You are The Chosen One…
you are here for a reason…
you are capable of more
than you could ever imagine…
you are where you are…
you are doing what you are doing…
you are shining like a distant
star in the dark…
you are silent,
yet your voice is echoing…
you are instrumental…
you are elemental…
you are indomitable…
you are integral…
you are saying something…
you are expressing the intangible…
you are hearing something:
music, rain-drops, a concert,
a down-pour, a stream of consciousness,
nature, beats, a distant rumble in the clouds,
poetry, to be embraced, to be held,
to be grasped, to be assimilated –
because it all matters,
because it all makes sense,
because it all entrances…
think about it all:
who you are, who you choose to surround yourself with,
what has led you here and what has carried you this far…
for me, it is my heart that has brought me here;
this time was chosen for me
to shine my ray of light as the rain falls;
for me, moments are precious and timeless,
unregrettable and unforgettable;
my parents would have moved heaven and Earth for me
if they could while I was growing up, and even now…
choices are so important…
time should not be wasted
by wrapped yourself up with a chain of what if’s?…
an idea is magical…
realizing a mental-picture is potent…
seeing something that nobody else can see
is blessed and celestial…
if a flood looks like it is on the way,
if you think that you can’t weather it,
save what you can anywhere and any way that you can,
and try to swim through whatever comes rushing towards you,
and if all else fails build yourself a life-raft
out of anything that you can find,
and never lose the one thing that will save your life
if you let it… never lose hope…
because The Chosen One’s do not often
get a say as to when and why
they are thrust into the lime-light;
heroes become heroes because they save lives
and they give themselves freely to another
at their time of need;
the divine conductor sets the stage,
writes the melody, keeps the orchestra in-time and on-pace,
and gives gravity to everything,
and they are present every second of life –
when we die our destiny has been fulfilled,
however our impression on the sandy beach of life
still remains long after we pass-over
to what lies beyond the horizon;
anybody who touches, anybody who teaches,
anybody who takes a hold of their life
and who wants to love and share life’s
infinite riches of experience,
inspiration, and light from their perspective
does so because they must –
because they were given a choice
and asked a question, the answer to which
was in their heart their entire life –
because right from day one,
they were, as you are,
the chosen one.
life
My Poem ‘Correspondant’
When I was 12 years-old
I had a pen-pal from France;
when I was in school,
I and the rest of my french-class
were asked to write a letter in french
to someone who had written a letter in English
to the person with the name
whom they had randomly picked out of a hat…
I was picked by a boy called “Sebastian” –
who I believe went to school in a town in Normandy –
and over the next few months
I would write in my best french to Sebastian,
and Sebastian in-turn would write
in his best English to me.
Sebastian would tell me about where he lived,
about his family, and about his love of the English-language.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Sebastian’s letters to me –
however, my competence in replying to Sebastian in french
left a lot to be desired, and after a while
I did not reply to Sebastian in the same frequency
as he was writing to me.
Sebastian sent letter after letter
about a myriad of different things that were happening to him –
but, unfortunately, my letter-writing to Sebastian
had gone from once a month to none-at-all,
which to this day still makes me feel horrible
and it is one of the many things that I regret
and which still picks away at my conscience.
When I was 12, I was not the writer that I am today.
When I was 12, “social-media” had not been invented,
neither had what we call today the “internet”,
and talking to someone in another country –
even as geographically close as France is to England –
felt as hard as talking to an alien a far-away galaxy.
When I was 12, school felt like a place
where I was forced to attend.
When I was 12, I did not understand
what in life is the most important.
I am in my thirties now,
and high-school, or secondary-school
as we call it here in England,
feels like it was many moons ago
than I can remember with as much clarity
as I have for yesterday –
however, as with many moments from my childhood,
there are things that still stand-out
and there are some moments
that rise to the surface of my mind randomly
when I least expect them to…
and today, on a rainy Saturday afternoon,
here in England, as I sit behind my desk,
in my bedroom, writing in my notebook,
is one of those times when something
and someone that I haven’t thought about in years
has flashed back to me and made me ask
with genuine fascination:
I wonder whatever happened to “Sebastian”,
my life-time ago pen-pal from France.
My Poem ‘The Light at the end of the tunnel’
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.
My Poem ‘The Burning Man’
What symbolizes life more than a candle?
What symbolizes a person’s soul more than a flame?
What symbolizes that which is precious
but that which is also hard to handle?
What symbolizes that which no one,
no matter how powerful they are, can tame?
Fire. Burning. Creation, and destruction.
The end, as well as the beginning of something new.
Just as a fire will continue to rage
as long as it has fuel –
an artist… a reveler… a person inspired
and who embraces life’s limitless opportunities
to express themselves see powerful images,
like that of a “burning man” –
as if they are also gasoline
to the spark that resides
within their mind and in their heart;
just like a band of many, performing as-one,
a harmony and a synchronicity of destiny
binds everybody together –
so much so that they create
their own gravitational-pull.
