language

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 ‘Inter-dimensional’

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

The fast moving clouds above my head
remind me yet again
that the world is constantly in motion;
the slowly decreasing volume of coffee
in my coffee cup reminds me perfectly
that everything has an end;
hearing and seeing people
conversing with others
reminds me every time
that language is like
an audibly addictive stimulus
for communicating stories,
memories, and emotions;
reading the last words of an author
is like celebrating and saying goodbye
to an old friend.

Life goes on;
heaven exists;
everybody is someone;
sometimes life is like walking through a mist;
there are worlds beyond the horizon;
there are universes where everything
and anything is possible;
there are dimensions
that stretch to infinity beyond this one;
there is life elsewhere
that is as abundant and beautiful
and as magical to behold as sea-coral.

When you are staring at a painting
you can feel like you are being drawn into it;
when you are reading a story
you can imagine yourself
as the character that you are reading about;
when you are listening to your favourite songs
you can feel every note and every word
as if there a part of you,
and you understand all that they mean
and all that they meant;
when you are watching life unfold
and real-life events take place right in front of you,
sometimes reality can be more real
than any version of anything
that our minds would ever be capable of constructing.

Some people never leave the city, the country,
the mindset of the place where they are born –
while others take flight at the first opportunity
to follow their dreams;
some people miss their calling to great things –
while others are just great at everything
and in anything that they do in life,
however some people sometimes need
to be shown what a miracle they are
and what acts of magic
they are daily witnessed performing;
some people find peace and solace
when traveling inwards;
some people find release
the more that they explore outwards;
some people go far
without having to physically travel;
some people are capable of so much
and they are so gifted in so many ways
that when they do travel to when and to where
it is always inter-dimensional.

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 ‘The Reveler’

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

Instantly feeling the life of a party
get inside you, as the music
moves your body to the beat;
living and breathing the life
and the times of a festival,
unable to stop yourself
from moving your feet;
being at a show
and hearing band after band play epically;
losing yourself, finding yourself;
being yourself, embracing your inner-self;
feeling happy, feeling free;
the collective spirit,
emotion, ambiance, and unbridled
and unbounded liberation
is exciting beyond words;
the wondrous magic
is like breathing the air of a brand new world;
the uplifting and enlivening anti-gravity
has you feeling like you are flying like a bird;
the amazing energy penetrates
deep inside you like a sword;
the echoes of waves of sound
emanate and overcome you;
even if the rain was falling
and the sky were a blanket of clouds,
the sun would be shining
and the colour above would be bright blue.

Music is its own language;
music is its own eternal and everlasting age;
music is a force of the universe;
music is what came first;
music is living, breathing, evolving, changing,
and can mean different things
depending on the time that you are listening;
music is meant to be enjoyed and reveled in.

The stage is like a heaven of stars;
the stars of the stage are like angels and messengers;
the songs played are like magic spells of amazing power;
that which raises the heart-rate
and brings stars to everyone’s eyes
is like being in the passenger seat of a speeding car.

If you are wild at heart
and the call of the unseen and the unknown
grips you hard every time you hear it,
then you are a born traveler;
if you can see things
and feel the presence of something divine,
then you are a true believer;
if you feel that every day is a prize
and a gift, then you are always a winner;
if you know what it means to be a part
of something bigger and greater,
that connects you to all levels of nature,
then you are closer than ever to heaven of Earth,
because you are a timeless reveler.

My Poem ‘Burning Bright’

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

‘Poet of the Sphere’,
‘The Sound of Mark’,
‘The Eternal Boy’ –
I am my books, and my books are me;
just as Ray Bradbury is ‘Fahrenheit 451’,
‘The Martian Chronicles’, ‘The Illustrated Man’ –
just as those books will forever be
Ray Bradbury.

An author has a connection to their books,
to their stories,
that is even beyond the words that they have written;
a published writer is a part
of each and every one of their books –
deeper than the cover, the ink, the paper, the ideas;
a storyteller knows what it is
to have true unburdened and unbounded imagination;
a wordsmith embodies their words and their works,
and their power cannot be taken away from them,
not even by fire.

