journey

My Poem “Dreams of the Moment”

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

A stream of light breaks
the dark shadows of the floor…
a dream of another life dawns upon my mind
and makes me remember mornings long ago
when I awoke far away from home for the first time
and I heard a brand new chorus
that added another dimension
to what I already knew to be
the opening notes of a new day’s call…
a passion, a dialogue, a conversation,
a nexus of mind, thought, emotion,
and art expresses itself on the page before me…
sunlight touches my face –
I can feel the sun’s rays upon the irises of my eyes,
I can feel sparks of inspiration within my mind,
I can feel my hopes within my heart and soul
reach out and touch the heaven sent sky above me –
and I find and I capture what my pen
has desperately been driving to make
my eyes and senses see:
that life is the road and the journey
that does not end – and that though people may change
their appearance from time to time,
as nature does seasonally,
some things are dreams of the moment
that will always be.

My Poem ‘Experimentation’

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Everything begins with experimentation…
most of the things that we love the most
once began as something unknown…
most things we seemingly
stumble upon at random…
most of the things that we take with us wherever we go
are the things that remind us of the wonders
that we remember of our childhood home…
we grow up with certain things…
we grow up with people who we know, and who know us…
we lose things… we have to look in more than one direction
in order to find our focus.

When we start looking beyond our comfort-zone,
when we start following a voice
that calls to us like an S.O.S,
when we start caring about a people
and a world that is not our own,
when we start finding others who bring out our best…
a chain-reaction of events without-end forms…
a new thing is born…
a new way of exploring
the infinite possibilities of the universe is launched…
a new sword to defend you from the dark of the world is forged.

Everything is a continuation…
everybody is a DJ – and every day we all remix what we see,
what we hear, what we feel, in our mind and in our imagination…
when we look around, when we want to journey to somewhere
with a definitive-destination, and we stop to think
about why any of us are here and what should be
our new source of motivation…
when we want a bit of the old and a bit of the new,
when we want both the contemporary and the retro,
then it doesn’t hurt to spin the wheel of inspiration
and dabble in a bit of artistic experimentation.

My Poem ‘A Novel Idea’

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The search for new ideas,
for an artist, is a life-long thing…
the journey towards creating something
new and one of a kind
is like living a dream…
my own personal search and journey
started deep within my soul,
and my heart, my gift,
and my love of inspiration and writing
has taken me high and it has taken me far…
a phrase, a name, a thought, an emotion,
a smile, can be the beginning
and all the spark I need
to start the flames of a fire
that may lead to a picture I draw,
or a poem, or a short-story,
that I may write –
and then it is in the hands
of a force of nature
as to where I will go and what I will say,
and to what heights and depths
I will climb and explore.

Writing a poem, to me, is like
walking in the English countryside
on a sunny Summer afternoon –
inspiration and words flow easily
and unobstructed, and my thoughts
feel energized and wild…
I could write an entire poem
about how the clouds
move against the blue-sky, and how I feel –
or, perhaps, a musing about life,
the world, people, and why we all choose
in life what we choose;
but, when it comes to writing a story –
that is where the true challenge lies,
and where the true inspiration fulfillment awaits…
writing a short-story, to me,
is a true adventure that I never plan
or know too much about at the beginning –
which grows and constantly reshapes itself,
and can sometimes find
a new identity for itself day-by-day.

A word, a title – to me they could be a poem,
to me they could be a short-story…
and then, when it starts to find its feet more,
so to speak, and it begins to run-away with itself,
it can start to become something else –
and when that happens, as a writer and as an artist,
you have to keep going, you have to keep writing,
and do not stop and do not feel any trepidation, or fear…
because, everything that happens,
and everything that inspires every writer,
happens and inspires us for a reason…
there is no way of knowing where to go,
what to do, or if what you are writing is any good
or could be enjoyable to another person’s eyes,
imagination, sensibilities, or taste,
until you sit down, and you write,
and you embrace all that follows you
in the wake of you having
your novel idea.

My Poem ‘Crescendo (Happy New Year)’

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

As one important door closes,
another important door opens…
as one year ends,
as one journey reaches its climax…
another year, another journey begins…
as one world sleeps, another world awakens –
and the cycle of life begins again,
similar and yet brand new…
as one sky becomes filled with twinkling stars,
another sky is as bright as can be
breathtaking and blue.

This is real life…
this is the song of day and night…
this is the orbit of the human soul –
just like the moon spinning around the Earth,
just like the Earth spinning around the sun,
just like the sun spinning
on the outer-edge of our galaxy.

Lights go out in the universe
every second of every day,
but we do not see them until it is too late –
however, it is never too late
to mourn the passing of something, or someone,
whomever, or wherever they are,
with a thought, with a song,
with a simple-but-meaningful verse of poetry.

