are different
from everybody else then
you truly are “special”
in every sense of the word –
and I have always believed that
when you embrace you own
individual eccentricities
then you may find that you share
more with other people around the world
who already know who and what they are
and who choose to let the light of their
multicolored soul shine like
the constituents of depth
that give light to a star.

My Poem “New Horizons”

Mark Hastings life, me, Poetry , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Every day, beginnings
and endings exist and play out
in parallel to one another:
on one side of the same world
one person can be looking
at the sun rising at the dawn of day,
while another can be looking up
at the moon and the stars
of the twilight hours of the night…
everybody lives in different worlds,
living different lives –
even people sitting three feet away
from one another, in the same cafe,
can be thinking, feeling, living,
and breathing in vastly different ways.

Everybody in their life has a path;
however, that does not mean
that the steps that need to be taken
in order to reach the place of potential
are always going to be straight
and easy to be traversed…
every day since the start of recorded
human history empires have fallen
and new dynasties have risen
to fill the vacuum left
when one piece of the tapestry of life
is cut away because it no longer
fits with the modern world that it exists within.

Without exception everybody,
at some point in their life,
has made multiple mistakes –
and often times everybody has to find
a way to adapt and to coexist
with the intentions, the actions,
and the waves of change caused
by people who influence the people of the world
through their words but who live
far removed and untouchable from those
whom they claim to speak for
often times from behind walls and gates
and in castles and in high-towers
which have a power-structure
that has existed for centuries
among many human societies around the world.

What is built must one day self-realize
that there will come a time
when the end is a necessary component
of reinvention, revitalization, renewal,
so that something can continue to be relevant
beyond the time of their prime –
and that goes for the people,
businesses, brands, and opinions
that have existed around the world…
every day there are new lives being born
and every instant there are new universes
coming into existence that are off-shoots
of other universes…
every moment there are things that happen,
there are things that are seen,
there are things and there are people
that change the world and open the windows
and the doors to brand new horizons.

My Poem “Personal Heaven”

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

Heaven is a moment of time…
Heaven is a person of love and light…
Heaven is a song of truth that
touches your heart as well as your mind…
Heaven is a source of passion and inspiration
that artists constantly mine…
Heaven is a cloud of thoughts,
impulses, memories, and observations
that combine to make an internal
ocean of infinite depths
to which anybody can dive.

Heaven can be found within the soul of a person…
Heaven can be found in the way
that a someone makes you feel…
Heaven is whatever someone considers
to be breathtaking, magical,
wonderful, and beautiful.

Heaven is often not just
what someone can feel
but what in truth cannot be touched
or put into words…
Heaven is the world within you
that you discover over the course of your life
which stays with you and which unfolds
before you when you fall off
the precipice of this life
and you start living the life
within the world of your own personal heaven.

My Poem “Show You The Way”

Mark Hastings Poetry , , , , , , ,

We were all beginners once…
We all had to start somewhere…
We all walk slowly and gently
when we take our first steps
at doing something for the first time…
We all learn by doing,
and our failures should always
be considered lessons
to be studied and improved upon…
No one knows everything
and they never will –
even about things that they know well…
Even the most experienced
and learned can learn
something new every day…
Sometimes you have to first find
a hero, a muse, an inspiration,
the voice, the actions, the face,
and the message someone
or something that gives you
the motivation to open your soul
and unlock the door within you
to show you the way.

My Poem “Quotes”

Mark Hastings life, Poetry, Quote , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“I have always loved reading quotes,
I have always loved sharing quotes,
I have always loved the way that
something that someone once said
is captured, written down,
and recorded for posterity,
because what someone in particular
said at a particular time
captured the attention and the imagination
of someone, got inside them,
and changed them profoundly –
sometimes to the degree that the words
that someone once uttered,
perhaps just in passing,
struck something deep inside
and grew to become their life-long motto
and the words that they daily live by.

The right quote, at the right time,
can be a powerful thing…
the right words, said by the right person,
when someone is sorely in need of wisdom
can be like rocket-fuel for the mind…
the right insight from the first-hand
experience of another person can be like
a parachute for someone – allowing them
to gently glide back down to Earth
from a place high above the ground –
when they feel like they are falling through life,
and it can create metaphysical wings
to make a person believe that they are soaring…
the right collection of interconnected letters
and words can reveal so much about
what is going on within a person’s mind
that they sometimes find that they have to hide
from everybody observing them on the outside.

Quotes are amazing to me,
because they are like gold nuggets of wisdom
and inspiration that people sometimes find
when they are sifting through
the fast-moving stream of life…
magical rainbows of colour and depth
that show themselves after a rain-storm
of uncertainty and unpredictability
that are brought to light when the right
conditions present themselves
and beauty arises and when truth
and nature come into alignment.

The best quotes ever captured
are poetic in so many ways –
and usually more so than the speaker
who was the source was ever conscious of
when they said them…
when I read something, when I hear something,
when I feel something in something
that someone else has said,
it is always impossible for me
to not be affected by it –
especially if what I have read, what I have heard,
what I have felt was something that
instantly and immediately had an impact on me…
to me some of the most inspiring words of wisdom
that still haunt the world
are the true ghosts and the real spirits
of people who may have long-since passed on,
but who will live on forever
through their poignant, timeless,
and immortal quotes.”

-Mark Hastings, 2019

My Poem “Catharsis”

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

Whatever you internalize,
whatever you take in,
whatever you analyze,
whatever you hear,
whatever you taste,
whatever you touch,
whatever you see –
especially if it is something
that challenges you in some way –
at some point, ultimately,
has to be released and set free…
that is why art – poetry, painting,
drawing, movies, television, books,
theatre, carpentry, comedy, music –
is so important to society,
because it gives us an excuse
to externalize our inner thoughts and feelings.

Expression can be powerful…
creation can be trans-formative…
exposure to things can be inspirational…
discovering who you are and who you want to be
can define how, where, when,
and with whom you want live…
sometimes you only have an inkling
about what is bubbling away inside of you,
below the surface of your day to day thoughts –
and it is only at moments when your internal
defenses and barriers have been lowered enough
when what is within you is allowed to come out…
there is something evocative about
watching something being performed live –
like watching an artist or a band
let their art and their distinctive
sound and voice speak for itself –
that just overtakes you, consumes you,
and makes you do things and say things
that you would not ordinarily do.

The only way to find the answer
to a question is to ask it…
the only way to discover the truth
of something is to explore it…
the only way to get through life
is to live it, to fight for it,
to embrace it, to worship it,
to take chances, to take risks…
the only way to be is to be a poet –
because a poet lives every day
a life of reflection, of contemplation,
of inflection, of internalization,
of externalization, of expression,
of liberation and catharsis.