To me, there is no greater sin in this life
than to burn a book, to try and destroy a story,
to undo what was done and written;
to me, there is no greater crime
than ignorance of the truth;
to me, everyone of Earth with a story to tell
deserves to speak aloud and stand under a hot sun;
to me, and to a lot of writers,
the knowledge of life that each and every one
of us possesses is what keeps us Human,
and it is what makes us unique –
magic is real,
and language and stories are the proof.

J.M. Barrie is Peter Pan;
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is Sherlock Holmes;
Terry Prachett is every character
that lives on the ‘Disk World’;
William Shakespeare is every character
that he wrote and gave life to in his plays;
Stephen King is Roland Deschain
from his epic ‘Dark Tower’ series of books;
Neil Gaiman is ‘Shadow’ from ‘American Gods’;
Douglas Adams is Arthur Dent;
J.K. Rowling is Harry Potter;
J.R.R. Tolkien is Bilbo Baggins;
and I am every one of my poems,
that to me are like rhyming short-stories.

Every writer of every book,
is each and every one of the characters that they write;
every myth, tale, and story, is an inspiring light;
every author deserves to have their books
remembered and embodied until the end of time –
from the sunrise of every morning,
until the moon fades away again
at the end of another night;
every story can live forever and be retold,
if people take them into their minds
and into their hearts,
and allow them to never stop
burning bright.

In memory of Ray Bradbury;
and all authors, all books;
and all myths, tales,
characters, and stories.

My Poem ‘The Feeling’

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

Every day I am overcome
by a sudden intense wave of emotion,
like the tide of an ocean;
I could be doing anything, at any time,
when I feel a light-headiness
that is one of a kind;
and when I feel it,
I know that something is about to happen,
I know something is happening right now,
I know something is building and rising
and growing in so many ways
like the sun in the sky.

Our internal thoughts
have more of an external influence
than we may think they might:
I have imagined things happening,
and they have come true;
I have come face to face
with something I dreamed about one night;
I have seen things turn around on themselves
and show themselves to me again,
as if they were brand new.

My thoughts often bubble up
and leave the confines of my mind;
my emotions are noticeable
and can be read in every language that I know –
from the sound of my voice,
to the tone of my poetry,
to the language of my body;
my instincts know know to read most of the universe’s signs,
but I always find myself somewhere
I might never at first would have thought to go –
which makes the choices that I make
sometimes more spontaneous and in the moment,
and they are phenomena of my life
that have stayed with me.

I remember where I was, who I was with,
what I thought, what I felt,
what every second meant,
when something that turned out to be life-changing for me
flashed into existence, and changed me,
and propelled me on a new course and direction, as a result;
I have the gift to see myself
as I was at a particular time in my life,
and although those days will never happen again,
and those moments can’t ever be repeated,
I am truly blessed to have lived a life
that has been so eventful, epic, inspiring, and full.

I am nostalgic;
I am someone who looks at old photographs,
and says to myself: remember when?
I believe that love is more than a word,
more than a simple emotion,
more than even a poet or a song could ever truly express –
because it is real ‘magic’;
I don’t let go of anything without a fight,
especially something that I believe
with all my heart was heaven-sent;
I know I am not dreaming
when the thing that I am imagining
is so amazing, awe-inspiring, and heart-racing,
that it becomes the dominant thought
that I can’t stop thinking,
and when what I am seeing is so exciting
it becomes the defining meaning of everything
I am intensely feeling.

My Poem ‘Nine Lives’

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

A poet, a writer,
a dreamer, a communicator,
who loves to write,
who loves to see the world,
and who dreams of life
and adventures beyond the stars;
a booking agent, a sign-language speaker,
a people reader, someone who sees the best in people,
a teacher, a friend, and someone who cares greatly,
and who has the biggest of hearts.

A coffee-house barista,
a caffeine cocktail expert and mixer;
a business man – someone with a briefcase of paper,
electronic wonders of inter-connectivity –
who is someone who is definitely a man with a plan on his mind,
who looks like someone who I would describe as a “fixer”.

