mystery

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 ‘A Study in Starlight’

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

Everybody knows what it is like
to stay up all night;
everybody knows that experience
of looking out of the window
and watching the stars in the sky
arch through the dark
and mesmerize with their light;
everybody knows what it is like
to stay wide awake
with something, or perhaps someone,
on their mind;
everybody knows that you cannot tell
what will come from what you see around you
and from what you may find inside you
when it is just you
and your future in front of you,
and when what you choose to do next
may be the most defining moment
of your entire life.

Countless writers, artists,
deep-thinkers, and students
who every day attend the university of life,
and its many campuses,
have been driven by the need
to stay in the groove that they feel comfortable in
and create and generate a work by their own hand;
a lorry driver knows what it is like
to drive all through the night
getting to where they need to get to;
a true detective knows what it is like
to have a tantalizing mystery
and a question in front of them
that they believe if anyone can solve it they can;
everyone alive who has ever been told “no”
knows that the harder you work at something,
and the more you believe in yourself,
you can inspire all kinds of energy
and strength to rise from out of the blue.

There is an infinite story being written
in the sky above and all throughout life;
there are infinite characters
with a distinctive voice
making themselves be heard –
even those who communicate with the language of silence;
even someone who is skeptical of the supernatural
knows that there are many forms of astonishing miracles
that some people witness every day
that in themselves are “magic”;
there is no greater push to do something,
or think in a certain way,
than the motivation of fright;
everyone has, at some point in their life,
had an instinct of a not-so-secret sixth sense;
when something looks, reads, or sounds
like it is missing that indefinable “something” –
that is because sometimes some things
need a fresh breath, shot, and spark,
to be infused into them before they are done,
to make something that is great truly epic.

Life is a constant study of seeing,
learning, and understanding,
that doesn’t end until it ends;
in my own personal philosophy,
if you feel like there is more to see or more to do
you are always correct and absolutely right;
if you have the choice to be yourself,
why for a second would you choose to pretend;
the clues and the curiosities
that many people find as they live their lives,
to those of us who embrace a question
as if it were a bona fide religion,
are what keep us up all night
looking through a window
studying the starlight.

My Poem ‘The Great Detective’

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

The great detective knows the streets of his city
like he knows the indelible lines on the palms of his hands;
the great detective sees the world and its people
as if they are an intricately-interwoven and infinite puzzle;
the great detective walks with knowledge and conviction,
with a mystery to be solved in his pocket,
and he knows of nothing that he has not already considered,
thought about, and played out in his mind in a hundred ways,
and because he sees and knows only
solutions and answers to every question,
the great detective walks with phenomenal confidence;
the great detective is not oblivious to breaking a sweat
and fighting for what he believes is right,
should the time and need arise –
however, he strives to find a way to win the day
without having to encounter, or get involved,
in any sort of tussle of trouble.

The great detective is always thinking,
and his imagination and his thought process
is boundless and second to none;
the great detective has a vast palace of memory
in which he keeps the things he holds the most precious;
the great detective has a mind as fast,
and a tongue as quick, as a bullet from a gun;
the great detective has seen wonders,
and has met people who exhibit traits of humanity
from all ends of the spectrum,
but he is still proud to call himself
a member of the human race –
however, he believes that when people do start listening
to what he has to say he will be the saviour of all of us.

The great detective believes above all else
that through logic and reasoning
even the improbable can have a reason for being
that can be simplified to a simple sentence;
the great detective is not afraid to act
and think simultaneously, and adapt on the fly;
the great detective thrives on the rush of a new experience;
the great detective knows he is good, perhaps great, at what he does –
so when asked if he is modest about his gifts he does not have to lie.

The great detective can conjure up a deduction in the blink of an eye;
the great detective has seen things that are so beyond words
and description, the only other way to classify them
would be to think of them as magic;
the great detective himself cannot not pigeon-holed,
nor his ego or self-belief subdued –
although some have failed when they have tried;
the great detective is like a force of nature,
and even to himself, when he looks in the mirror at his reflection,
or when he considers the most perfect of callings for himself,
he always returns to the most elementary conclusion
at the end of his deductions:
and that is that, beyond anything or anybody that he could be,
he is, and was always meant to be, who he is,
and who he will always be – the great detective.