knowledge

My Poem ‘We are all one’

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

Joy may come in the morning for you
in more ways than you might expect –
someone with a passion
and a drive and a love for what they do
cannot wait to jump out of bed,
while someone who feels like
they do not have a purpose in life
might open their eyes
and then close them again quickly
and cover themselves up again
below the covers
like a bird putting their wing
over them as they rest
comfortably in their nest –
however, the truth is
that everybody has a role in life,
everybody is meant to be alive,
and everybody is born to be
just as they are –
everybody is a necessary source of experience,
knowledge, instinct, inspiration,
heat and light, like a candle burning in the dark.

We all go through a metamorphosis;
we all go through an identity-crisis;
we all go through doors to places
we do not always know where;
we all go through stages of re-evaluating
what our priorities in life are,
just as we all sometimes struggle
to pick-out what we want to wear;
we are all a creation
and made in the same guise as the divine;
we are all here to be something to someone;
we are all blessed from birth
with the gift of infinite possibilities,
even if we are not given an endless life of time;
we are all of our time
and no matter how you see yourself,
or how somebody else sees you,
never forget that we are all reflections,
we are all human, we are all
resonators of change and emotion;
life is a lesson in accepting the undeniable fact
that we are all one.

My Poem ‘Be Like Mark’

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

I am Mark.
I love writing.
I love making art.
I love thinking.
I love imagining.
I love believing deeply.
I love going far –
over oceans of water,
and to the ends of my knowledge
and my imagination that always takes me
further away than the night-sky’s
farthest stars.

I am in love.
I live to love my angel of heaven on Earth.
I have explored.
I have marveled at the beauty of above.
I have seen many sights
that I will always remember seeing all my life –
however, there is no perfection
that could ever compare to my muse,
to my Melissa.

I am a dreamer.
I always have and I always will
see the guiding-light of hope,
even on the darkest of days.
I am a true-believer.
I know things, and slowly-but-surely
I have come to realize
that no matter who you are
or where you are from
the world can be important to you
in a myriad of different ways.

I am unique.
I return to the same places week-after-week.
I value people.
I love hearing and I love learning
about the new stories
that come into being.
I love how the happiness of those who I love
and care about makes me feel.

I remember so much,
but I am in no way smart.
I know that anyone can make something
even the size of the entire world
fit on to the head of a pin,
or make it as large and as incredible
as the universe is both beautiful and dark.
I have felt an intense understanding
of how all life works
and what everything means, many times –
while sitting on the porch of a house in Tennessee,
or while walking through New York City’s Central Park.
I would not ever advise everybody
to live like me, or to do all that I have done –
but what I would always tell everyone
is that things happen as they are meant to happen –
and if you truly want to live your dreams, and be happy,
then, even if it is for just one day in your life,
choose to be just like me, and be like Mark.

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My Poem ‘One Life Only’

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

The meaning of life
is not to be rich –
the reason you are here
is to find the one
with whom you are meant to be with;
the reason for the waves of the ocean
is the same as the reason
that everybody has emotions;
the reason why we change
when we fall in love
is because we are always reminded
subconsciously of the instant of our birth,
when we opened our eyes and we looked above,
and we came eye-to-eye
with the first face that we saw –
every day of our lives
we want to feel what we felt,
and we want to find the only other person
who could ever compare
to the first love of our lives
that we naturally and instinctively adored.

A little-known thing
that as we get older we all forget…
a seemingly small but significant moment,
like a sunset…
the knowledge that the more that you give
the more that you get…
the thing that will remain
ingrained in your brain
even after your body’s last breath…
the last thought
that will pave the way
to heaven after death…
that which will build
the landscape of the world to come next…

What you do with your life is your choice –
the repercussions of your actions
will be your true voice;
when you are low,
when you reach the wall of “I don’t know”,
when you feel pulled in every direction,
when you want to make what you do for pleasure
and what you do for love
your one and only profession,
when you can live
and be there for someone else,
when it finally dawns on you
that the most important people
in your life are what make up
the true riches of your wealth –
then you will know what you have been missing,
then you will know you have a world of everything,
then the sun will shine even on rainy day,
and then you will live the dream
that will never fade away.

If we could all go back to the beginning,
if we could all go back to the start,
if we could all know the self-titled song
of our lives that we have been singing along to
since day one,
if we could put our present
back inside time’s wrapping,
if we could find earlier
the one with whom we share the same heart,
we might find our life
slowly coming undone –
so, don’t think too much
about the road less traveled,
don’t think about wanting your life
to fly by, or to get older quicker…
take every day slowly;
don’t think, just do;
find the one for you,
even if you have to search the entire world;
let things happen as naturally as possible;
build a home of bricks, not sticks;
don’t worry about the why of things,
just make the most of your
one life only.

My Poem ‘Unlimited Data’

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

The world is constantly buzzing
like a bee-hive;
the planet is beating
every second of every day
with the speed of a rapid pulse;
the Earth has never been so active, nor alive;
humanity is constantly craving data
and information – and everybody, it seems,
constantly has this unquenchable thirst
to see, hear, and experience something,
anything, everything first:
because, to some people,
there is no time that matters more
than that which only happens once.

