33 and 34

I was in Røros this weekend and very not apt to use the internet so as to maximize my enjoyment there. Røros is hands down my favorite place in the world, and I have been waiting for three years to go back there. I had a wonderful weekend and even cried a bit on my way back (cheesy, I know, but at least I'm being upfront about it).

The first poem I wrote about the play called "Elden" that I saw there. It's about Røros' role in a war between Norway and Sweden in the early 1700's. Sweden had invaded Norway and on its way back home decided to stop in Røros and take all the copper that was there, since Røros was a big mining town until the 1970's. The inhabitants initially hid the copper, but when the Swedes threatened to burn the entire town, which is comprised almost completely of timber buildings, the inhabitants relented. Unfortunately, on their way back to Sweden, the entire Swedish army froze to death in the mountains. The entire play was about the hopelessness of war.

Moral: just because you think you need something does not mean you actually do.


7/30

Who wants it?
Who wants that stain
Seeping, spreading?
Where are we heading
When it wants us more?

But we need a bit.
We need some pain
To make us feel our worth.
We need to explain our birth.
We need our need of war.


The second poem I wrote right after leaving Røros when I was crying a little bit and watching it disappear behind the mountains. Just as I had strived to see every last bit of Røros when I was there, I saw it as much as possible.

Moral: It's okay to look back sometimes.

7/31

What little view these birches grant,
A pity that the clouds have stayed
And petrified this single plain.
This mountain bend is sure a crime.

Time reversed itself. So near.
In six minutes will you appear.

So I sit rearwards on this train.
I hate how you fade,
I hate looking back, but I can’t
Help but see you one last time.


Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

32

On Tuesday, while examining the wreckage from the bomb, my friends and I also went out to the cemetery behind St. Olavs Domkirke to visit the graves of some of Norway's most favorite artists and people. One person buried there is Henrik Wergeland, whom I have become quite fond of. My favorite poem of his was written on his deathbed when he was dying of TB, and in it he cries for spring, one of the prevailing characters in his poem, to save him. I find the opening line so beautiful:

"O springtime, springtime, save me!
No one has loved you more tenderly than I."

So... without further ado, I wrote this poem to him in response to his fear of death and fear of oblivion.

Moral: we are all immortalized, even if we never live to see it.


Mortality is not well-behaved, too
Decided on rejecting the call,
Bitter that life enslaved you.

You knew you would succumb one
Day. Your fear depraved you.

You knew you would be merely
Part of the frost, part of the fall.

Yet your springtime has saved you.
How could she ever betray someone
Who loved her so sincerely?

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

31= amount of time I was stuck doing nothing

In a huge change of pace from my poems from the last week or so, here is a humorous poem from a circumstance that happened to me today. I was taking a shower in my dorm room and when I tried to leave I found myself locked in, since you lock the shower from the outside. I find this stupid, and I was there for about a half an hour pacing and trying to get out. However, I counted wall tiles in several different ways and got to 486 full ones in our bathroom! So... that's something I didn't know before.

Moral: when you're bored, you think about things that you'd probably never think of.

boring things sure get fun
when your pacing is a pastime.
you can count tiles in arrays,
or individually. oh, sublime!
i wonder why we capitalize one
person, but not the others. days
are counted from the morning right?
was one person discriminating against night?
oh well, this what i did for a half hour
when i was locked in my goddamn shower.

30

I've noticed that the days are becoming shorter fairly rapidly here. Granted, the sun is still out at 10:30, it used to not really go completely down. Midnight here resembled about 9 pm back home. This poem doesn't have a moral.

The dark could but converge.
It hung at a fixed point,
Incorrigible to urge.

How stubborn was it one
Evening. The clouds floated
On the darkest cusp, a joint
That was quickly demoted.

For the days are shorter.
And as for the sun,
I’m not sure if we can afford her.

29

Flowers in front of Oslo Domkirke


My friends and I went back downtown this evening to take in more of the events, especially because it was difficult to do so last night when we were one of 150,000 people marching in Oslo. As we walked along Karl Johan and side streets, and by the block were the bomb went off, we noted the number of roses there were in front of Parliament, the Imperial Palace, churches, fences, even intersections. They were scattered but dense gardens. I've noted that people tend to grieve really intensely, get it out of the way, and move on, sometimes back into violent, insensitive lives, but when they grieve again, they'll be planting roses.

