memory

My Poem ‘The Green Day’

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

Today is the day
that we celebrate
the man, the legend,
and Ireland’s favourite saint…
today is the day
when we all want to be Irish,
even if it is just for 24-hours,
and when we all have an excuse,
if we need one,
to wear something green…
today is the day
when I am sure that even from space
the entire planet glows with an emerald light…
today is the day
that may only be remembered by some
through a haze of memory
as if it were just all a part of a dream.

Shamrocks are on show;
Irish beer flows;
everywhere you look green is all that see;
everybody from morning ’til night
raises their glasses
and feels their spirits rise
and fly free.

Green, to me, has always represented life,
abundance, growth, and energy;
today on Saint Patrick’s day
we can all know and see the face divinity;
green, to me, has always felt ethereal
and magical in some way;
today on Saint Patrick’s day
we can all be filled with a strength
to get through anything in life,
come what may.

God has always had his messengers on Earth,
and for centuries they have spread
the meaning of life throughout the world
through his teachings;
the meaning of life is to love and be loved,
however learning how to do so
comes in a variety of different ways;
living your life to its fullest is important
because life is precious
and the time that we have to live is fleeting;
it is a great thing
to be able to share the joy of life,
and there is no better time or way
to be our most human of selves
than on the day of green
that is Saint Patrick’s day.

The Green Day-poem

My Poem ‘V’

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

Our lives are stories
within an epic and ever-evolving,
ever-changing, ever-continuing poem
that started at the moment
that the universe began;
my own life has changed over time –
as I have grown, experienced,
thought, and felt, the world
and everybody whom I have met
has contributed into making me
who I am now at every turn;
we are more free to be who we want to be
when we are young and when we know nothing
about the need of adults to make plans;
I always knew that I had an energy
and a passion within myself –
however, it is only since I began
writing poetry and stories
that I have felt as if I were able
to allow the inspired fire
within my heart to burn.

I can still remember
the first poem I ever wrote;
I can still recall
where I was when I started
to put together the poems
and the pages and the images
of my first book;
I can still feel what it was like
when I knew that I had a gift
and that I could use words
to express my feelings
like a musician makes music
by playing notes;
I can still sit, stare,
and hold my pen and my notebook
in my hand and relive
the experience of inspirations magic touch.

Every time that I unveil
a new poetic-offspring of mine,
to me it is like seeing
the face of your own child smile
for the first time;
every time I start writing
and the words flow
and come fast like the water
of a raging-river,
the light and the energy
that binds everything together
starts to shimmer;
every time I am inspired
I can feel something inside of me
fighting to break free of me
and explode like a cannon;
every time of every writing
of a new poem is like witnessing
the golden light of an unending dawn.

I still have to pinch myself
to believe how lucky I am;
I still have to look in the mirror
and marvel at all that I have seen,
all that I have experienced,
and all that I remember from my life;
I still have to find a way every day
to use the power of what I know,
but that which other people
might not at first understand;
I still have to daily accept
the awesome feeling of pride that I feel
in myself at all that I have personally achieved
and done – especially when I flick through
and I re-read and remember
all the poems that I have written
that have been published in my books…
I still find it incredible to believe
that not only do I have one book
of my poetry and stories published –
but, in fact, instead of one,
as I write this, I am looking at the cover
of book number five.

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My Poem ‘The Light-years’

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

The sun is the herald
of light, energy,
awakening, and growth;
somewhere in the world
and high-above
the star at the heart of our sky
shines and effects all of our lives
more than any of us
could ever possibly know;
light can be a life-inducer;
there are some places on Earth
where because the light is different
time feels almost frozen –
a single day can feel like a year.

Nothing is ever truly stationary;
the universe, the galaxy, Earth,
our world is constantly on the move;
even seemingly empty space
is always full of something –
the mystery of the darkness
the surrounds our perfect jewel of life
too is full of shining clues;
something that happens,
even if it is light-years away,
creates ripples in space and time
that will eventually be there
at the dawn of a future brand new day.

Billions of light-years away,
billions of light-years ago,
the dark space that now exists
between the stars and the planets
was one bright beautiful light;
the universe was smaller,
life was just truly beginning;
anyone and everyone could see
the constant streams of celestial energy flow;
there was only day, there was no night;
every instant was like a constant roller-coaster
of emotions of our many senses,
and you would only have to look at a star
to hear it sing.

The bigger the universe has become,
the more that time and reality
has been pulled and stretched in every direction;
the more that life has splintered
into many from one,
everything has felt as if it were
on the verge of snapping back
because of the almighty galactic tension.

The universe has become infinite,
while life on every planet
has become finite;
as everything becomes a rush,
the more that the time we have
to truly take everything in
becomes even more precious;
there will always be love;
there will always be fear;
there will always be a reminder
that we are one of many
and yet always connected every day
and every night in the sky above;
there will always be something out there
calling to us all with a voice
powerful and capable of traversing
within the blink of an eye
the distance and the time
between every light-year.