In the heat of a desert…
in the dry air of a forest…
in the most desperately-remote places on Earth…
within the beat of a person’s heart
crescendoing in their chest…
sometimes a seemingly-spontaneous wildfire
can spark into life…
sometimes amazing things can happen
when the conditions are “just-right”…
sometimes the gift and the act of free-will
can give rise to an instinctive
visceral expression of natural art.
Life is a shared-experience…
some people’s life, light, flame, and fire,
burns brighter and for longer –
but everybody who lives any life at-all
burns with a purpose…
everybody is a stranger to each-other
until they introduce themselves to one-another…
everybody is on a mission of self-discovery –
but the most important thing
to look back upon your life
and be proud of is all the times
when you walked together with someone
in mutual-participation and cooperation,
guided by a feeling and without a firm-plan;
there have been many examples throughout human history
of what happens when you bring together
people and nature and you let them be
and you let them burn and commune
for a short time with one-another,
and there is no better festival of life
that takes place every year
that is a symbol of the constant burning spirit
of a person’s spirit more so than ‘Burning Man’.
My Poem ‘Searching…’
A night-time astronomer…
a day-time blue-sky observer…
a cosmic-archaeologist
who uncovers the face of the past
by looking back in time
as they look up to the stars…
an Earth-bound poet
who looks at the world around them
and imagines a similar beautiful day,
in a far-away country,
that will always live forever in their memory –
in spite of the speed of time
that always wants to pass by too fast…
a nostalgic boy looking through
a physical family photo-album…
a book-lover in a book-store
looking for a new book title
to jump out at them…
a self-confessed bohemian young woman
who rides the Subway every day
with their head-phones on
and their music-player in their purse…
a doctor in a hospital E.R.
desperately listening for a heart-beat
and feeling for the unmistakable tremor of a pulse.
I search… we search…
everybody searches throughout their life –
some search for truth in darkness,
some search for and find joy
when they are given a gift of inspiring light,
and some use their gifts to help others,
and some use the answers they receive
to the questions they ask to create art,
to write, to give others a reason
to give them the gift of their precious time.
Everybody in life is looking for something different;
everybody in life likes different things at different times;
everybody in life has priorities and personal opinions
about what in life is the most important;
everybody in life at times journeys low,
and everybody in life at times ascends high.
A person, a place, a name, a face,
an identity, a commonality,
a heaven on Earth, an interface –
we all use our sight,
we all use our senses,
we all use different sources of light
to mend or break-down fences;
we are all surfing a wave of something…
we are all the beholders of a star in our life
that is worth protecting…
we are all in a constant state of changing…
we are all on a never-ending trek
to find that which has been waiting for us
the entire time that we have been searching.
My Poem ‘The Stranger Things’
The stranger things are,
the stranger things matter;
the stranger things are what shine
far away in the dark,
and they are as beautiful and mysterious
as the planets and the stars;
the stranger things become
the more that we think about them,
and the more that we become invested
in the strange things of the world
the more our heart beats faster.
Everybody is “normal” in their own way,
and yet equally as strange;
everybody is a character in someone-else’s story,
and a figure in someone-else’s painted landscape;
everybody can be “at home”
at the same time that they are “away”;
everybody can be beyond who they see
when they look at their own reflection in a mirror
and wear within their mind a vastly-different face.
To me, the stranger things are
the more interesting they are;
to me, the longer something stays unexplained
the more intrigued and the more drawn to it I am;
to me, the stranger things in life –
the mysterious, the one-of-a-kind, the extraordinary –
are constantly leaving their mark for me to find,
like a calling-card;
to me, the stranger things –
the unknown, the questions, the fables,
the stories of aliens, fairies, and monsters –
are so inspiring and amazing,
the more I hear, the more I see, the more I imagine.
What can seem strange to one person
can seem “every-day” to another;
what can seem fantastic to a child,
or to someone who is young-at-heart,
can seem to someone with a closed-mind
like something that could only be found
between the pages of a book-cover;
what I have learned in my life,
as a story-teller and a story-reader,
is that anything and every-thing
can be a fountain and a treasure-trove
of thoughts and energy –
and that life, if nothing else,
is never boring and can be always interesting;
living and breathing in a world deeply
brings with it oracles of gifts,
and they can be found in the strangest of places
filled with the strangest of things.
My Poem ‘Beam me up!’