A manager, a strategist, someone who has authority
over a lot of people, who is always thinking about
work schedules, rosters, and organizing a way
to get the most from his employees in any and every way they can;
a street-performer, a gifted and amazing musician –
someone who cares and who loves their art so much
they will spend entire hours and days
sitting or standing in the spot on the street,
or in the Subway or Underground station,
they can always be guaranteed to be found,
who brighten the day and the face of every passing
child, woman, and man.

A website designer, a moderator,
a person who can read and who can speak in code,
who knows the language of binary –
someone who has the gift to be able to create magic
with the tap of a key on a keyboard;
a DJ, a person fluent in the lexicon
and the discography of music, singers, musicians,
and who understands the deep layers of sound,
and the power and the importance
of one of humanity’s oldest and best
timeless forms of communication and entertainment,
who rarely enjoys any seconds of true white noise silence,
and whose favourite place in the world
is standing behind their DJ decks
and looking out at people reveling in
the magically and enthralling music they are producing,
broadcasting, and sharing, and seeing the ecstatic joy
of people enjoying themselves
moving like a single ocean of energy on a dance-floor.

A parent, love giver, a friend, a companion,
a protector of their children since the day of their birth,
who will be there for their offspring all of their life –
someone who is one of billions of people
who they are connected to, and who unknowingly are connected to them,
because they know someone who knows someone who knows someone,
who does something, who likes something,
who has something in common with someone they know,
who they may have met.

I have met people, and I have known friends,
and I know friends and family members, who know and who do,
and who are gifted at an infinite number of things –
however, for the purposes of this poem,
I wanted to show how varied and exquisite life is,
and as an example of the amazing people in our lives
we all may know, and this poem is a snap-shot
of some of the people that I know, and have met,
who all have, and who all live,
nine interesting and inspiring meaningful linked lives.

My Poem ‘The Dissimulation of Birds’

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

Have you ever walked past a hedge,
or a bush, a nest, or a tree,
and heard the tweets, the chirping,
the calls, the teachering of birds
being all that you can hear;
have you ever had a bird come up close to you,
and not for a second show and signs
of agitation, or fear;
have you ever seen a murmuration of starlings at dusk,
and been awestruck by the immense number, speed,
and constantly changing shapes it makes;
have you ever come face to beak
with a raven from the Tower of London,
and been so astonished by it and its interest in you
that you can’t and don’t want to look away.

The life of birds happens right along-side
the life of everything else on Earth,
independently, but occasionally overlaps;
the life of birds, the society of birds,
is self-sustaining, and it is an existence
that is at-one with nature and the seasons of Earth;
the life of birds requires impeccable memory,
instincts, and spatial orientation,
and a geographical blue-print in the form
of an incredible, second to none, internal map;
the life of birds is knowing
not just the distinct language of your own species
and recognizing it at a moments call,
but also knowing the voice of another class of bird,
and their potential intentions from a single chirp.

At dawn is when you will hear,
but not necessarily see, the majority of songbirds
that sing in chorus with one-another,
to make the most of the magical and beautiful sounds –
hearing the natural and amazing voice and melody,
while seeing the spectacular phenomena of a sunrise,
is a divine and wonderful experience that always astounds.

Different birds have different nests,
and every birds learns in time how to build a home
and a bed for themselves and for their mate and offspring;
different birds live different lives –
some regularly migrate to different
and recurring places and countries,
some stay the whole time in the country they first fledged,
and return to the same nests where they hatched, time after time.

Birds, as a collective species,
are one of the most intelligent and highly-evolved
forms of life on our planet;
birds have so many gifts to be envied –
I have always been fascinated by their freedom to go anywhere
with the miracle that they have of instantaneous flight;
I am convinced that birds convey more between themselves
than anybody in any language of humanity could ever convey in words.
If you ever want to see an incredible and beautiful thing
that speaks to our own need for independence
and interdependence you will see, hear, feel,
experience something special in a flock, a murder, a cloud,
a flight, a convocation, a charm, a congregation,
a watch, a dissimulation of birds.