Sometimes you are The prince and at others Just the Pauper

Truth Beauty Freedom Love

Most of all... LOVE

As Wesley said To his Buttercup

As You Wish

A life lived in fear is a life half lived

Please give me the gift of the spirit in my heart and the spirit Of dance in my feet.

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#poetry #osxs #sketchbook

2024-11-10 00:54:10

wrinkled pages

Mornings are not for answers, but for contemplation and observation.

A pathway along a river slow Red and winding, shrouded in shade

Spiderwebs in the morning sun Stretched amongst the honeysuckle.

Glistening dew already burned away Leaving a dusty thread of white

A mom runs behind a stroller, pushing her newborn (Burning the baby weight — not too fast, mom)

A little bird peep peep peeps over the muffled roar A waterfall beyond the high hedge row

Wet-smelling mist drifts into the low morning sun While water cascades

Down

Down

Down

Like the wants of a heart that never run out Filling the river of a lifetime That runs into the sea of a family

This is the payment for an early morning walk Fed by a God of beauty and kindness

#reflection #essay #memoir #journal #osxs #100daystooffset #writing

Path of a Heart

Mornings are not for answers, but for contemplation and observation.

A pathway along a river slow Red and winding, shrouded in shade

Spiderwebs in the morning sun Stretched amongst the honeysuckle.

Glistening dew already burned away Leaving a dusty thread of white

A mom runs behind a stroller, pushing her newborn (Burning the baby weight — not too fast, mom)

A little bird peep peep peeps over the muffled roar A waterfall beyond the high hedge row

Wet-smelling mist drifts into the low morning sun While water cascades

Down

Down

Down

Like the wants of a heart that never run out Filling the river of a lifetime That runs into the sea of a family

This is the payment for an early morning walk Fed by a God of beauty and kindness

#reflection #essay #memoir #journal #100daystooffset #writing

2025-07-22 12:00:00

The first real poem I ever write, will be in skin.

When I forget how to breathe, My body will remember— My skin, thin enough To touch the world And exchange Life for life

Not every day can be a healing. Sometimes, we can only let Small kindnesses in, One after another, Trusting there's Enough.

I have lived a long time armored— In the irony of being an artist, In the pelt of this wolf. I can be more, being The porous one, Letting it in.

Skinbreathers cannot live In arid worlds, absent The wetness of life. So I let the day Touch me in Music.

I let life pass my guardian In word and deed while Trusting in kindness And support when I am most tired. Coming ever.

So today, I won't climb hills. I won't explain or inhale. I'll just let the good Find it's way into Me—the sound And the still.

A world breathing for me While I live in memory, Digesting the past To feed the art, And wisdom, And Love.

Touch me And I'll Live.

#poetry #100daystooffset #writing #story #osxs

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All that is gold does not glitter; all that wanders is not lost.

In every garden lives a keeper of stories, and sometimes, if the wind is kind, travelers stop to tell their own.

In a quiet, shady corner of Moonflower Garden, where the dew collects into tiny constellations of liquid stars, Bonita the spider swiftly and lovingly tended her web. Bonita was an artist. Each of her webs spun a story—of her days and nights, of the victories and failures, and the lessons she had learned through her life. Her web was not designed to capture but to listen. Each silken strand translated the voices of the wind, the pollen, and passing dreams.

On a golden fall afternoon as the light turned the color of apricots, the Gardener—wearing a periwinkle sweater—smiled and sang. A cloud of orange and gold descended, singing its own song of greeting as it murmurated across the Moonflower landscape. The Gardener stopped digging with her little blue spade and rocked back on her heels, head tilted, listening.

We are Les Ailes du Méridien de Poussière, the cloud of silent beauty. We come from far away and pay no heed to man.

We are the wing that flutters, the breath that whispers songs only the beloved may hear.

So listen, friend of the Moonflower, and when you hear us, know that you are loved. O Moonflower, keeper of silence, let your light fall over me.

We come from far and see so much— from lands below, from seas and storms— we come to touch, to drink your nectar sweet.

Grant us, O Moonflower Garden, a safe and delicious place upon which to rest our weary feet.

Let us kiss you with our proboscis, and we will soothe your tired leaves; we are part of the pulse of your paradise.

