Every story is an alternate reality,
a parallel universe, a world of possibilities…
every story is filled with characters
all bound by the rules of there individual realities…
every story has its own meaning to be told…
every story has its own seasons and history
that informs the present and the future
by repeating the same the echoes of the past
which never get old…
every story is different, and its own,
and yet connected to every other…
every story continues beyond that which
can be read within the pages between
the front and the back covers…
every story should be written
by those who are meant to write it,
but every story deserves to read by everybody…
every story can make a difference
to the lives of people who are drawn
to the magic and the poetry of the art
that they feel hypnotised by,
like a moth to a flame…
every story has a special place in the heart
of its creator and its author,
because no matter how many times it is read
no one but the writer of a story could ever
write the story of dedication that it took
to make a story clear and correct
after what can sometimes feel like a lifetime
of existing within a mist of mistakes…
every story has its own version of itself within it
that someone is writing simultaneously,
and every story has its own version of its author
living their life and being who they are supposed to be -
and within every story there are those
who sometimes dream that they are characters
in someone else’s story,
but they can never find the words to explain why…
every story has a beginning, an end,
as well as a conclusion -
however every story is a journey that begins
with the answer and the conclusion of another story,
because the truth is that every story is all one story
written into the words of every person,
even if they don’t realise it,
and every time anyone thinks they know
everything about every story they have been told
someone else will have their own version of the same story
and a new reality, a new universe,
and a new world is created, over and over again,
that continues to change and evolve
the way in which anyone can tell, retell,
and give new meaning to the life of a story.
storyteller
My Poem “Once Upon a Time”
It is said that every story ever told
has a beginning, a middle, and an end -
which is true, from a certain point;
however, every story of everything
and everyone is connected…
no matter when, where, or why a story is told,
and no matter how a story is told,
what a story is about, and the reason it is
a story in the first place,
is always retained within it -
because at the heart of every story
there is always a reason that binds the many
elements and fragments of a story together
that all then fit together perfectly
like the pieces of a puzzle
or the strands of connectivity
that maintain a net.
All stories have certain things in common with one another…
all stories are different, and yet similar…
all stories are true, and all stories are false -
because perception of reality is key,
and sometimes multiple people
can have varying opinions on what happened,
as well as when and why something happened,
even though they might have all been witness
to the same thing happening…
all stories change and take on a life of their own
the more that they are heard and retold -
and sometimes a seemingly insignificant
aspect of a story that captures the essence
of the tale being told can grow to have more prominence
and can become what people remember
in greater detail more than most,
because of the manner and the demeanour
of the storyteller doing the retelling.
Stories are how life communicates
aspects of itself with future generations -
just as the DNA of humanity has being doing
even before we as species emerged
from the ocean of possibilities
and we were driven to become
what we have evolved into…
there are so many recurring motifs
that repeat throughout many of the chapters
of history that seem to demonstrate
a cycle and a rhythm of some sort of
underlying pattern and system -
which is why several stories
sound familiar when they are shared,
reconstructed, and sometimes given
a new name that is more contemporary
and easier to understand from a modern standpoint…
stories can be a source of inspiration, insight,
and a key to unlocking and understanding
why something, why someone,
or why somewhere is that way that they are -
because everything, everyone,
everywhere, never stays the same -
except for those things, people, and places
that exist in the middle of nowhere
and are only discovered by those not knowing
what, not whom, they are going to find…
things sometimes get lost,
people sometimes get forgotten about,
places something get abandoned;
however, then there are those things,
those people, those places,
that refuse to be taken for granted
and always find a way to be remembered,
to be recorded, to be given a special place
in the story of history and are allowed
to continue to exist in some form,
even though they might only be responsible
for something that they never have imagined,
nor ever expected, to be given the status
of becoming a story -
because what happened, when,
where, why, and how, only happened
once upon a time.
