Your mouth was filled with everything,
and you chose to fill mine
with poison
and void.
Your tongue was swollen with knowledge,
but you only taught me
that knowledge also
swells the head.
Your words could expand a universe,
but instead you collided with mine –
CRASH! BANG!
Implosion.
//Implosion, 4/12/2019
//Collette Kristevski
Chaos
and considerations,
burdening my solitude.
Heaviness of obligation,
pressing in,
threatened by my quietude.
Enter, the uninvited
white noise
of responsibility.
Is this what life is?
To war with time, with my own mind
and with God?
//Disruption, 4/8/2019
//Collette Kristevski
Let what lies on your tongue
be a key to dimensions not known by devils.
Let your breath be Spirit
and your mouth, a portal to the Heavens.
Let your saliva be nectar
and your words never sting.
May your inhaling be grace
and your exhaling not be a sigh.
May your life be a prayer
and your passing be the amen.
//A Prayer, 4/8/2019
//Collette Kristevski
You ask me for poetry
as a gift.
I tell you,
I’m sorry,
but I cannot give you poetry.
You ask me why.
And I answer:
Because I don’t know how to write about
what does not hurt.
//You Heal Me
//Collette Kristevski, 4/5/2019
Shout out to my husband who doesn’t drive me to need to emotionally vomit all over paper in order to cope or process. If you are in a relationship that requires tons of angsty poetry for you to survive it, perhaps you should re-evaluate. Trust me, I’ve been there. I once was the self-proclaimed queen of angsty romantic poetry. It wasn’t a flattering look for me.
Even psychology,
even religion,
even philosophy,
even poetry;
despite the deepest plummets into
conscious
and unconscious;
and given my unrelenting introspection,
attempts at humility,
apologies,
amends,
prayers
and penance;
even with a tight grip on grace,
divine love,
salvation
and sanctification;
and though I remember Your words:
that I must forgive to be forgiven –
I still cannot forgive myself.
And I pray that
forgiving everyone else is enough.
Have mercy on me,
for I have forgotten
how to have mercy on myself.
//Forgiveness, 4/5/2019
//Collette Kristevski
You can color within the lines
but cannot paint a portrait.
You can read music
but cannot improvise a tune.
You may be right,
but that does not make you wise.
//Right or Wise?, 4/2/2019
Collette Kristevski
@paradoxandpaschalia
Whatever knowledge I ever possessed (or thought I possessed) never prepared me for life or made me wise. I fear that all it did was make me, at least for a time, intolerable and also intolerant. Being right and being wise are not always the same thing.
“What is True”
so readily resists being grasped.
Perhaps Truth
refuses to be decisively grasped
so that questions never cease.
Perhaps this is the Truth
that is more nearly True:
that sometimes we can learn more from curious questions
than from solid answers.
//”Quid est veritas?”
//Collette Kristevski, 4/3/2019
Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no fault in Him at all.
John 18:27-38
This is one of my favorite exchanges in Scripture. For quite a while I was on a spiritual journey, and my question was, like Pilate’s, “what is Truth?” There is speculation that Pilate’s question is actually one of jest and mockery of Jesus’ claim to be witness to the truth. Maybe it was. But I like to think that Pilate’s question was mainly a philosophical one or a curious one. What is truth? Jesus did not answer. Perhaps because Pilate did not stay long enough for the answer. Perhaps he didn’t want to know the answer. Or perhaps Jesus did not answer, and his non-answer WAS the answer. Either way, I think the question “what is truth?” or “what is true?” is crucial. What is Truth (capital T) to you? Is there such a thing?
Background taken from PicsArt.
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.
Ortho-paradox-ia 