writer

My Poem ‘Correspondant’

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

When I was 12 years-old
I had a pen-pal from France;
when I was in school,
I and the rest of my french-class
were asked to write a letter in french
to someone who had written a letter in English
to the person with the name
whom they had randomly picked out of a hat…
I was picked by a boy called “Sebastian” –
who I believe went to school in a town in Normandy –
and over the next few months
I would write in my best french to Sebastian,
and Sebastian in-turn would write
in his best English to me.
Sebastian would tell me about where he lived,
about his family, and about his love of the English-language.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Sebastian’s letters to me –
however, my competence in replying to Sebastian in french
left a lot to be desired, and after a while
I did not reply to Sebastian in the same frequency
as he was writing to me.

Sebastian sent letter after letter
about a myriad of different things that were happening to him –
but, unfortunately, my letter-writing to Sebastian
had gone from once a month to none-at-all,
which to this day still makes me feel horrible
and it is one of the many things that I regret
and which still picks away at my conscience.

When I was 12, I was not the writer that I am today.
When I was 12, “social-media” had not been invented,
neither had what we call today the “internet”,
and talking to someone in another country –
even as geographically close as France is to England –
felt as hard as talking to an alien a far-away galaxy.
When I was 12, school felt like a place
where I was forced to attend.
When I was 12, I did not understand
what in life is the most important.

I am in my thirties now,
and high-school, or secondary-school
as we call it here in England,
feels like it was many moons ago
than I can remember with as much clarity
as I have for yesterday –
however, as with many moments from my childhood,
there are things that still stand-out
and there are some moments
that rise to the surface of my mind randomly
when I least expect them to…
and today, on a rainy Saturday afternoon,
here in England, as I sit behind my desk,
in my bedroom, writing in my notebook,
is one of those times when something
and someone that I haven’t thought about in years
has flashed back to me and made me ask
with genuine fascination:
I wonder whatever happened to “Sebastian”,
my life-time ago pen-pal from France.

My Poem ‘Autumn’

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

The summer serenade has come to an end…
the leaves are changing colour
and are spiraling to the ground…
the door of a new, but familiar,
season of nature opens…
the outside air is growing colder –
even the tone of the music
that the wind blowing through the trees
and the buildings makes a different sound…
Autumn is with us now…
it is now ‘Fall’ as they call it in North America…
in some states and in some countries
they are beginning to take off the covers
and dust off mighty snow-plows,
and some of the birds in the trees
that have been nesting in the same nests
all summer-long and have been singing loud
their morning and evening songs
are taking flight and are heading
thousands of miles south.

Pumpkins are being harvested;
winter-coats are coming out of the closet;
when walking through a still leafy woodland
at the right time of the day,
when the sun is shining bright
and blissfully in the sky,
you can find yourself in the middle
of a shower of golden light;
when it is dark later in the morning,
but still breathtakingly beautiful,
and in the evening time,
the new season heralds the arrival
or darkness and stars far earlier
than at the same time on a Summer night.

Now it is the favourite time
of the year for some people;
now, when the children return to school,
is when there is a great buzz of enthusiasm
in the air – just as intoxicating
as the smell of a forest after a rain-storm;
now is when a great anticipation of delights
begins to build;
now, when change is at its most tangible,
is when, if are lucky and out among nature,
you can come up-close and see with your own eyes
marvels of the world like that of a baby fawn.

All is in transition;
a new filter to view the world through
descends before our eyes
as the Earth is now at its farthest from the sun;
moments experienced and shared
are like magical miracles sent from above;
now is the season to embrace what comes to you
while you are among the wilds of the open
and make the most of one of the most
magical seasons of life on Earth… Autumn.

My Poem ‘Thoughtform’

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

Who has not imagined something, or someone,
who is not there, but what, or whom,
appears before them as if they were real?
When they are a child,
everybody has an imaginary-friend –
even if they do not know their name,
or see them as clear as day.
Who has not created a reality
and a world within their minds
when they are going through
a stressful time in their life
as a way for them to deal?
Everybody, every-thing,
requires thought behind it –
and it is the power of thought
and of intention, and of emotion,
like that of a ‘happy thought’
that can be enough to revitalize a person’s hope
and chase the wolves of fear away.