A Poem A Day #488: Interstellar Storyteller
My Poem “Trekker”
I have always been a trekker…
whether it be through a city of stars
or across an ocean of light,
I have always allowed my thoughts,
my dreams, and my instincts
to dictate what I should do and when…
over the years I have unflinchingly
taken leaps into the unknown
and jumped instantaneously
through swirling wormholes
of many colours to places
of hope and adventure…
over my life I have looked
to the stars to guide my way –
like the seafarers of old –
and every time I saw the torches
of destiny align along the road of fate,
seemingly for me,
I never hesitated to believe
that I could follow the example
of my heroes and decide
to make a difference come what may…
I was instilled with a feeling
of hopefulness, optimism,
and a strength of spirit
and self-belief from the time
that I was a small child –
and as I grew, as I looked around,
as I observed, and as I wondered
why the universe was the way that it was
I naturally began to imagine
that I saw more than
what my eyes told me I was seeing,
and that is why when I look
at the vast darkness of space
I see an opportunity to be inspired
and not a reason to feel fear…
I enjoy reading, watching, and reliving
the stories of pathfinders,
explorers, voyagers, and those people
who have a natural inclination
to go where no one has gone before,
to do what no one has done before,
and those who find ways of achieving
the impossible simply by using
all that they have at their disposal
to start upon a quest
that should only be embarked upon
by those who are the personification
and the embodiment of a true trekker.
“Live Love and Prosper”
My Poem “Run Jesse, run!”
It is the hallmark of a great film,
a great television show,
a great play, a great writer,
a great cast, a great production staff,
a great actor portraying
a great and complex protagonist,
who by the great gift of their craft
is able to make us –
the viewer, the audience –
care for them, accept them,
and become emotional invested and involved
in the story and in the journey
of the characters that we follow
from the second that we first see them
all the way to the last moments
of the last chapter and finale
that will ultimately – hopefully –
deliver a satisfying conclusion
that makes the journey that you
have taken with these familiar
characters worth all the time,
all the energy, and all the thought
that you committed to them
over the hours, the days,
the months, perhaps even the years
that it has taken to reach the end credits.
It can sometimes be hard to find
an ending that ticks all the boxes,
that answers all the questions,
that wraps up all the dangling threads
that remain to be addressed
and given a reason for why
they were not connected to the
greater narrative that underpins
everything that is a part
of the ultimate story being told…
in any given story it is always
out of the hands of the writer
and the author which part of an ongoing
story people will respond to and why –
sometimes it is the simplest
and the smallest of plot points
that resonate the most
and which over time become
what people remember the most,
as if what they saw shined like gold.
It is always a test for an audience
when an author creates
a character and they put them
through things that push them to their limits
and they change them in ways
that are hard to watch,
and it can sometimes be hard for people
to continue to empathize with
a certain character when they
start to behave in morally
questionable ways of being…
quite frequently, in some of the best
stories ever told, an audience gets
to watch the evolution of
a protagonist into an antagonist,
the hunter into the hunted,
the wronged into the redeemed –
and vice versa –
and the once imprisoned against
their will make their getaway
and run for the hills and away
from all that they are leaving behind –
like the character of Jesse Pinkman
driving like a bat out of hell
in his black and red ‘El Camino’
away from his past and towards
a future that not even he knows.
“The average person looking at someone doing evil or wrong wants the person to get away with it. I think it’s the most amazing instinct. The audience can’t bear the suspense of the person being discovered. “Hurry up! Quick! You’re going to be caught!” – Alfred Hitchcock
My Poem “The Wolf Within Me”
It was about three years ago,
around this exact same day
and month of the year,
when I decided to write a poem
for Halloween called “The Wolf In Me”;
however, to my amazement, what was
supposed to be a poem slowly but surely
grew into becoming a short story,
a novella, and then ultimately
a short novel capable of standing
on its own and filling an entire book –
and this story was the first chapter
in the tale of Olivia Hunter:
a young woman burdened with a curse,
a secret, a gift, a spirit within her
capable of transforming her into a Wolf,
because the secret that she lived with,
alone, was that she was a werewolf.
When I first began writing “The Wolf In Me”
I had no idea that it would ultimately be what it became…
when I first began Olivia Hunter‘s journey
with her I was just as in the dark about
where her story would take her,
because there was no plan as to the direction
of every twist and turn…
when I first began writing, imagining,
and bringing to life the world,
the characters, and the story of
“The Wolf In Me” I felt myself
be carried away and compelled
to write more, to know more,
and to find out more about
what was going to happen
and where Olivia’s story felt like
it was telling me – the writer – to take it…
when I first began writing “The Wolf In Me”
I began to feel more and more –
the more that I wrote –
that I could be a writer
who explored and exposed different worlds
and different depths of life, of people,
and fully investigate subjects like
identity, change, life, loss,
and those things that are important
to everybody’s daily lives
and their state of mind.
