Cease the dark
for Light’s sweet summons.
Don’t delay
mortal’s plea:
where the lies now occupy
let the Truth recide.
//Mortal’s Plea, 4/14/2019
//Collette Kristevski
This is a Shadorma, a 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5.
I have been
stone, metal and brick.
I have lived
as concrete.
I must be as porcelain,
for others are glass.
//Porcelain, 4/14/2019
//Collette Kristevski
This is a Shadorma, a 6-line syllabic poem of 3/5/3/3/7/5.
We love,
like free verse:
unapologetically.
I,
the pen.
You,
the afflatus.
Our phrases,
intertwinded.
You,
the meter.
I,
the rhyme.
Hearts,
flutter –
an onomatopoeia.
This,
our syntax.
All my best personifications,
swallowed by my hands
in your hands.
My best similes,
like a four-letter word,
unspoken.
My best metaphors,
rose-colored glasses –
perfection.
Cliche.
We speak
always in alliteration alone.
We sing
hyperboles
for aeons of waiting.
We sigh
in archaisms,
and I am fain to breathe them in.
Your words,
euphonies
to lonely ears.
I repeat you after three lines,
like three breaths.
Inhale –
two syllables.
Your voice,
a stanza;
mine,
a refrain.
We,
like poetry.
//A Panegyric, 6/6/2014
//Collette Kristevski
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.
Collette Kristevski 