Our thoughts are what make
things real and come to life;
it is our obsessions and our dependency
upon things that make them seem
impossible to live without;
our thoughts can illuminate the world
no matter how dark it may appear –
like a beacon of candle-light;
it is how we worship our own
personal god of the miracles
that blesses our lives
that speaks the loudest about us,
and in-turn puts the words that we say
into our mouths.

People live many incarnations of themselves
from their first step to their last breath;
people wear many faces and they speak in many tongues
depending on where they are,
and what they are doing, and with whom;
people never stop changing –
every day the world remakes us,
even after the moment of our death;
even god himself sometimes has to speak
in different ways and with different voices –
depending upon the knowledge
of how the intended-recipient of their message
or call reacts to certain things;
a change can sometimes be triggered in someone
often by something innocuous –
such as a blooming sunflower,
or being exposed to the light of the moon.

A person’s out-ward, physical, appearance
is nothing but a mask that we all choose to wear
in one way or another;
a person’s actions are manipulated and coerced
and secretly directed from the day that they are born;
a person’s in-ward, inner, ego, and true-identity,
almost stays under some kind of a cover;
a person can be anybody, a person can be anywhere –
sometimes a person can want something
and can imagine something so much
that they can become a distant manifestation of themselves
that evolves naturally from who they see in the mirror
and who they project themselves as
through their ‘thought-form’.

My Poem ‘The Light at the end of the tunnel’

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

At the end of an alley of shadows,
a light in the distance like that of a star,
at the far end of a dark tunnel,
like a shard of sunlight through an open door,
the end of one journey, the beginning of another,
the place you have to reach
so that you can share
what brought you through the bad times
that you never thought would be over –
nothing can prepare you for that moment
when you catch up with your destiny,
when all the confusion of the past
falls behind and you can be the one
who you always wanted to be.

A ray of light from the heavens above,
a stream of energy from on-high,
a rainbow that forms when clouds of grey are broken –
a symbol of both hope and love –
can be like a miracle to those in need of one;
sometimes to find out what you should do next
you need to not push too hard
against what is coming towards you
and do what comes naturally
without you having to try.

Things are lost for a reason’
things are found when the time is right;
sometimes in your life you may go through
more changes in your world than Earth has seasons;
sometimes to over-come any fears
and insecurities that you may find within yourself
you have to plant new seeds
in the garden of your mind
that will one day grow into beautiful flowers
and trees of hope, and dig-up the weeds
that your garden doesn’t need –
and which are only serving
to take life, energy, and growth
away from what you need to thrive
and to keep your secret paradise alive.

Life might be a short four-letter word,
but its meaning and its route
is deeper and it is longer
than could ever be documented
or described with images or words;
a person’s life is a world…
within a world…within a world;
life is what you find when you stop
looking at the future
as if you are viewing it
through the wide-end of a funnel;
a life is what you can find
when you decide to stop walking
at the pace that other people
would have you walk –
and instead sprint like an athlete
towards the light that you see
at the end of the tunnel.

20160829_112007-light-tunnel

My Poem ‘Searching…’

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

A night-time astronomer…
a day-time blue-sky observer…
a cosmic-archaeologist
who uncovers the face of the past
by looking back in time
as they look up to the stars…
an Earth-bound poet
who looks at the world around them
and imagines a similar beautiful day,
in a far-away country,
that will always live forever in their memory –
in spite of the speed of time
that always wants to pass by too fast…
a nostalgic boy looking through
a physical family photo-album…
a book-lover in a book-store
looking for a new book title
to jump out at them…
a self-confessed bohemian young woman
who rides the Subway every day
with their head-phones on
and their music-player in their purse…
a doctor in a hospital E.R.
desperately listening for a heart-beat
and feeling for the unmistakable tremor of a pulse.