Since I finished writing “The Wolf In Me”
I have written many other things –
short stories, poems – and I even wrote
and published a sequel to “The Wolf In Me”
called “The Wolf In You”;
however, for some reason, from time to time,
in my mind I am drawn back to the thought
of the character whom I imagined,
thought about, lived, breathed,
and wrote about, every day until
I had to say goodbye to her
and let her story speak for itself –
and I silently wonder how she is,
where she is, what she is doing,
and if one day Olivia Hunter may choose
to inspire another story about her
that speaks to the spirit of The Wolf
who I believe resides within me.
My books “The Wolf In Me” and “The Wolf In You”,
as well as all my other books of poetry and stories
are available to buy online from Amazon,
Barnes & Noble, and The Book Depository
in Paperback and as an eBook.
Happy National Storyteller Day!
My Poem “Everybody is a Poet”
The truth –
no matter what anybody tells you –
is that everyone is an artist,
everyone is a Poet,
everyone can do something unique,
everyone has a talent,
everyone has something that they are meant to do,
everyone has the spirit, the soul, the mind
than when honed is capable of doing anything,
expressing anything, experiencing everything
that makes life on this planet worth living…
If you can make someone smile,
if you can make someone laugh,
if you can make someone think,
if you can make someone feel something,
then I am happy to tell you
that you are an artist, you are a poet,
you are a member of a world wide
society of people who embody life
from every extreme on the scale
of reality in which we are capable of
inhaling and exhaling…
Money can’t buy you many things –
and one of the things that it can’t buy
is yourself: your life, your memories,
your experiences, your perspective,
your joy, your happiness, your hopes,
your fears, your nightmares, your concerns,
because all of those things are unique to you alone
but they can be shared and sympathized with others
because there are always others who have similar,
universal, human, psychological, physical,
and verbal insights into the kaleidoscope
of thoughts, dreams, and emotions
that drive the engine of nature
that surrounds all of us…
There are things in this life, in the universe,
that nobody can see –
when astronomers look up and back in time
to the beginning of the universe
they find an impenetrable wall of light and energy:
the innermost shock-wave from the explosion
that created everything that we see,
from the moment of the Big Bang, frozen in time –
which surrounds the answers to some of the most
important questions ever asked: Why are we here?
What is the meaning of life? Is there a God?
Everybody asks questions – that is what we do,
and that is what humanity has always done…
Everybody has a story to tell
and everybody is a storyteller
and a character in their own right…
Everybody goes on a journey during their life
to find themselves and what they believe
should be their purpose while they are alive
on Earth and a member of this world…
Everybody creates a little piece of art every day,
but sometimes it can take a while to interpret
what someone is trying to say –
however, in their own way,
even if they do not realize it,
and even if they are not actually using words
to communicate their feelings and motivations,
a person’s actions can speak volumes,
and in my opinion every action that someone
makes should be classed as poetic…
I have met a lot of people throughout my life,
and I have heard, seen, and I have read stories
about people from vastly different walks of life –
and the conclusion that I have come to
is that everybody, in their own way,
is an artist, and everybody is a Poet.
My Poem ‘Good morning, sunshine’
I’m not a song-writer,
I’m a story-teller…
I’m a believer,
but I’m not a fortune-teller…
I have been doing what I do
for longer than I can remember,
doing what I do is both a curse
and a life-saver…
if I could talk to God
I would ask him a favour:
help me, help you,
inspire the world
and give hope to the sick,
the needy, and the poor –
because that is what I want to do
and that is who I want to be…
I want to have the words within me
to change the world
and make everybody understand
that every day is like a new song
that has never been played or heard before,
and every conversation in every language
that is spoken is pure unfiltered poetry.
We all have an oasis in this world…
we all have a place on this Earth
that for us has this lure…
we all have reasons for doing
what we do between sunrise and sunset…
we all have reasons for feeling
happiness and for getting upset –
we are all thinking and feeling human-beings,
we are not unfeeling machines…
we care and we worry about personal things…
we all know what is in our heart
and we all think about “what could have been”.
We don’t have long to figure out
what we are meant to do…
growing up, sometimes we all have to go
with the flow of a tune that we don’t really know…
most of the time, if you don’t have someone else
holding you up and pushing you forward
then you can feel like you are walking
and wavering on a tight-rope
between two tent-poles.
I have been around the world…
I have met people both evil and kind…
I have been on occasion lost for words –
but since the day I met the angel,
my angel, Melissa, all I see
is true heavenly-beauty
every time I look at her face
and she says to me:
“good morning, sunshine”.
Mark The Poet 