My Poem ‘Forest of Forever’

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

Many years ago now,
in my forest of forever,
I stopped, I stood,
I looked, I dreamed,
I listened to the song
that played as the wind blew
through the trees,
I was alone but surrounded
by ancient spirits –
even though there was no other
man, woman, or child
around to be found,
I knew that I was being visited
by the ghosts of poets
and the muses of fellow dreamers –
it was as if I were communing
with my younger-self,
as well as with my future-self
and the one writing this poem:
the one who sees
and the one who believes
that every thing that happens
happens for a reason.

As I write, as I think back,
as I use the infinite sight,
as I remember all the steps
that I have taken along my path,
I am again in the woods of yesterday
and breathing in the air
and being intoxicated by the smell of pine –
I am again standing in the sunlight,
as if I have managed to leap back in time,
and I remember all that I felt
and all that walked with me
when my poetic gift was still in its infancy,
and I can know and I can remember
things that have not yet happened
but have already happened
that I have been immortalized in my poetry.

I see in my memory a land far-away;
I see the beautiful face of the one person
in the entire who is the true light of my day;
I look in front of me and I see
the man who would be me;
I turn my head and I see a boy
with blond curly-hair
who was once and will always be me;
I see an incomplete circle;
I see an unfinished masterpiece;
I see a continuously ever-changing world;
I see a shadowed version of myself
looking at me from afar
from their vantage-point
from which they can see every incarnation of me.

I cannot hold-on to my flashback for too long
before I flash-forward again;
I continue to write as if all that was
had always been just the words
that I had written by my own hand
with my own pen;
I look out of my bedroom window
and I see a floating white feather
and I am reminded of the falling leaves
that will be always frozen in time
when I return in my mind
to my forest of forever.

My Poem ‘Yesteryear’

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

Sitting in the same spot,
wearing the same shoes,
unlocking a door
usually kept shut,
looking out through a window
and seeing a unchanged view;
remembering the past
without reliving it,
remembering poems that I wrote
right here about a time in the future;
everybody is nostalgic, especially a poet;
the more I see, the more I think,
the more I write, the more I remember,
and the more that the pages of my mind
flick back and forth,
I pick up on things that I left behind
from the last time that I was here.

The past is a story that we all tell ourselves,
and for good reason when we come up upon
moments from our lives we do sometimes find
blank pages full of words written in invisible ink;
the present is like being at a crossroads
of time and possibilities;
the future is sometimes not going to turn out
just how you think;
the Earth keeps turning,
the people keep moving,
the seasons keep changing,
life keeps evolving as it has
and as it will continue to do so
for centuries upon centuries to come.

We sit across from ourselves more than we realize;
we are constantly searching for commonalities;
we all want to see ourselves reflected
in another person’s eyes;
we all imagine different realities;
some things will always change,
some things will always be the same;
some things are other things
just repackaged in a different box
with a different name;
some things come back time and again.

Tears must fall;
forests must grow;
flowers must rise tall;
rivers of all colours must flow;
life can sometimes feel like you are walking
through a hall of mirrors;
we must all learn to capture every miracle
and make it a part of us
before it disappears;
a life of anticipation can feel like
you are constantly waiting
for a parcel to be delivered;
as I get older and as I travel
and I am pulled along by destiny’s slipstream,
I constantly find reasons to say
that I am glad to be here –
and now, as before, I walk forward
while closing again and walking away
from the door of yesteryear.

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 ‘The Mayfly Life’

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

Every life is a short life;
every thing has a shelf-life;
every journey is finite;
for every morning
there must be a night;
every artist has a muse;
everybody has always
got something to lose;
for every mystery
there are always clues;
everybody at some point
imagines what it would be like
to walk in somebody else’s shoes.

Everyone has a shadow;
every new life is a beacon of light;
everyone has a clock
ticking down slowly to zero;
everyone has a secret birthright;
every day we listen;
every day we speak;
every day we read the written;
every day we all must trust
and believe that our lives and we
are meant to be as we are;
every thing that can be created and destroyed
should be marveled at with awe like a star,
because though the memory
and the spirit of something may survive
and live forever after death,
the shell and the body
that surrounds and protects something
has but a short time
until it must break apart
and reveal the true energy inside
that has been waiting so long
to emerge from the dark.

Like the light of the moon
on a star-lit winter night;
like a beam of sunlight
bursting through the clouds
after a shower of rain has fell;
like the spell that changes you forever
that is “love at first-sight”;
like the wish that comes true
after you hope with all your heart
and throw a token of you
into life’s celestial wishing-well;
so much is evanescent,
so much is momentary,
transient, temporary, and brief,
the rules of life,
and the time that we all
have to do what we must,
can only be compared
to the sight and the life of a tree
and its falling leaves
that change over time –
and like every living thing,
and like every living person,
everything has a reason to be…
even though their life-span
in comparison shares so much
with the life and the fate
of the ephemeral mayfly.