I search… we search…
everybody searches throughout their life –
some search for truth in darkness,
some search for and find joy
when they are given a gift of inspiring light,
and some use their gifts to help others,
and some use the answers they receive
to the questions they ask to create art,
to write, to give others a reason
to give them the gift of their precious time.

Everybody in life is looking for something different;
everybody in life likes different things at different times;
everybody in life has priorities and personal opinions
about what in life is the most important;
everybody in life at times journeys low,
and everybody in life at times ascends high.

A person, a place, a name, a face,
an identity, a commonality,
a heaven on Earth, an interface –
we all use our sight,
we all use our senses,
we all use different sources of light
to mend or break-down fences;
we are all surfing a wave of something…
we are all the beholders of a star in our life
that is worth protecting…
we are all in a constant state of changing…
we are all on a never-ending trek
to find that which has been waiting for us
the entire time that we have been searching.

TCTTS: First verse

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

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJdcP7wjSqB/

My Poem ‘The Stranger Things’

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

The stranger things are,
the stranger things matter;
the stranger things are what shine
far away in the dark,
and they are as beautiful and mysterious
as the planets and the stars;
the stranger things become
the more that we think about them,
and the more that we become invested
in the strange things of the world
the more our heart beats faster.

Everybody is “normal” in their own way,
and yet equally as strange;
everybody is a character in someone-else’s story,
and a figure in someone-else’s painted landscape;
everybody can be “at home”
at the same time that they are “away”;
everybody can be beyond who they see
when they look at their own reflection in a mirror
and wear within their mind a vastly-different face.

To me, the stranger things are
the more interesting they are;
to me, the longer something stays unexplained
the more intrigued and the more drawn to it I am;
to me, the stranger things in life –
the mysterious, the one-of-a-kind, the extraordinary –
are constantly leaving their mark for me to find,
like a calling-card;
to me, the stranger things –
the unknown, the questions, the fables,
the stories of aliens, fairies, and monsters –
are so inspiring and amazing,
the more I hear, the more I see, the more I imagine.

What can seem strange to one person
can seem “every-day” to another;
what can seem fantastic to a child,
or to someone who is young-at-heart,
can seem to someone with a closed-mind
like something that could only be found
between the pages of a book-cover;
what I have learned in my life,
as a story-teller and a story-reader,
is that anything and every-thing
can be a fountain and a treasure-trove
of thoughts and energy –
and that life, if nothing else,
is never boring and can be always interesting;
living and breathing in a world deeply
brings with it oracles of gifts,
and they can be found in the strangest of places
filled with the strangest of things.

My Poem ‘The God of Sleep’

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

It’s a shame that I can’t write
while I am dreaming,
just as I dream while I am writing –
because I know that what I imagine at night
would eclipse, and does, any and all
that I put into words in the sunshine
of the day-light…
fragments of my thoughts of the night before
remain in the morning, sometimes,
like the wreckage of a ship
that has run-aground on a beach –
but they are only pieces of a whole
and there are holes now
where unrecoverable dream-moments
used to appear so clear and so real,
but which are now lost
on an ocean of wonder and wishes
being carried out of reach.

Sometimes we have the same dream
over-and-over again,
and each time we imagine them
we remember more about them when we wake up;
why we all dream is still a question
that nobody can give a distinctive
and a correct answer to –
however, I believe the question of why we dream
is on-par with the question:
why do we fall in love?

We love because we must;
we dream because we are unable to stem the tides
of our imagination and our emotional flood;
we wade deep into a dream
when we are doing something in it
that means something to us;
when we dream we are hearing
and we are being pulled-under a spell,
after having been sprinkled by Morpheus’ dream-dust.

I often wonder what I do not remember
about the times that have now returned
to the ether of infinite time, depth, and colour;
like some people who remember their dreams,
I too wonder what they mean;
I often wonder what would happen
if all of our dreams and their content
were to become real and we could share
every detail of our dreams with one-another;
I have always believed that our dreams
are our doorways to a greater world –
a world that knows no bounds
and has no fixed borders,
and I believe that each time we dream,
when and where night and day meet,
we are being given a gift to hold-on to
and do with it what we will
by ‘Hypnos’ himself, the god of sleep.

