I like my poetry like…
A wine, bitter but honest.
A bread, leavened.
A meditation with your eyes open.
A prayer with closed lips.
A confession disclosed.
And if I speak of poetry
like some speak of religion,
please understand…
there was a time when
poetry was the only way
I could commune with God.
It was my silent amen.
//Religion
//Collette Kristevski, 4/2/2019
Children realize
the typical answers
neither bestow
salvation nor
worship.
Maybe children
love passion,
and we elevate
these things
only when it’s convenient.
//Convenience
//Collette Kristevski, 3/28/2019
This is an original blackout poem. Photo taken by me and edited with PicsArt.
Follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia for more original poetry and art.
The poet does not create beauty,
as in “bring into existence.”
Beauty exists.
Beauty woos,
beckons
the poet to Itself.
The poet is simply privileged
to partake of It –
to participate with It
in the illumination of some Truth:
that Beauty exists on It’s own.
Partake
Collette Kristevski, 3/30/2019
I was inspired to write this poem while thinking about beauty and it’s significance. As someone who writes poetry and does some drawing and painting, I would like to think that I’m the type of person who is able to see beauty in seemingly mundane, everyday things – even things that are obviously imperfect. However, I am also a tidy, clean and perfectionistic person, and often want to “perfect” what does not live up to my ideal. But when I am able to reframe imperfections in my environment as having meaning and beauty somehow, it becomes less burdensome on me, and lessens my intense need to tidy up or perfect things. On further examination though, I’ve come to recognize that beauty is not necessarily created, but that it exists on it’s own, apart from any creating or perfecting on my part. I just don’t always have the eyes to see it. The Greek adjective “kalos” is an interesting word because it can be rendered as “beautiful” or as “good.” In the Orthodox Christian faith, which I am a part of, we elevate beauty sort of as an all-encompassing term to refer to not just what is beautiful, but also what is True and Good. It refers, ultimately, to God Himself and to His will or purpose for His creation. In fact, the most primary text about Orthodox spirituality is called the Philokalia, which means “love of beauty.” And so I was pondering what it means to create art since art is often referenced as a means by which we create beauty. Perhaps art, in the most genuine sense of the word, is not art because someone made something beautiful, but because through the “creating” of the art, the artist was actually participating with the beauty that was already present. They simply illuminated it, or made it more obviously available, for all to see. Now, I definitely don’t claim to create art in this genuine sense. But it is a worthy standard to aspire to. If I can make art that gives a sense of enormity and infinity, of what is God and True and Beautiful – only then can I claim to be an artist or poet.
Follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia for more original poetry and art.
The burden and cares laid aside.
Hear the flight
of the beasts of man –
his pride, sin, despair.
Renew
the heavenly things.
Restore
that which was lost.
//”It is finished”
//Collette Kristevski, 3/28/2019
This is a blackout poem. Background taken from PicsArt.
Follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia for more original poetry and art.
There is Something
more immense
than I have ever been able to account for.
I have sensed since childhood
Something
abysmal,
mystifying,
unnameable.
To claim to be able to see,
to name,
to know –
I am embarrassed
to say I ever did.
//I am still mystified
//Collette Kristevski, 3/29/2019
For more original poetry and art follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia.
What is man
if not both body and soul?
Not two divided parts,
but insperable energies within a single undivided whole.
So when the bots come to consume your mind,
don’t pretend you didn’t know.
We were warned of this transfer of consciousness long ago.
But this is not the resurrection of which we’ve been told.
A mind within a metal house is not progress, just ego.
But the serpent of Eden is disguised,
and he says that you won’t die.
So we leave Eden again,
become less and less authentic,
less human with our technological sin.
Whether a computer hive mind
or metal shell to hold the soul,
when it comes down to survival, I guess anything goes –
your soul for transcendence, a quid pro quo.
Immortality is real, but it’s not just for the fittest.
Christ said it’s for the least of these,
but you gotta fight to get it.
And if He foresaw the promise of immortality
placed on conveyor belts and displayed behind glass,
God still would have become fully human and defeated death.
In a world where conscious technology is already how things go,
who can you trust?
The Immortal One or the “holy” status quo?
//Immortality
//Collette Kristevski, 3/26/2019
This poem is inspired by a prompt given by @thethoughtreserve on Instagram. Coming in with an Orthodox Christian take on the problems of technology, transfer of consciousness and survival. I’m no doomsdayer, but consciousness and its interplay with technology is a topic I’ve been interested in for a while, and it’s getting pretty concerning out there. This is not the type of poetry I usually write, but I enjoyed the challenge. Hopefully it will give you all some food for thought.
As a child, completely open and vulnerable to the Divine, laid in a bed of grass, I theorized – death, evil, goodness and Truth – and poked my fingers through the march of time.
Like sparrows, within me, they always took flight. Always thinking things I was taught never to vocalize. Things it seemed others didn’t prioritise. These Truths, they still well and rise, even now that they’ve been brought to light.
Yet now dulled by age and tired eyes, laid in a bed of blankets, I trivialize – death, evil, goodness and Truth – and sleep away the march of time. But these sparrows – they still take flight.
//Sparrows
//Collette Kristevski, 3/25/2019
For more original poetry and art follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia.
That Immovable One moves within me.
That Invisible One appears to me.
That One who Created comes to me,
holds me, a feeble creature,
when I wail and want to cease being created.
Behold, the Immortal One, who cares for me!
I, the fragile mortal maker of trivial complaints,
the discontented dreamer of frivolous daydreams,
the blasphemous breaker of blessed covenants.
Yet I, an easily destroyed fleshly one, shall not be destroyed.
For that One who died is also Life,
and Life rests in these mortal tendens,
on this lying tongue,
in this musing mind,
in these clenched, stubborn white-knuckled fists.
Someday I will finish drying myself up.
Then will that fountain of Life spring forth from me.
And I will say “I remember You.”
Maybe then I will not ceaselessly
re-enter this dry spiritual desert.
But, even still,
and despite myself,
both then and now,
He still comes to me
and reveals Himself to me with equal splendor.
//Untitled
//Collette Kristevski, 3/21/2019
For more original poetry and art, follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia.
I was like the caterpillar,
prolonged within cocoon.
So long,
I became unrecognizable,
like a distorted figure
shifting in the shadows of longing.
That well-worn shell shed off,
but slowly, achingly,
and then all at once.
And yet,
unwaveringly, I wonder
when will I become something new?
It’s like there are all of these lives
I am not yet living,
and my wings are being crushed
under the weight of this one.
I am carried along ceaselessly,
but only by the ache.
//Ache
//Collette Kristevski, 3/17/2019
Follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia for more original poetry and art.
It was a healing pain,
a cleansing pain.
One last gasp,
and a life came from a death.
Death of the selfish,
of the self.
I am mother,
not because I gave birth to life,
but because of what was birthed in me:
a healing pain,
a cleansing pain.
And here,
before his wise innocence,
I die everyday,
and am birthed again,
again,
through a healing pain,
a cleansing pain.
The paradox of motherhood:
sometimes he is the child,
and sometimes I.
//Healing, Cleansing Motherhood
//Collette Kristevski, 3/16/2019
Follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia for more original poetry and art.
Ortho-paradox-ia 