Wheelock Street Snow Bank

Hey all-
So I decided to try my hand at some free-verse poetry. Much to my surprise it was a lot of fun! Let me know what you think!

~CD


Carved snow bank
Like little pebbles were
Bullets, like the cars
Had firebombs in the
Puddles they hit,
The ice glazes it:
Thrice fired,
Thrice ignored,
Thrice reformed
In an ash cloud
Of charred snow.
Trapping specks
In its buttresses,
As if Dresden
Could happen twice,
Every day, along
The road
During rush hour,
It is
Pounded,
Sculpted,
Sliced,
Refined.
The harder the splashes
The more its spires
Point upwards.


Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Broken Refrigerator

If only life were quieter, like satin
Unrolling like spring on a pallet,
On a lawn of verdant sunning.
If only life didn’t need to flatten
Me in total silence with a mallet;
Like I knew my fridge wasn’t running.
Too quiet is never good,
Things weren’t breathing when they should.

As if life were cleaner, like white khaki
And a green immune to grass stains,
Or pastels that needn’t fade.
As if life weren’t the tacky
Essences of ignored moldy rains
Pooling where the sour milk stayed.
I guess life is always a mess,
If it weren’t I would learn much less.

I could only wish for no mistakes,
An effortless collection of easy,
Constant migrations of joy.
I could only wish this fridge breaks
Only once, though. But even “breezy”
Is but an anecdotal ploy.
Though my feelings are mixed,
Even refrigerators get fixed.


Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

DOUBLE POST!!! Again.

Hello all-
So as promised, here is something sort of special. These two are fairly simple poems whose inspirations were during fairly mundane tasks: cleaning my room, reaching into my pocket. I figured I write so much about bigger things, it'd be nice to write about something... simpler. Anyways hope you enjoy them! Oh and I'm going to be gone this weekend, so this is kinda my post for Friday... Yeah.

~CD

Scissors

The manicure shears
I’ve been looking for
Have yet to make themselves
Known. On my shelves
I’ve made myself pour
My attention. Hope appears.

The stacks of stacks
In broad harmony
Across my desk
Leaves my room grotesque,
A slow-borne sea
Of too much lax.

By now I perhaps won’t find
Them. Things like to walk away
When their place is not known.
So for now I may be alone,
In the clutter of today,
In the clutter of my mind.


Hole in my pocket

The contents not within my grasp,
My palm empty, dissatisfied,
The realization, a well-worn gasp,
My inner voice, a well-thought chide.
What was there when I left today
Has just so happened to go away.

It does not do to dwell in the trust
Forsaken in that lazy tear.
Eroded fabric, now I must
Patch you up. It's only fair.
As if its purpose were but to mock it,
Much is lost by a hole in a pocket.


Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

HOW COULD I FORGET

Hello all! I was having so much fun until fifty minutes ago (Friday) that I forgot to write/ post a poem! My apologies; I'll come up with something incredibly special for Tuesday. Anyways, here is a poem I wrote in the summer about some lady I saw waiting in line at a pizza place. Hooray for shallots.


The Shallot Woman

The patio apart with glass,
A waned figure bends in the air,
Her wafer arms and thinning hair,
Her face gaunt from a toxic gas.

The gangrene strikes her legs with care,
As they stretch dimly in the shade
Of the thick branches. There she bade
The waiter leave the bottle there.

A starving hope, conformity
Does pry her body in this shape.
When bound by peers, and bound by tape
She yearns pseudo-proclivity.

The layers painted on her eyes
Are peeled back with introspect.
The tinted lenses all reflect
Her future, past, and present guise.

At what inception? It’s been lost,
The process slow like stretching roots.
The plant bears shiny, flushing fruits
That bloom wild at the tender’s cost.

And yet she knows how hard she fought!
As sheen slides down her waxy cheeks,
She does not know that what she seeks
Has long dissolved, replaced with naught.

The toil of peeling every skin
That she compounded on her soul
Is digging in a finite hole,
With no elusive prize within.

For shallots have no inner piece
Because their hearts have been destroyed
And their independence devoid
To hope acceptance never cease.

And when the soul is locked inside
It suffocates from inward rot.
This tragedy I wish were not:
An injured essence likes to hide.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Resolution

Oblivion treads many strides
Before the footprint etches in
The lawn. Too late for a protest
To fall gently on a delicate chest.
Across the field the guilt glides.
And then I excel at naming sin,
Thundering, to list them is to win.
Self-perdition I grant best.
I withhold any gracious sides.

My mind can wield its own crosier.
Absolution in familiar skies,
Thought out clean like splintered glass,
Crew cut on some dirt-baked grass,
Maybe given too much exposure.
But even I tell myself some lies,
Which but discourse can vaporize.
Before forgiveness comes to pass,
Rain always giveth closure.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

A Shadow's Warning

I dance along as if to send
A messaged track
To any shape willing to lend
A form or two
For many who desire a new
Beginning black.

And over bumps perhaps they grew
But cannot mend
The lattice that the free forms do
Possess. They lack
The architecture of attack.
Thus my thoughts wend:

A quiet shape prey to a crack
Should dictate few,
When it holds no purpose to back.
And as I bend,
I cannot know how to defend
My will from you.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

A Semi-Divine Driver Watching an Intersection

Hey all-
So this is about as close as I get to blank verse, and even this isn't really blank verse. I wrote this right after taking my AP Econ test last May, because the last thing you really want to have after a test like that is free will :P

-CD

Sometimes when I look off the road,
Pictures paint themselves on the sidewalk
In hues of joy, and apathy, and whatever else is there.
But when I look closer, it is then I see
That it is I with the dirtied palm and chalk,
Smudging and erasing and stomping my foot where
The crevices are. Cracks mean nothing to me;
Just channels for the run-off rainbows, the asphalt’s load.
Driving a while never is something to get excited
Over, particularly when the errand minutely gallops across
My calendar, like what it does every weekday at five.
I get tired of sketching the same characters, the same strolling;
I wonder why I even bother doodling at all. What matters anyway?
For all I know, this façade that is supposed to keep us all alive
Might just be rubbings on rock, ink on silky dross.
Honestly, perhaps whatever hope I’ve been gleaning
Is what my neighbor tossed out when separating the hay.
Hay is quite simple, and that’s why only cattle are delighted
To eat it. But what matters that they’re bovine? What is their meaning?
Sometimes when I look the walkers are like marbles, mindlessly rolling.
But today I saw something different, something I could never draw.
As the red blinked from my eyes to the headlights to the intersection,
It was a smooth red, like what butchers weave,
Pulling strings and knitting out steaks.
Beams paraded across the street, in between Cleveland and Saint
And a school, and there I saw
A little girl, with interlaced golden sinews
Tamed and charmed like baby snakes.
As her gait made little connection
Between concrete and her shoes,
She dragged behind her, across pink paint
A red scooter. The light changes. I leave.
What else could she drag behind her?
In spring, it is that red piece of metal.
In summer, it may be a boy, or any romance.
But come fall, she’ll have trouble pulling along
Anything. Everything will have gone concave,
Like a rusted spoon in a faded stead.
At least by winter she’ll do no hauling,
If things remained how they were,
She’ll be the frail scooter, maybe dead
As destiny and reapers take her to dance.
For far too many things are far too strong,
And Death has no constituents to save,
No matter how hard they push and pedal.
Even Free Will has a higher calling.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre