universe

My Poem ‘From the top’

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

My time, my days,
often see me surrounded by people
on an infinite, overwhelming,
incalculable, unfathomable scale;
there are days when the thought
of how many billions of people
there are in the world
literally boggles my mind;
the obsessive observer in me
wants to see everything,
and wants to meet everyone,
and sit down with them,
so that they can tell me their tale;
the dominant writer in me
wants to discover and convey
the meaning of the entire universe
and the meaning of life
and wrap it all up in a story,
or a poem, and leave a message
to live and to love life by
for all of mankind.

I cannot help but look out and see more;
I cannot help but listen and hear
a symphonic opus;
I cannot help by feel drawn
in multiple directions,
while still keeping my feet
firmly on the ground –
like a rocket of potential
waiting to launch;
I cannot tell you how much love means to me,
and to me the meaning and the feeling of love
is the most important thing in and of my heart
that I wholly trust.

Most things occur and are where they are
according to a plan;
everyone is defined by their own unique chemistry
that, to some degree, dictate the things in life
they can’t have and the things that,
if they want to, they can have;
knowing what to do and when
is one of the key indefinable instincts
in attaining your dreams;
some things, no matter how simple
they are on the outside,
are not what they seem.

Trillions of stars,
billions of planets,
millions of galaxies,
thousands of possibilities,
hundreds of variations,
tens of directions –
but only one of each of us;
each of us bound,
each of us free,
each of us still connected
genetically to ancestors
and to distant family members
who once spent a great deal of time
thinking, adapting, understanding,
and swinging from the branches of trees.

The farther back in time we go
into the history of Earth,
and the more we read of humanities
relationship with the planet
we are blessed to live on,
we can tell and we can see
the direct effect that we as a species
have had on our environment,
on life, on ourselves,
and the most fundamental fingerprint
of humanity is the ability
to deliver change globally –
both quickly, and slowly,
quietly, and sometimes boldly –
and because change is in our nature,
we sometimes do not know when
or how to stop.

One thing that I have learned about life
is that nothing is predetermined in stone –
but a prosperous and a hopeful future for all
can happen if people work together,
and if hope can be promised, assured,
and delivered every time it is spoken,
or shown by those who in the pyramid of the world
lead from the front as well as from the top.

My Poem ‘Neo’

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

A new day;
a bright blue new sky;
a new breath of fresh air;
a new moment to take in
the exquisiteness of a familiar place;
a bright light;
a time to let the world slow down,
as if you don’t have a care,
and be re-energized
and feel phenomenal
at all the emotions that you go through
when you feel a gust of wind
blow through your hair.

Life is constantly rejuvenating itself;
people are always looking to better themselves;
life is growing; people are becoming;
life is mystifying; people are fascinating.

New music, new art,
new motivations, new starts,
new meals, new deals,
new mirrors, new reflections;
new journeys, new travels,
new energy, new directions;
new expectations, new idols,
new ideas, new styles,
new happy tears.

New life is abundant on Earth every minute,
just as it is every second in the big wide universe;
there is more happening,
and more parts moving into place,
than anyone could ever comprehend;
the unspoken truth is that
for all the grains of sand on a beach,
and all the stars of the night sky,
we know nothing about how everything truly works –
even a theory that could combine
biology, physics, chemistry, and spirituality
could only ever scratch the surface
of the great meaning of the life, the death,
and the rebirth that is happening:
stars and life are being born,
dying, and coming back to life
in new, wonderful and spectacular forms –
some of which are beyond imagining.

New inspiration, new enthusiasm,
new sights, new vision;
the world made anew because of you,
because of life’s constant state
of reconfiguration, disposition,
and re-fusion.
Somethings will new change,
and some things always do;
some people age before their time,
and some people cannot believe
how fast the days and the years
of their life have flew.

Every new day is a new page;
as the world turns,
life and people from any point of view
can see and be given insights of the universe
that will never be old –
because the universe is constantly
remaking itself every second…
just like new.

My Poem ‘Civus mondus’

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

Every country,
every city, every town,
everywhere where people look,
see, listen, hear, sit, stand,
and walk around,
every member of every society
is a part of the whole
as well as an individual;
no matter where on Earth a place is,
it is the people who populate it
and who make somewhere
the place it is known for –
and with those people
there are rituals and archetypes of behavior
that distinguish someone
as a piece of a mosaic of a regional picture.

The place someone chooses to live
is telling of who they are;
the speed at which time and life goes by
is different all over the world;
there is always someone
who stands out from the crowd
of a connected group of people
for a reason, because in some way
they shine like a star;
there is always someone
who at alternating times of the day
leaves you both vocal and lost for words.

Order always rises from chaos;
differences of opinion
always generate a wave of change;
language, fashion, normality,
evolves and shifts and can cause
ground-shaking disturbances
like the Earths moving
and colliding tectonic plates;
peace can follow a prolonged period of rage;
sometimes modern life can feel like a race.

Just as you can’t stop a flood completely,
you cannot ever stop the world from spinning;
just as you can’t stop the rain from falling,
you can’t silence a people and species
who were born and are meant
to use their gifted, miraculous talent
to never stop talking and communicating;
just as long as the sun continues to shine
there will always be blue skies,
the world will never be truly predictable
or ever boring – because
as long as there is a world, a galaxy,
a universe, there will always be for everyone
the gift of something.

Choice is both the problem
and the solution to everything,
as the world continues its conversation
and delegation with itself
to find a mutual and universal understanding;
there will always be cycles of parallels
and juxtapositions;
as long as each and every one of us has a voice
and that voice can have an and every accent,
and can be expressed in any way,
we will all always be worldly
and universal citizen.

My Poem ‘Holographic’

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

Beyond what you see,
further than the horizon,
above the clouds,
above the trees,
in the art at the heart of the universe,
in the colours of the galaxy
that can only be seen from Earth with a telescope,
there is layer upon layer of light and colour –
particles of dust, laboratories of gas,
cocktails of elements,
when observed from a particular vantage-point
come together to make a picture
that is a piece of art
that has been millions of years in the making
that will slowly change over time
and evolve to be something else,
just as everything else must
that is connected to nature.

The things we see can sometimes be an illusion –
a hologram, a figment and a combination
of our vision and our imagination,
as well as our emotions,
and if you were to see the same thing
from a reversed-angle, looking back,
you would see a completely different picture
with radically different connotations.

Many things can be a trigger for great creativity;
many experiences can be spectacles
that can inspire great art;
many things must first happen in a poets life
for them to write epic poetry;
many life-changing infernos began burning
because of a well-time spark.

A face is always but a mask;
a book cover is but an entrance below
to a trove of treasure;
every planet with life
is a pearl of infinite complexity
in an ocean of dark;
a name is but a teaser
to something greater and deeper.

A library is a hive alive
with story-lovers, and story-tellers;
an art gallery is where those who
want to appreciate art and visual poetry
can go to be awestruck by a kindred spirit
that lived perhaps centuries before they were born;
everything has a story to it,
everyone has had to be a part of a journey
that may at times have been unpredictable and frenetic;
a market of any type is the best place
to see a snap-shot of an echo of something
that is primordially interstellar;
new artists rise with every new dawn;
everything that you catch with your eyes
is a layer of space and time
that exists in a universe
that when seen for all its components and projections
is fundamentally holographic.

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My Poem ‘Sputnik’

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

It’s six o’clock at night,
on a cool spring evening,
and I am looking out my window to the sky
at a beautiful gold and blue light,
watching the sun setting –
and the sight of it takes my breath away;
and within seconds,
I watch the sky go from red to grey,
as all that I see becomes draped
in the dark veil of twilight.

I watch the stars appear;
I see the planets rise;
I see the ultimate display of the constellations,
and I name them one by one, as I imagine them;
and then, when I see the constellation of Orion,
I am awestruck by how wonderfully its stars
shine so clear, and my entire vision
is that of an infinite number of stars in my eyes.

I spent my day taking in nature,
listening to the world around me,
being captivated by birdsong,
and watching the building of bird-nests
in the branches of the trees above,
and in the hedges of the ground below;
I spent my day believing that I knew
all in life that I could ever need to know.

Right this second, I feel like a satellite;
right at this moment, I feel like I am alone in space,
and no one even knows I am here –
because I am just a faint moving white dot in the dark sky;
right now, I feel so far away –
like a distant flickering candle
in the window of a cottage atop a hill;
and barely noticeable –
like a star of the night;
now, I look down,
and around at everyone else on Earth,
and I see what I can of their lives:
I see true happiness,
and I wonder what that feels like.

I look up at the moon;
I gaze up at the stars;
I see the heavens –
the place from where we all came from,
and I dream that I may return there soon;
I imagine that I can reach up and touch the sky,
because in the dark the void of space
does not seem that far.

Every human being has looked above
on a star-lit night, and wondered:
are we alone in the universe?
And, is anybody else out there?
I have asked myself that very question,
and I know the definitive answer –
and I speak that answer aloud every night.

Everybody sometimes goes into their own
“hibernation mode”, in which they appear
to leave their worries in another place somewhere;
I have always found it difficult
to remove myself from the world,
and not think about what is always on my mind;
some days I wish I could be a living, breathing,
astronaut floating in space –
or a part of Earth, circling the planet,
like the very first satellite: Sputnik.