Time passes into darkness too quickly…
stars shine, they burn bright –
and then, like everything and everyone,
there comes a day when they die…
memories remain, everything and everyone
continue to live on,
and it is a long time before something
or someone’s spirit actually leaves…
there is nothing worse than letting go of something –
however, the parting of ways with something
is not the same as saying goodbye.

Within the blink of an eye…
within the time that it takes for you to realize
what your life has all been about
and what you leave behind,
you see a shadow fall within your mind…
every second, every minute, every hour, every day,
every year, of every moment of time
are all the same and are all connected like a chain –
one leading to another, over and over,
and continuing in one direction: forwards –
no matter if you feel like you are living in the past,
there is always a brand new miracle
that the universe wants to show you…
life is a precious and beautiful piece of music
that never stops growing, evolving, and building
into the most epic of all crescendos.

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My Poem ‘Blind Curiosity’

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

When the sun went down
it was like witnessing
a great eye closing…
when the daylight
faded into the darkness of twilight
it was like seeing the world
slowly fall asleep…
when the golden light shone up
instead of down
it was like watching the world
appear to start a journey
towards a state of dreaming…
when the sky was finally devoid of colour
and the stars came out to shine their light
from unfathomable distances away…
I found myself looking,
just above the horizon,
to where the sky meets the ground,
and I was drawn high above and far away,
on a flight of fantasy,
to a place within my own imagination –
but which felt more like a part of a dream
of someone divine who could create
beautiful new worlds
from the moment that they touch
the ocean of infinite dreamers
with the toes of their feet.

I always walk blindly into a dream…
I have no preconceptions
about what I might find
when I start looking deep inside…
I have always wondered
whether we could revisit a dream –
even one that we might have had
when we were children
and after we had been read a bed-time story –
and I wonder if an adult
observing a child’s thoughts
would know instantly what they mean?
I envy the playground
that every child has within their mind –
the scope of a child’s fantasy world has no limit,
and within a child’s imagination
every moment can be the instant
of an infinite number of sunrises.

The evening sky is a magical piece of heavenly art,
as the birds return to their nests,
and as the owls, the foxes, the badgers, the bats,
the wildlife of the night start to appear,
when it is dark so many things happen…
there is so much wonder, thought, love, magic,
and imagination that blooms like a flower
constantly under the light of divinity…
there is so much life in this world,
and most of it thrives at night
when the universe recites its sonnets for us to hear,
and when the dreamers of existence leap with joy
into the realms of blind curiosity.

My Poem ‘A Ghost’s Story’

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

Some people think
that ghosts are all in the mind…
some people think
that we see what we want to see…
some people think
that the stories of hauntings
are more often than not
just a bunch of lies…
some people are just unable
to entertain the possibility
of somebody continuing to live
though they may not technically be “alive”…
ghosts, spirits, people remain on Earth
and they talk to us all every day –
but sometimes not in ways
that are easy to believe.

When a human spirit leaves its corporeal life
and is set free of its physical body,
a natural change and transition occurs…
when a human heart stops beating,
another source of spirit grows stronger
and we are given a choice:
to follow our instincts
and to journey to a place
beyond human understanding and comprehension,
or stay on Earth and be shown,
and get to interact with,
the living of humanity
within an existence of limitless-time.

Everybody has a reason to be who and what they are –
some people when they die become songs,
and some people when they die becomes stars;
some people’s spirit live on
within the pages of a book
long after their audible-voice can no longer be heard,
forever inhabiting a story’s every letter of every word;
every form of life, when it fully becomes its own spirit,
lives on – and the more that we explore other planets
in the galaxy I am sure that we will encounter
alien ghosts, also –
and I personally would not be surprised
if one day someone from Earth
finds themselves haunted by the figure
of a dead Martian while living
upon the surface of Mars.

Everybody has a story that they are at the centre of…
some peoples’ stories do not end
when their physical body gives-out…
everybody had a moment during their life,
and after death, when they have to shake-off
who they used to be and become someone else completely new –
the draw of an enticing bright light
is hard not to race towards like a moth…
some peoples’ idea of life after death
to some might be thought of as “heaven”,
and to others that same idea
might be their exact version of “hell”…
life when you are alive is different
to the life that awaits us all
on the other side of the threshold of our twilight
that we have to cross when our time
as a living and breathing human comes to an end…
it is said that when we die
we write the most beautiful poetry…
it is important to say goodbye
to loved-ones and friends…
every person, every-thing lives on…
everybody and everything changes –
but nothing ever truly ends,
and when each of us pass on
our story changes also,
from one like that of a caterpillar
to one like that of a butterfly –
and that is the essence of a ghost’s story.