The most amazing thing about life
is that it is constantly changing;
the most incredible thing about the world
is that it is constantly evolving;
the most influential language
is the language of pictures and photographs;
the most powerful drive of a metropolis
is using and interpreting numbers
by using the natural and original enigma machine
that is the human brain to think and speak,
perhaps without even knowing that they know it,
the infinite dialect of maths.

It is incredible to me how far we have all come
in such a short space of time –
even in my lifetime,
humanity has pushed the boundaries of possibility
and has achieved epic advances in so many areas:
technological, philosophical, biological –
which so many of us have been blessed
to take advantage of and make them integral
and important parts of our lives;
we as a species expect things to happen instantaneously,
and we sometimes expect a reply to a question
to arrive as soon as it is asked –
and because there is so much knowledge
to be found by anybody at anytime,
answers no longer have anywhere to hide.

We are all a part of the repeating cycle
and frequency that governs everything,
that makes us who we are;
everybody biologically fits
into a pattern of behaviour –
and a part of that inbuilt and inherent design
is extreme adaptability;
no matter how much we think we know,
there is always more;
everybody is data-hungry, energy-hungry,
interest-hungry, and if we did not have
power and electricity
I could not tell you who we would all be.

Some things, in no time at all,
just become a way of life;
some things we completely rely on
in the modern age to be to us
a literal life-saver;
some things that we do we take for granted –
like the ability to push a simple switch
and turn on a light;
some things just become a necessity –
and I am sure that if you were
to ask a technologically-savvy
and internet literate
and always connected member of humanity,
the gift to them that keeps on giving
has to be the miracle, if you can get it,
of unlimited data.

My Poem ‘Reading is Believing’

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

Libraries are closing everywhere I look;
the doors of places of knowledge and wonder
are being closed shut, like the covers of there books;
our breathtaking banks of inspiration are no longer protected;
I one day fear that children will miss out
on a magical and life-empowering experience,
should our libraries evaporate into a cloud of numbers and frequencies,
and as a result the future of the world will be affected.

Every day I hear about another library
under threat from being turned into a “used to be”;
every day I see people reading and entranced in a story;
every day I see people in bookstores being drawn to books
by their title and the incredible art of their covers;
every day adults and children fall in love with books
and characters for the first time –
thanks to teachers, friends, family members, fathers, and mothers.

Every second a new writer, a brand new story-teller, is born,
and continues the story of humanity;
every baby who is brought up to loving parents,
in an incredible family, is introduced to reading,
and sharing ideas, from almost the day
that they get to sleep in their own bed;
every experience has its own voice,
and some have even been reinterpreted in the form of a novel,
and then adapted into a movie.

There is no more sad or depressing story, to me,
than that of a nearby town thinking about closing a library;
I never want to see a day when the only way that words can be read
is strictly and exclusively electronically –
digital books are great, but they will never have the life-span,
or the story and journey, of a physical book,
and that is the way it will always be.

Libraries are islands of tranquility;
books are the legacy of hope, history, tragedy,
that also still carry the story and the DNA of its parent tree;
reading a book is a personal passion for some people,
and to me there is no better place to see the belief
that reading is believing than in paper books,
that are like reading every person who has ever lived’s diary;
and that is why I believe it is everyone’s duty and responsibility
to do all they can to save the libraries.

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My Poem ‘Heart to Heart’

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

It always feels exhilarating
to get something off your chest;
it always feels amazing to say something
that you have been meaning to say;
it always feels great to ask something of someone
that for a long time you have only had
the opportunity to guess;
it always feels liberating
to give a secret about yourself away.

Procreation, pregnancy,
the creation of new life has always intrigued me;
maintaining a legacy, passing on knowledge,
keeping a tradition alive for a new generation to carry on,
is something that truly fascinates and enthralls me.

Children learning about their family
from the stories told to them by their parents;
parents engaging with their children,
and showing interest in what they like to do,
and what they think;
children being allowed to say what they see,
and create their own picture of the world,
from a vast mosaic of pieces of life that they see,
and connecting together the fragments;
parents allowing their children to be children,
without any unneeded pressure
about who they should be too early –
in my opinion, the best gift you can give any child
is the knowledge that life itself is a teacher
and a lesson, and if you pay close attention
to what is going on around you,
and how you feel about things,
there is no knowing what you will discover
about the world, and about yourself,
and with the right knowledge
and an abundance of passion and enthusiasm
there is no knowing what might happen.

Children can only be taught so much by their teachers
and their parents, and there comes a time
in every boy and girl’s life when they realize
that they have to make a decision for themselves
with their own mind and their own reasoning,
and make a choice that might inform their entire future;
children can only be protected and held back
from the big wide world for so long,
and the moment that they realize
that they have to start paying for what they want,
every child has this worry about what to do next,
as they are engulfed by a massive wave of fear.

Every parent will tell you
that bringing up a child is not easy;
every child will tell you
that no one shines brighter in their eyes
than those who raise them, those who praise them,
and they who just by being there for them when they need them,
who make them extremely happy;
every parent will admit that providing and balancing
what a child needs with what they want can sometimes be hard;
every child, in not so many words, most of the time,
just wants to know that they are wanted,
and that they are loved,
and the best and the most amazing way
a parent and a child can show this
is to talk to each other,
and not be afraid to look into each other’s eyes,
and have a heart to heart.