A Brief Personal Welcome

(A Primer for Reading, Listening, and Entering the Work)

Welcome to Horizon Pilot.
You’ve been recruited to seek the creative—to take flight, to scout ahead.

This isn’t just a blog. It’s an invitation.
What you’ll find here is not designed for skimming.
These aren’t social snippets or clever fragments.
They’re thought experiments in full poetic dress—crafted with care, tested in performance, and meant to do more than entertain.
This is the work of a teaching poet: made to travel with you—as wingman, as navigator.

Poetry, to me, is the epitome of creative thinking.
It’s the only art form that can go anywhere, do anything, and still be folded into a jacket pocket or memorized in fragments—
and be heard a thousand years from now.

It can be timeless, or time-sensitive. Sacred, or savage.
It isn’t always what you want—but it might be what’s been missing.

This blog is where those poems land, are unleashed, and—at times—redefined.

Take what speaks to you—and only that.
You are not expected to like every piece. This isn’t a test.
It’s a museum of ideas, a test track, a proving ground.

Read the poems, then—when you’re ready—try performing one aloud.
You might discover your own voice.

Each post here is twice curated.
First, the poem. Then, the poet’s story of it.
Pieces arrive with a short note, from me, to you.
Then, an image, from me, to the poem.

Those images represent a third wave of interpretation—
a way into the poem you might not expect.
Sometimes it’s an echo.
Sometimes a portal.

This first offering includes a batch of ten poems.
Future entries will arrive once a week, as individual drops.
There are over ninety qualified poems currently in orbit—
each selected for quality, resonance, and the ability to stand alone.

Being here is a hybrid experience:

An intimate consideration
A backstage workshop
A front-row seat at a private reading

You’re welcome into all those spaces.

This is a personal message from the poet.
If I can’t sell a good poem by introducing it on my terms, illustrating it,
asking the reader to carefully consider it, and then read it out loud to own it—
then I don’t know what works.

Thank you—for your interest in the work,
your time-tested patronage of the arts,
and your support of the continuing experiment of poetry.

Read well.
Return often.
And if the words begin to echo in your life—then we’ve succeeded.

—Mark Kessinger