My Poem ‘Survivor Instinct’

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

Once the mist has lifted,
once the dust has settled,
once a new day begins
and the dark clouds have drifted,
and the frozen time has melted,
once the sunlight breaks through
and showers to the ground,
once people find a way to say something
to fill the void of silence
once again with sound,
once everybody no longer feels guilty
for showing a smile –
everybody can learn to accept and to move on
without constantly living every hour in denial.

Some people do not blink,
some people do not know,
some people do not think,
some people care so much
that even the thought
of something tragic
happening to someone else
anywhere in the world
feels like they are
carrying a heavy load.

There are people
who would do anything
and would give anything
to someone who was in need
more than them;
there are people
who get up out of bed
hoping to help someone in some way;
there are people
who feel a need to give to charity
in the form of a donation;
there are people
who live their life
with a constant open hand
to anyone and everyone every day.

Heroes are all around us;
angels walk among us;
where there is dark you can find light;
you never know when someone
is going to safe your life.

When something is happening far away from you
it is easy to convince yourself
that it isn’t happening;
when someone is hurting
and you don’t know them
it is easy to switch off
from the image of them
as if the memory of them
was a creation of your imagining;
when you see something happening
and you know that you can do something to help,
when you believe that you can be a light
to guide someone out of a living hell,
when you see a chain
and you would give anything
to be that necessary missing link,
then do what feels the most natural to you
and use all that you feel
when you turn on your survivor instinct.

My Poem ‘Celestial’

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

We all wonder
when we look up to the sky
what the veil of black or blue
obscures from view –
whether it is in fact above
that we all go to when we die,
and why it is that a burst of light
and energy from the sun
can have the effect that it does
of making us all feel brand new.

If music is the heart-beat
of everything in the universe,
then poetry in the genetic code
that binds all life together;
if light is the way
that the true beauty of the universe
comes to life,
then love is the dream come true
that we all want to live in a state of forever;
if memory is the way that we can all
travel through time,
then the future is a present
that we haven’t yet unwrapped;
if life is about sharing everything
and is about understanding one-another,
then we can all learn again
to live in harmony with every-thing and everybody –
just as all life once did when the things we did,
the things we said, and the things we built
were made to last.

Every sense, every sensation,
every lens, every emotion
of every miracle of creation,
is more detailed and deeper,
and is yet to be fully revealed
and realized by the celestial secrets’ keeper –
however, even though I believe
that humanity is not yet ready
to know all that there is to know,
I believe that there is life out there
who realized and who discovered
the reason for all things to be
as they are and what they are
not long after the universe was born –
before humanity,
or the sun in the sky, for that matter,
were even the twinkle of a star
in any constellation of light in the dark.

Travelers and explorers of space,
singers and players of an opus,
emissaries and examples of an entire race –
each and every one of us
is meant to be different from one-another;
both drivers and passengers of our own destiny,
each and every individual with a consciousness
and a face that has ever expressed
a feeling from within
that there was more to be found
beyond the four walls of their day-to-day world;
everyone who has ever believed
that they have seen, met, and have been touched
by the divine whom they might think of as an angel,
knows more than they might realize –
and no matter where they come from,
and around what star they start out orbiting…
everyone is a child of life,
and just like a light of heaven,
timeless, unique, and celestial.

My Poem ‘Star of My Heart’

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

Your love of life
is the same as mine,
and when I look into
your beautiful eyes
I see all the stars
of my life align –
every moment, every choice,
every person, every time
I looked above and I asked
to be shown a sign –
every thought, every dream,
every time I felt the draw
and the allure of the unseen,
you were always there
waiting for me to come into your life
so that we could both give ourselves
and our overflowing gift of love
to each-other in every way, over and over
like a song on constant replay,
and be there for each other
every second of every day,
always and forever.

We have both sought one-another;
we have both listened out for one-another;
we have both been through so much
so that we could be together;
we have both known
that we were meant for each other
since we both followed
the tweets of each others’ twitter –
and now until the end of time
I promise to love you like no other
and with you discover
what awaits us both
in the life that we will always share,
no matter what blue or star-spangled sky
we both find ourselves sleeping under.

Every second that I see you
my world consists only of you;
every moment that I talk to you
I take a trip into a world
of our own making
that every day becomes filled
with all that could only be
what makes the both of us
so amazing together,
and every memory of us
constantly comes back to the present
and feels like they just happened yesterday;
every moment I gaze and I see everything
in infinite number what I love the most
about the perfection of heaven that is you.

Lightning-bugs light up the dark;
butterflies bring out the beauty of the day;
you bring out the best in me in every way,
and I swear to you, my angel,
that I will always love you
and you will never stop being
the constant star of my heart.

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