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
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
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.
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.
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
For more original poetry and art, follow me on Instagram @paradoxandpaschalia.
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 