instincts

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 ‘The Phoenix’

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

It was inevitable that it would happen,
it always happens;
it was always going to end and begin again this way;
it was inevitable that I would be burned alive
and come back to life,
because that is the pattern;
it will always be me dying to save myself,
and then rising again from the flames
with the same face, the same name,
the same heart, the same soul,
until it really is my Earth-bound last and final day.

Every time I come back from the dead
I lose nearly everything that I had,
but I do retain every detail of my past lives’ memories;
every time my world crumbles and turns to ash,
I return to the place I know,
the people I love, and the thing that is as a part of me
as I am of it- and that is my notebook and my poetry.

You always think that things will go on forever, until they end;
you always think that people will stay with you, until they leave;
you always think that you will always be someone’s hope,
inspiration, life, love, and best friend;
you always think that you know and have seen everything,
until you learn and you see something that you cannot believe.

My world imploded, and then exploded;
my identity was stripped from me and thrown away;
my life had to crash and then be rebooted;
my past, my present, my future, my horizons,
were all sent into flux, and blown away on the wind,
to be replaced by a blank page, an unknown,
and a feeling of loss and uncertainty.

Where once there was something rich, deep, bright, and hopeful,
there is now nothing to be found;
where once there was fate, destiny, reason,
the answer to everything in the entire universe,
there is now a hole in the shape of something wonderful,
special, and profound.

Night has become day,
day has become night;
everything felt simple,
even when it was vastly complicated in every way-
as long as I kept myself, in part, hidden in the dark
I would always end up turning my face away from the light.

Things ended because I was stupid;
I was ripped apart and burned,
because what happened was too far gone for anyone to fix;
I was everything that I have always hated,
but now I have died, I have been reincarnated,
I have been reconstituted, I have been tested,
I have been regenerated, I have risen again from my own flames,
and I am starting again and fighting my instincts
of continually being the human embodiment
of the mythological bird known as “The Phoenix”.