I feel like I have been torn to pieces and put back together again... I feel like I have loved so hard, for so long, but now I am convinced that all the love that I once felt is gone. I have always been a dreamer and an unwavering optimist; but now I see only one path before me: the same one as that of the sun, and one day, too, I will have shined my last, and I will finally be free of all pain. I have felt many connections over my life, but almost all of the people with whom I have shared so much have long since gone their own way and anything once felt has been lost. This is what happens, this is what has happened, this is what I never anticipated, this is what I never could have predicted; but as times change so too are people remade - especially when they find themselves at a crossroads, scarred by life, and not willing to repeat the same cycle that they have been struggling to live through over and over, seemingly without end. What should we do, What would we do, What can we do to feel something, anything, like we once felt before? But there is no way back. There is no way to start anew. There is no way to know what would have happened if different choices had been made - especially when each and every day feels simultaneously like the first and the last. There is no way other than to reach for tomorrow, and hope that what we find will once again remind us of where we came from and why we are still alive. There is always a way forward, even after something akin to the "End of the World" - but, if you want to give the version of you who rises out of the ashes of what came before something that they will keep with them in the new world of the future that awaits them, you could do no better than to gift a thought of hope and a promise that everything will be OK as long as they choose to embrace, and do not fear, the burden that is sometimes felt by those of us who would class ourselves as survivors.
love
‘VEGA – The Vampire King’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Fifteen: “Olivia Hunter”
‘VEGA – The Vampire King’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Fourteen: “Tempus Fugit”
‘VEGA – The Vampire King’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Thirteen: “Out of body”
‘VEGA – The Vampire King’ by Mark Hastings – Chapter Twelve: “The Messenger God”
My Poem “Everything to Me”
On the night after my Dad died, I ran away into the city - I wanted to lose myself within the metropolis of people, because I felt like I had lost something inside of me... on the night after my Dad died, I walked the illuminated city streets not knowing where I was going to go, nor who I was going to meet... on the night after my Dad died, I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my life... on the night after my Dad died, I wanted to scream, I wanted to shout, I wanted to cry - but, in all honesty, I could not control my emotions so instead I felt numb but as if I were walking around with a gaping wound in my chest that exposed my bleeding heart that felt like it had been repeatedly stabbed by a knife. On the night after my Dad died, I unexpectedly met some new friends who all already knew one another and who had gathered together to share a Christmas drink - and though I had never met any of them before I knew that there was something to my meeting them that seemed like someone or something wanted me to form a brand new link... on the night after my Dad died, I remember being angry at whomever or whatever had taken my Dad away from me... on the night after my Dad died, I could not believe what had happened, what I had seen - and even now, and always, I will never be able to comprehend this nightmarish new reality I am living in that I wish was just a bad dream. On the night after my Dad died - after spending most of the night talking, connecting, and intoxicated, with my new friends - I said goodbye, and then, after I somehow made my way home, I reflected upon what had happened through a mirrored torrent of tears, and I wondered what was going to happen next and who I now was - and though no clear answers came to me, I knew that my world, as I knew it, had come to an end. My Dad is always with me - I feel him around me, within me, like the glow and the feeling of some kind of perpetual spirit and light that I know is my Dad speaking to me, reaching out to me, guiding me, giving me the gift of his unending love that will always mean everything to me. -Mark Hastings 22/12/22 In memory of my Dad, David William George Hastings 6/1/1949 - 8/12/2022
My Poem “Shadow of Death”
All my footprints have gone... all my fingerprints have disappeared... all my impressions have been undone... all my loves have been lost - it is as if what happened never happened and now I am the only one who remembers or cares that I once used to be with someone, sometime, somewhere. I never used to believe in true endings until this year, and now it feel as if life is not done teaching me the lesson that I, nor anybody, has true control over what happens... I never believed that hope would abandon me - but something is telling me and showing me that the days of knowing what to do and when are out of my hands and from now on I am going to have to do more to keep the once perpetual light of optimism within me lit, because even the most intense and raging fire can be doused and can even go out for good. All my life, I took more for granted than I realised - and it is only now, that I am bereft of what and who I used to rely on, that I understand where I have been going wrong, where and when I should have done more, and made the most of moments that I thought would last for ever, but were always only temporary... all my life, I have been blessed and I have been surrounded by more that I could have ever wished or asked for; and now that things, and people, have left me I find myself wondering if, when, and how my life could make sense ever again - because I have been changed forever in ways that not even I could describe or capture in poetry. The future, to me, is now one day at a time... the past, to me, is now like somewhere I once knew that I wont see or repeat again until I reach my own version of the end... the present is dark, and even the lights I see, to me, have lost their once vibrant shine... reality, for me, has been fractured too badly for anything or anyone to be able to mend - because I will always be haunted and living under the shadow of death.
markthepoet.me 