My Poem ‘Catching my breath’

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

The world is a crazy place,
sometimes I wish I could
transport myself high-above
and see the world
as an astronaut in orbit does –
beautiful and glowing green and blue
against the black backdrop of space…
sometimes, especially in a busy city,
it is hard to find an oasis of peace –
somewhere to go to get away
from the constant bombardment of sound,
somewhere wide-open:
like a park, or a forest of trees,
that you can walk through,
where you can smile to yourself
and close your eyes at the miracle
of being able to take your ease…
sometimes you just want to sit back and relax
and let the minutes and the hours stretch out
until you can’t tell them apart…
sometimes just owning a moment,
and swimming out into a metaphorical
subconscious-ocean, is just what you need –
you could simply just get your feet wet
by imagining you are sitting on a wooden boat-dock
and looking down at your own reflection in the rippling water,
or perhaps diving down to see
the coral-reef of your imagination
and then resurfacing with your head above water again
and realizing that you have traveled far.

We all need that place…
we all need that world within our world…
we all need to travel in different ways…
we all need a language that we know and understand:
art, music, sound, touch, a look, a smile –
finding the right words to say at the right time
is like completing a cosmic word-search.

We are all lighthouses guiding the way…
we are all sunrises and sunsets
to significant other people in a myriad of ways…
we are all messages in bottles
riding the world’s waves…
we are all looking at someone
and are being looked back on
by someone with a different face –
we are all both the observer
and the observed, you could say.

Inspiration does not always flow
as easily as water from a tap…
you could sit down and want something
to come to you and there is nothing there…
and then… zap! you get struck by something,
like a bolt of lightning,
and your eyes widen, your heart races,
and you create and you make something
that did not exist before,
and the energy and the art flows,
and you take a journey with it
all the way until it is something to you
that you would think of as if it were a new friend –
that is when you stop and you sit back
and you find and you finally feel
your heart-beats start to slow,
and you smile with joy,
as you put your hand up to your chest,
as you catch your breath.

My Poem ‘God’s work’

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

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 Light at the end of the tunnel’

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At the end of an alley of shadows,
a light in the distance like that of a star,
at the far end of a dark tunnel,
like a shard of sunlight through an open door,
the end of one journey, the beginning of another,
the place you have to reach
so that you can share
what brought you through the bad times
that you never thought would be over –
nothing can prepare you for that moment
when you catch up with your destiny,
when all the confusion of the past
falls behind and you can be the one
who you always wanted to be.

A ray of light from the heavens above,
a stream of energy from on-high,
a rainbow that forms when clouds of grey are broken –
a symbol of both hope and love –
can be like a miracle to those in need of one;
sometimes to find out what you should do next
you need to not push too hard
against what is coming towards you
and do what comes naturally
without you having to try.

Things are lost for a reason’
things are found when the time is right;
sometimes in your life you may go through
more changes in your world than Earth has seasons;
sometimes to over-come any fears
and insecurities that you may find within yourself
you have to plant new seeds
in the garden of your mind
that will one day grow into beautiful flowers
and trees of hope, and dig-up the weeds
that your garden doesn’t need –
and which are only serving
to take life, energy, and growth
away from what you need to thrive
and to keep your secret paradise alive.

Life might be a short four-letter word,
but its meaning and its route
is deeper and it is longer
than could ever be documented
or described with images or words;
a person’s life is a world…
within a world…within a world;
life is what you find when you stop
looking at the future
as if you are viewing it
through the wide-end of a funnel;
a life is what you can find
when you decide to stop walking
at the pace that other people
would have you walk –
and instead sprint like an athlete
towards the light that you see
at the end of the tunnel.

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My Poem ‘The Day-dreamer’

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

I am a boy in a bath-tub…
now I am a boy in a boat
on the surface of a pond…
within the blink of an eye
I am now a teenager
in the middle of a vast lake
surrounded by mountains…
I blink again and I am now racing
down a river, over rapids,
and all the while I am
a man in a boat without a paddle,
and then I reach the edge of a waterfall…
and when I open my eyes now I am on a sea
in the middle of an ocean of blue,
and overhead there is an unbroken sky
as clear as a new-born baby’s eyes –
and there I am, alone in my boat,
wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of little-blue jeans,
with a notebook and a pen settled in my lap…
and it is then that I drift away
and allow myself to be carried by the waves…
and within seconds there follows the end of the day –
the night surrounds me, the stars shine brightly,
the sea-air floods my lungs and my thoughts
more with every second and intake of breath…
I close my eyes again, and when I open them this time
I am among the stars in outer-space
being drawn to a new shore…
and when I blink once more
now I am clearly on the sea of an alien world –
where the sky is as golden as an Egyptian desert,
and the water beneath me is as red as a ruby…
when I momentarily look down at my notebook
and then I look up the picture before has changed again –
now I am encircling a vortex at unbelievable speed,
and the world becomes a blur…
and then I awaken in my bath-tub,
and I am a man of 35 –
a life-time of imagination returned to me
and took me on a journey of space and time
in the few seconds that I my eyes were closed…
now there is no fear…
now things are clearer…
I am on my way somewhere…
I do not know where life will take me next,
but I know that I will never stop being
a life-long day-dreamer.

TheDay-Dreamer