We will make love to your blossoms, introduce them one to another, becoming messengers and makers—

We, Les Ailes du Méridien de Poussière, the cloud of songful beauty. Come— feast upon our splendor.

Tears filled the gardener's eyes as she watched the flood of color and motion fill her world. She was agape with wonder as she heard the song they whispered and settled everywhere, wrapping her verdant world in a blanket of amber and saffron.

“Oh!” she cried. “Welcome, beautiful things, to my little world of life. I pray you find solitude and respite here on your journey. Meet my friend Bonita—she is a welcoming host, not what you’d expect.”

The Gardener gestured to Bonita's beautiful web, glowing in the afternoon light and conspicuously absent of the little winged-wonders.

Bonita waved back a welcoming gesture. “Come closer my little jeweled travelers. There is no danger here, I am a vegetarian spider—a weaver not of snares but of stories. I hunger for the wonders you have seen on your journey.”

The little orange spider fit right in among the myriad of trembling wings, her smile, perhaps a little off-putting to her audience, was genuine and bore the warmth of her heart in any case.

Monarch's and their kind are skittish by nature, and so they hovered close, alighting on the lavender and milkweed, wings never still. The gardener thought of a page wiggling in the wind.

“Tell me,” Bonita said, in her best Butterfly-ese, “of the lands you’ve seen.”

They spoke all at once, their voices blending in an almost overwhelming choir. Bonita learned of gleaming mirrored salt flats, storms over cornfields, and canals and lakes alive with creatures of every kind.

She was saddened by tales of those lost along the way, yet thrilled to hear of the millions that would nest far to the south, in the place they called the Valley of Return.

What Bonita loved most, was the love and energy they carried with them. They spoke of wonders and kindnesses, leaving out the woe and hardship. These tiny miracles found joy and happiness in the journey, choosing to focus on the camaraderie and brotherhood they shared. The difficulties were just the road upon which they traveled.

Bonita thought these children of Michoacán were beautiful and beauty multiplied.

As twilight began to deepen, and the Gardener sank into the shadows, a passive observer, Bonita spun a new web. Now it was the guest's turn to marvel. Between the stems of the Moonflower, the garden lattice and the beams of the Gardener's porch, she built a tapestry of silver thread.

Once, one of Bonita's ancestors had wowed a world with a lexicon that saved a life. But as she worked through the night, it was not a dictionary she referenced, but the countless tiny souls that found a safe place here in her world. And so as the sun rose the next morning, the work of Bonita's night shined and glowed for those beautiful little souls that had come so far and found safety and happiness as her guests.

Bonita’s night work gleamed— a giant silver effigy to the lovely company.

“For your rest,” she said softly, “I pray the night has refreshed you and the dawn has healed your wings.”

As she spoke her invocation, a shudder rippled across the yard, through every surface of orange and black and white—an unspoken butterfly gesture of love and gratitude.


Bonita’s eyes welled with appreciation and love. She wished her Gardener could have witnessed the miracle.

The Monarchs rose as one and brushed her web in farewell.


“Your kindness will travel with us,” they cried in whisper. “Even across the Dust Meridian.

Bonita watched them charge the morning air with the power of millions of tiny wings—
a drifting constellation in the blue sky.


Then she smiled to herself and to the garden before turning back to her web—
and there, gleaming at its heart, was a single orange scale, left behind— like a promise.

#poetry #100daystooffset #writing #story #osxs

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A Pilot’s Journey Through Slow Sand and Flight

In the quiet weight of being stuck, all roads begin to open.

Between waking and sleep, the edges of reality blur—where knives can glow, droids can chatter like old friends, and alligators wear coveralls. Here, the rules bend, and a pilot finds himself stranded not by fate, but by the slow, sticky sands of doubt and longing. Yet in stillness lies escape, and even the deepest trap may open the widest horizons.

I discover tonight that I am a pilot, callsign Lovesick. I wear a bright orange flight suit adorned with assorted tchotchkes and buttons attached to my breast. From that collection of ephemera, a large glowing knife juts out. At first, people stare with concern, asking if I am hurt. I assure them I’m fine. This blade has become part of me—woven into my very fabric, my definition.

My craft, the X-wing, burns hard toward our waypoint. S-foils locked, ready for the attack run. I come in for a landing—at a grocery store!