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My Poem ‘Echo’

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

I often wonder why people go to the same places:
why they shop at the same shops,
why they eat at the same restaurants,
why they drink the same drink at the same pubs;
I often wonder why music, fashion, brands,
bands, writers, movies, have the impact that they have,
and why they become the thing that someone people genuinely love;
I often wonder the same questions as an ‘ad man’ would
of a product he is figuring out how to sell and advertise,
and get people thinking and talking about something;
I often wonder the same thoughts as an artist
has to think when they want to start turning their passion
into a means of living.
There must be thousands, if not millions,
of people like me in the world,
but I don’t think that there are many people
who ask questions and come up with their own informed answers
in spontaneous verses of poetry –
most people don’t have the time to think about things
that are outside of their normal way of thinking,
their circle, and do not have the passion that I have
for imagination, connection, freedom of expression,
through a love of life and words;
I would guess that there are not that many people
who can see what I see.

I have always been fascinated by what draws people
and all forms of life to what they desire
and want above all else:
when a moth is drawn to a flame,
that doesn’t mean that they want to kill themselves;
when an astronaut leaves the Earth,
that doesn’t mean that they want to separate themselves
from the world and from the rest of humanity;
when someone does something
that may have consequences for them in the future,
when they start they are not thinking
that what they are doing will one day be bad for their health;
when someone looks for an answer in a book,
or in a story about a time gone by,
they are looking for a truth already been found by someone else,
they are looking for clarity.

The rings within a tree are an echo of its life
and of the times that they have lived through;
the DNA of someone is an genealogical timeline
of an entire family of infinite members
that can be traced back and mapped to the beginning of time;
the frequency of every piece of man-made technology
can be followed back from the present day,
to the invention of the light-bulb,
to the manufacturing of the first wheel,
to the amazing and phenomenally detailed drawings of Leonardo da Vinci;
the entire meaning of all that matters
can be glimpsed in the natural art of the universe,
and in the first thought that always follows
when someone asks a question of why?
Everyone, and everything that happens,
exists, and is a thing of momentous importance,
in the endless ripples and waves that is
the universe of the big bang of creation’s echo.

My Poem ‘Human Condition’

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

Our existence can seem
like a raindrop on the infinite ocean of time;
our voice can sometimes seem
muted by a barrier of silence;
our life can sometimes feel
like we are standing behind an impassable line;
the universe can sometimes feel,
when you think about it,
too big to ever understand and too miraculous
and wonderful to just be seen and lived only once.

Birth and death are inextricably-linked;
life returns even to the scorched Earth
and the black ash of the remnants of a forest fire;
things can begin and end in a blink;
the universe’s ultimate power
is that it will go on and on,
and keep making and creating,
attracting and electrifying,
and being the source and the reason
that everything must transpire.

There are some people who believe
that humanity is the only intelligent life
in the entirety of the Milky Way galaxy,
and perhaps even the entire universe;
there are some people who believe
that after death follows rebirth;
there are some people who honour and worship
an idea and a way of life
that has been practiced for centuries;
there are some people who have claimed
to have seen things, and who claim to know things,
and have been deemed mad or crazy;
there are some people who believe
there is a definitive date for the end of the world;
there are some people who are capable of anything
in response to a single word.

Humanity is a singular, special, wonderful,
fascinating, and complex creation of life-
but in my opinion, it is not, will never be,
and has never been the most intelligent life,
nor the only life in the galaxy;
humanity has described itself in many ways,
and has believed itself to be many things
since we became free-thinking, and self-aware:
in stories, in legends, in monuments,
in countries, and in all languages,
in the form of music, art, and poetry;
and even though we like to think we have considered
and thought of every possibility of existence
there could ever possibly be,
there are dimensions of understanding
we all choose not to consider-
because they are too endless for us to dare.

Philosophers consider the who, the what, and the why;
doctors are the healers of our bodies and minds;
artists are the interpreters and magicians,
and the performers of the colours of the human soul;
astronomers are the watchers and observers
of the past, the present, and the future;
astronauts are the personification of freedom,
and boundless adventure, and a dream made real
that a man or a woman, without gravity, can fly;
a generous heart of someone special
is an example of the best of human-kind;
our wonder and awe at the sight of a sunset
is something truly magical;
our combined knowledge and constant ingenuity
is always going to be the most powerful,
intelligent, and interconnected computer.

We are all on a secret mission:
we all must do the best we can,
consider every possibility,
act on impulse,
love, laugh, see,
live every day with a dream and with hope,
and you will be among the brightest stars
of the human constellation,
and the perpetual life-force
of the Human Condition.