Prose, as inspired by CoSM

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, or CoSM is the personal museum of famed NYC artist Alex Grey.
CoSM is a center of spiritual, sexual and empirical thought, expression and freedom. Visionary spiritualist Alex Grey has a knack for capturing in paint what we can only imagine in fleeting bits and pieces. He creates worlds that are simultaneously in front of and inside the viewer.
If you live in, or will be visiting NYC, I highly recommend you check out the above link. His works embody raw passion, to the point where a viewing with one of his pieces feels like mental sex. Alex Grey is known for shedding away the flesh and showing humans, animals and ideas in their true form.
If you plan to visit - Leave all reservations at the door!

The following is a piece of prose I wrote on a recent visit. The inspiration was a wonderful triptych titled "Journey of the Wounded Healer".

I fell into the piece, and barely climbed back out. For a second, my world went dark... and only then could I see that the light has been artificial all along.

The chicken-man crows
His hearkening call bringing with it a new era of silence
I came once, and witnessed
What before I'd only heard

The little fish becomes the big sea
Becomes the sky
Mirrors the world

Mechanical dreams become patchwork memories
And the feelings of winter,
They reflect in her eyes

In my bed
of Baptism and burial
A tangled path unwinds anew


Click on the image to view full size.

Poetry is the expression of one's soul

Don't you just love digging through piles of your written work from like 10 years ago? I sure do!
The best thing is reading your own work once you've completely forgotten about it. Here are two very different pieces of prose and poetry I wrote for publication in a high school literary magazine. I was never really good at coming up with titles, so I just didn't bother =)

Untitled 1 (prose):

I sat on the beach and waited...for summer to pass, and the sand to turn black.

Night after night I watched...through tranquil breeze and summer storm.

Comets blazed with Heaven's fire...buried in their ashes I stayed, and collected my thoughts.

The depths of sky have littered sparks upon the waves. Burning pyres as testaments to watery graves.

I will swim among the fires by moonlight and starlight... just to find my peace next to you.

Untitled 2 (poetry):

As we walk and talk our tunes
Of summer past and summer soon
When young hearts are a-toying
Waiting for the coming June

On summer nights and summer days
The loneliness of winter fades
The loves of spring a thing gone past
The aches of autumn approaching fast

But these hands are seldom idle
Much like many busy bees.
As they find that rare honey
And return among the trees

Once the summer didn’t stay,
Went to September right from May.
Skipped on all the summer drama,
In the world you’ve turned away

In the deep and tender night
When the fireflies take flight
I will find you here once more
Softly crying at my door

But those days are getting shorter
Soon the boys and girls will see
That summer time has come to be
And summer love has come for me

For whom the bell doesn't toll

People exist, or don't. It's up to you to notice them.

The world of intellectualism has it's ugly side too. Whenever you put yourself on a level apart from others, you adopt the elitist mentality. "Insignificant" things and beings suddenly drop off your radar.

There is no worse crime than for a great poet to be a laborer; a great philosopher to be a soldier.

Take this girl on the train, a solemn manifesto inscribed in flesh. She may not be attractive, she may not be "dressed to kill", she may not be saying anything. No bag, no book, no music player, nothing. A fixed gaze and a horrific scar where her larynx once was.

But, who's to say that her silent vision of the world will not invert your own reality, shatter the mold whence you came, make it impossible to return.

There is no worse crime than to silence the already voiceless.

Image: Original photograph with Solari effect