Three words spark
a thousand lies
in my black hole of a mind
each lie a light
a billion stars in a trillion
galaxies contained
in a single thought
in a single pause
in a single moment
of awkward silence
while I decide which one
to pluck from the abstract
like a peach from a tree and
reshape into words.
How are you?
I fumble for a light
in the endless possibilities
but they are restless,
rotating,
elusive as fireflies
slipping through fingers
like holding onto water
or memories, and I may be
the artist of a thousand
brilliant lies but I am no orator—
if my stumbling tongue doesn’t
betray me, the truth is in my eyes,
so while I marvel at the artistry
of a thousand lies spinning
in a vortex around me, burning
white-hot in the darkness of indecision
with me at their center,
they dance out of reach,
and I always
extinguish them
one at a time
when I take
a breath and echo
the familiar answer—
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
I'm an award-winning fantasy author, artist, and photographer from La Porte, Indiana. My poetry, short fiction, and memoir works have been featured in various anthologies and journals since 2005, and several of my poems are available in the Indiana Poetry Archives. The first three novels in my Chronicles of Avilésor: War of the Realms series have received awards from Literary Titan.
After some time working as a freelance writer, I was shocked by how many website articles are actually written by paid "ghost writers" but published under the byline of a different author. It was a jolt seeing my articles presented as if they were written by a high-profile CEO or an industry expert with decades of experience. I'll be honest; it felt slimy and dishonest. I had none of the credentials readers assumed the author of the article actually had. Ghost writing is a perfectly legal, astonishingly common practice, and now, AI has entered the playing field to further muddy the waters. It's hard to trust who (or what) actually wrote the content you'll read online these days.
That's not the case here at On The Cobblestone Road. I do not and never will pay a ghost writer, then slap my name on their work as if I'd written it. This website is 100% authentic. No outsourcing. No ghost writing. No AI-generated content. It's just me... as it should be.
If you would like to support my work, check out the Support The Creator page for more information. Thank you for finding my website! 🖤