My companion droid, T5-9D, points out we’re low on bananas and marshmallows. We could also use some lubricants for T5's comfort. The arid sands have created problematic chafing.

Vienna by Ultravox blares from my Walkman, so loud my ears bleed a sticky silver goo—not blood, but something glowing like fairy dust, sweet and thick, like jam. T5 insists it can get louder:

“Whirr-beep, click-click, whistl-bop, beep-beep, whirr!”

I tell T5 it’s plenty loud.

“Bipp, bipp, click-whistle.”

“Well, maybe I am too old,” I quip back.

We swoop low beneath strange clouds that twirl in wild DNA helices across a red sky writhing just above ragged mountaintops.

Deep in a valley, the ship settles beneath the heavy boughs of a massive willow in a bayou. The air hums with humidity and the scent of life. An alligator slips through the shallow water, eyes gleaming yellow.

Waddling onto the mossy shore, it stands erect, well over six feet tall, wearing lavender attendant’s coveralls. ‘Gresham’ is embroidered on a patch over its left breast pocket.

“Would you like a kiss?” it asks, voice seductive, low and wet.

“No, thank you.”

Instead, it offers a hug. The creature’s skin is not as coarse as I expected, but smooth as silk—cool and oddly stimulating, like balm to my weary chest. I weep quietly into its embrace.

“Bet you wish you’d accepted that kiss,” it murmurs coyly while tending the ship’s fuel needs.

“Sugar-free or sap?” she asks.

“I don’t care,” I answer, wiping wetness from my cheeks.

From the trunk of the ancient willow, a long vine snakes down, wrapping gently around the fuselage.

“It’ll be a minute,” Gresham tells me.

I settle on the back of a nearby hippo—Shiela—her broad body rising and falling with slow breaths. I sip warm tea from a cracked porcelain cup. Nearby, a grand piano rests half-submerged in mud, its keys worn but gleaming.

The piano speaks to me in a language foreign and wild, communicating through chords simple but indecipherable. A google bird perches on its ledge, whispering the piano thinks I have kind eyes and wants to play something for me.

“No, I need to go,” I say softly.

The piano’s chords twist into a plea: “You can’t. You’re stuck in the sand.”

I rise and return to the ship. It’s right. The ground has consumed the landing gear. The bottom of the ship is disappearing. The sand creeps higher, swallowing the fuselage inch by inch.

“Slow-sand,” Gresham says, nodding toward the tree. “Most people come down here but don’t stay. They forget the sign.”

I feel the weight of disappointment settle over me, heavy as the humid swamp air.

I ask the powerful Shiela to pull me free.

She strains and snorts, muscles bulging beneath her skin, but the slow sand holds fast. She falters, and I feel the sinking deepen.

Defeated, I step down.

Gresham motions for me to join her.

“Let me take you through the bayou,” she says. “There’s someone you need to meet.”

Opening her enormous mouth, I see the interior has transformed into a lush, red reading chair. I sit, cross legged and we slip into the still.

We glide silently through dark water, willow branches brushing our faces, fireflies flickering like distant stars.

At the heart of the bayou, we claw onto land and climb in a spiral up an ancient, moss-draped bald cypress. On a cluster of branches laid with a clutter of sticks and foliage perches an eagle, its feathers boiling gold in the dappled light.

Gresham nudges me gently forward.

The eagle offers a single golden feather.

“Eat this,” it says, eyes sharp and ancient. “You will find it—liberating.”

I do.

The feather melts on my tongue, warmth spreading from my chest to my fingertips. It tastes of mandarin, plum, and clove—and a hint of jasmine. Spicy and delicious.

Suddenly, I am everywhere and nowhere. I blink and find myself back at the grocery store landing bay, then beneath the willow, then soaring above the bayou on wings I did not have moments ago.

Being stuck in the slow sand had not trapped me—it had opened every possibility.

No longer bound by the rules of physics and reality, I can go anywhere in and out of time.

I am no longer a pilot. I am become THE the pilot. The glowing knife is part of me still, but now I carry wings made of light and choice.

S-foils unlocked.

#dream #writing #xwing #pilot #alligator #essay #memoir #journal #osxs #100daystooffset #writing

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