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
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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
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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
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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
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Window shoppers scrutinize
the divisive diatribe,
the preachy, pithy egoic lines,
memes of a world disorganized.
Shiny projections,
filtered (im)perfections,
enslaving mankind to contagious counterfeiting –
an invisible insurrection.
Get a glimpse
of their carefully curated museum minds
through windows the size of a palm.
Everyone is the other,
and no one is himself-
masquerading authenticity.
Even these words,
at first ignited somewhere else –
a subtle mimicry.
//Curated
//Collette Kristevski, 3/12/2019
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We pontificate on the Divine,
philosophize the Cosmos
and moralize the Other.
But we ourselves
are the entities to be analyzed.
We are our only philosophical problem.
We are problem enough.
//Problem
//Collette Kristevski, 3/5/2019
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There used to be an innocent child
resting at the peripheries of my heart.
Upon seeing it’s malevolence,
he believed he had been enlightened
and never returned again to rest.
Enlightenment
Collette Kristevski, 3/7/2019
*art and words are my own*
For more original poetry and art, follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia.
Ortho-paradox-ia 