“Space… the final frontier…”
50 years ago, the voyages and the adventures
of the crew of the Star-ship ‘Enterprise’
began a universe, a saga, and a story,
envisioned from the out-set as a
“wagon-train to the stars”…
now, half a century after the first episode
of the television series ‘Star Trek’
first premiered on American screens,
fans young and old –
some whom were born before,
some whom were born after, September, 1966,
from all around the world,
of all walks of life, colour,
and ethnicity, are joining together
in celebration of the original ‘Star Trek’ series,
and its many film and television spin-off series,
to champion every story, every episode, every ethos,
that each and every one of which propagated –
and it is those optimistic and hopeful
visions of a future which has inspired
and compelled countless men, women, and children,
to reach beyond and journey into the unknown…
one day, perhaps in the life-time
of those who are young today,
humans will set-foot upon another planet far from Earth,
and the entire world will unite as they watch it happen –
and everybody will have the visionary creator of ‘Star Trek’,
Gene Roddenberry, to thank for creating
a world of infinite possibilities
where there exists life of infinite diversity
in an infinite number of combinations.
I have been a fan of ‘Star Trek’ since I was a child…
I have watched every episode of every television series,
and every minute of every ‘Star Trek’ motion-picture,
over and over again…
I have imagined in my dreams what it would be like
to be the Captain of my very own star-ship,
with my own crew, embarking on an adventure
of my own imagining into the vastness of space,
to the outer-reaches of the galaxy…
the thought of traveling faster than the speed of light
has always been enough to make my imagination
race away at warp-speed into the depths of wonder
that lie among the strange new worlds,
and the new civilizations, of the galactic-wilds…
I have so much to thank the writers, the actors,
the artists, of every ‘Star Trek’ adventure for –
even to this day, their influence continues
to inspire me and drive the course of my imagination –
because they have instilled in me a great love
of stories of the fantastic,
especially those of the science-fiction orientation.
‘Star Trek’ has taught me so much!
‘Star Trek’ has given me the gift of wanting to understand
the seemingly-incomprehensible, and why it is important
to treasure every moment that we are alive –
because each-and-every-one will never come again –
and what we leave behind is not as important
as how we have all lived…
and, more than anything, ‘Star Trek’ has given me
the gift of wonder and a love of embracing
the infinite possibilities of existence…
and I swear that if I were contacted
by a star-ship of any kind from another planet
that could transport me to their ship
in the blink of an eye,
“to boldly go where no-one has gone before”,
I would say, at the top of my lungs:
“beam me up!”.
My Poem ‘Rush’
Children dash… children sprint…
children can make moments last…
children don’t even realize
just how much the days of their early lives
race by so fast –
because, to a child, they can act as quick
as they can think, in a flash,
and their drive is the endless energy
that they find at a moments-notice,
even before the adults around them
have time to blink.
Even as they grow up,
some people do not lose their love
for the sensation of the wind against their face,
even as other interests compel them,
some people never give up their love of a chase –
as if they are still in school on sports-day
still competing in a race;
even as their hair-colour changes,
some people can never stop their heart
beating to a charged rhythm;
even as the world creates new obsessions and distractions,
some people live better in mind, body, and soul,
when they are pushing themselves to the limit –
like a soldier on a mission.
It’s why a boxer enters into a ring…
it’s why a rock-star gets up on a stage to sing…
it’s why someone keeps doing something that they love…
it’s why people run, dive, fly, and jump…
it’s because, when you feel like you have got lightning
surging through your blood,
you never want to halt doing
whatever gives you that unbelievable rush.
My Poem ‘Boomerang’
Throw that boomerang
as hard and as far as you can
high into the sky –
but make sure to watch it constantly
as it flies and then comes back around
with more speed and more energy
than what you put into it when you threw it,
because if you don’t anticipate its return
then it may end up hitting you
straight between the eyes.
Life is an open sky;
thoughts, actions, emotions,
and intentions are like a boomerang;
do unto others as you would have
done unto you is one of life’s
greatest philosophies to live by;
once you have light a fuse
connected to anything explosive
you run the risk that it is one day
ultimately going to go bang!
Actions have consequences;
words when spoken out-loud
are followed by echoes;
if you knowingly hurt someone’s feelings
then one day you too may find yourself
being hurt by someone or something
in ways that cannot be easily mended;
words, even those spoken
in the silent to the outside-world
confines of our own minds
find a way to spread themselves far and wide –
and where they may land
and what impact they may make
all depends on the reason
that they were said in the first place…
one word can haunt you worse
than any phantom or ghost.
I believe in karma,
and I believe that the world
is like a giant echo-chamber;
I believe in cause and effect,
and I believe that so-called “imperfections”
are in fact what make the world we live in perfect;
I believe that for there to be any kind of balance
there must be opposites,
and I believe that things do happen for a reason,
and I believe when things come face-to-face with you
don’t be afraid to go toe-to-toe
and eye-to-eye with them, or it.
The world is a sphere;
because of a little thing called “gravity”,
what goes up will always come back down;
sometimes the best way to move beyond
something that is bothering you is to let it out –
I personally would recommend putting pen to paper
and then exorcising yourself of your negative thoughts
by throwing them into a fire;
be careful what you say and what you wish for –
because the world is always listening,
and most things that we do in life
come back around to us like a boomerang.
My Poem ‘The Day-dreamer’
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.
