BIO
Jose Oseguera is an LA-based writer of poetry, short fiction and literary nonfiction. Having grown up in a diverse urban environment, Jose has always been interested in the people and places around him, and the stories that each of these has to share; those that often go untold.
His work has been featured in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Rigorous, Sky Island Journal, Jelly Bucket, OTHER. Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater, Authorship by The National Writers Association among others.
Twitter handle: @strpsrchla
Instagram: @stripsearchla
GREY HOUR
Art
is not created by artists
To
be stolen, programmed, and constrained
In
a museum, categorized, filed away by surname and style.
It
is a transient force that cannot be dissected by academics,
Sold
in ticket-sized, 8-to-5 windows of freak-show carnival exhibits;
Its
power segregated from its intent by lovers of art, haters of people.
It
is not a leashed dog that shows well under temperature-controlled,
Hospital-white,
mood-lit, cathedral-capped petri dishes of dead cultures—
Beauty
according to the de facto victor.
Policed
by factotum overdressed in over-sized, tacky business suits,
Shushing
me for awing,
Censoring
the audience’s captivation—
Cans
of paint thinner in their desire to inhabit the work—
Shunned
for touching, shown the door for being curious.
Don't
shoo me away for wanting to behold inspiration in its purest form:
Condemned
to witness the miracle before my eyes as prayer read off print,
Without
emotion or any sense of devotion.
A
narrative in which I’m not the protagonist or antagonist, but misread as part
of
the conflict;
Unused
and unaffected— unnamed third-person, second-class citizen, Public Enemy Number
1—
A
nobody from whom to protect the virtue I came to see.
Are
works not elevated to the status of art by those who ingest, digest, and egest
them into
Transforming
their unique existence, transcending it into realms
Of
sacred, denuding experience, transfigured into a pliable extract of
consciousness?
Art
is a mirror that reflects the artist in its beholder's sigh,
Beckoning
you to cross the invisible threshold cast by his commended spirit,
A
portal into eternity bound to your being.
Art
is free, therefore
Free
art.