My Poem ‘The Day-dreamer’

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

I am a boy in a bath-tub…
now I am a boy in a boat
on the surface of a pond…
within the blink of an eye
I am now a teenager
in the middle of a vast lake
surrounded by mountains…
I blink again and I am now racing
down a river, over rapids,
and all the while I am
a man in a boat without a paddle,
and then I reach the edge of a waterfall…
and when I open my eyes now I am on a sea
in the middle of an ocean of blue,
and overhead there is an unbroken sky
as clear as a new-born baby’s eyes –
and there I am, alone in my boat,
wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of little-blue jeans,
with a notebook and a pen settled in my lap…
and it is then that I drift away
and allow myself to be carried by the waves…
and within seconds there follows the end of the day –
the night surrounds me, the stars shine brightly,
the sea-air floods my lungs and my thoughts
more with every second and intake of breath…
I close my eyes again, and when I open them this time
I am among the stars in outer-space
being drawn to a new shore…
and when I blink once more
now I am clearly on the sea of an alien world –
where the sky is as golden as an Egyptian desert,
and the water beneath me is as red as a ruby…
when I momentarily look down at my notebook
and then I look up the picture before has changed again –
now I am encircling a vortex at unbelievable speed,
and the world becomes a blur…
and then I awaken in my bath-tub,
and I am a man of 35 –
a life-time of imagination returned to me
and took me on a journey of space and time
in the few seconds that I my eyes were closed…
now there is no fear…
now things are clearer…
I am on my way somewhere…
I do not know where life will take me next,
but I know that I will never stop being
a life-long day-dreamer.

TheDay-Dreamer

My Poem ‘The World of My Stories’

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

A person’s life is filled with different characters;
a person’s world is filled with many horizons;
a person’s life can be organized and thought of
as like a book of interconnected chapters;
a person’s view of the world changes over time
as they live, experience, and grow older –
and, from my perspective, I am so glad
for the life that I have had and still have,
because my life is a trove of golden-moments
and a limitless garden of inspirational memories
and musings that thrive and infuse
the palette of my writing,
because there is so much in abundance.

Just as every solar-system has a star at its centre,
the world of my poetry and stories too has a sun
that it revolves around and gives it gravity
and keeps it spinning;
just as every planet has a combination of gases
that make up its atmosphere,
the world where my ideas are born from
has all that is needed to keep my internal world
alive and its creations breathing, living, and evolving.

Worlds are built over time
and of many components and ingredients;
over a life-time, and while writing a story,
there is a constant preoccupation
to find truth, sense, and balance;
some worlds can be vast, and some worlds can be small –
expanding and contracting, depending on a person’s
state of mind and their environment;
over time we all collect many things in many ways –
however, it isn’t until you start thinking about
writing a story of your own that you realize
that even the smallest of things
can be among that which is the most important.

Usually, the idea for a new story comes to me like a dream;
for the most part, what a story will be about
when I am writing one all depends and is centered upon
something I have felt or something I have seen;
when I first begin writing a story
it is like I am learning to walk again
and not worrying too much about or counting my steps;
when I get into a story and I have fully found my footing
and I know where my story is going
it is then that I race towards its ending
without fear of losing my breath.

I love writing stories –
however, to me, writing a story
is like running a marathon;
to me writing poetry is like going on a sprint
through the green and blue world of my head –
and it is while writing poetry
that I get to let my imagination go wild,
and I get to sometimes write what I see;
writing a story is like creating and making
something that to you is a labour of time and love;
I am a writer, and more than anything I love to write –
however, I sometimes feel like to describe
what I see when I look within
there could never be enough words,
and it is then that I wish I could find a way
to show people what lies within me
and take them on a tour
around the world of my stories.