Moral: some things are forgotten over time, but they will happen in patterns.


flowers, you grow as
a million wishes
on the streets, sidewalk,
on our hearts, perhaps.
for hope, nutritious.

i see us relapse,
forget in distant talk,
but the mind still has
tendencies. you’ll bloom
in our wake of gloom.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Tjue Åtte

Today the city of Oslo had a rose and candle procession through the city, and my friends and I went. So did a lot of other people. 150,000 other people to be exact. I'd never been in a crowd that big, but there was something sincerely moving about the population of Oslo marching from City Hall to Oslo Domkirke holding roses in the air. Oslo has gone out of shock and into mourning, but not reproach and anguish. People are banding together. The last quote is a now famous quote by one of the survivors of the shootings at Utøyen, and I think it fits the general opinion of the citizens very well.

We are the city! We enter,
We pulse through the streets
Like blood. Its heart beats
As we march through the center.
“Ja, vi elsker dette landet!” is implied.
No one sings it but you can hear.
Everyone to everyone is dear,
As one voiced had cried,
“If one man can create that much hate,
Imagine how much love we as a togetherness can create.”

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

26 and 27

The first poem is a poem I wrote in my journal as part of my seasonal hand-written poem exercise. I usually give trees a very bad rap in some of my poems, but I found something redeeming about them as I drove past them in the forest. They may only give an illusion of strength, but sometimes anything is good enough.

The second poem I wrote upon returning to Oslo this weekend. People are still in shock, but the city is very quiet. No students are outside, people are quiet at dinner. I don't sense despair here.


7/23

Save me, trees! I cry
You are more fortunate than I!

How you stand, foreboding
In endless array. How you stand
Forever, keeping hold of the land.
How you stand unafraid in the dark.
Never telling if you are imploding.
Never telling save your bark.

I’ve hated you for having no soul.

But you sure have this all under control.

7/24

I have seen the sky
In tears. I have seen
The clouds scream vengeance
For the loss of May.

Yet it is quiet today,
Lost the urge to cry.
Lost urge for a sentence.
Lost of all clean.

Careful how we tread,
Fragile little head.


Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

A terrible half-way point

As you may or may not have already heard, there were twin bomb attacks in Oslo this afternoon. A bomb went off at the city center about 5 km from campus, and I actually heard it and thought it was thunder. Later in the afternoon, there was a shooting at a youth camp for the Labour Party in an island. All in all, I've heard of 18 casualties. I was almost not going to write a poem, but I decided I had to capture what I felt when I walked outside shortly after hearing. Everyone and everything was so fragile. I will also be out of the city this weekend, so I'll be posting twice on Sunday again.

rolling quiet
just static of
shock a scream
couldnt pass through
the air is too brittle

no birds
but ashes
no weeping rain
but smoke hangs
too bleak for rain or birds

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

24

It's my half birthday today, so I decided to be all punny and transfer it into a poem. So I did that. This poem is just the first half of all the words of the poem. Is the meaning lost on you? Well, it should be. Don't worry; I'll post the whole words so you can actually read the poem too.

Moral: The entirety of things is generally necessary to understand them.

Wh nee th seco se o scre?
Do no on a pa ev matt?
Is it no go th so thi on shat?
Sin wh mu w pai ent sce?
Ca we no sti ded wh i mea?

An ye, thi shou b se an hea.
Wh i ha a exper t m?
Fu i ho i al sho b.
Yo ma fi th man abs.
D no wor, i i ju ha a wo.


Who needs that second set of screens?
Does not only a part ever matter?
Is it not good that some things only shatter?
Since when must we paint entire scenes?
Can we not still deduce what it means?

And yet, things should be seen and heard.
What is half an experience to me?
Full is how it all should be.
You may find this manner absurd.
Do not worry, it is just half a word.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

23 I guess?

I miss doing more lighthearted stuff. This was from an incident that happened today after we had dinner in Oslo. We were getting on the T Bane, or Oslo's metro subway system, and while two of my friends made it, my two other friends and I were behind them and the doors closed on us literally, snapping my friend's sunglasses literally in half. It was crazy and rather hilarious. This recounts the incident.

Moral: nothing is free. Not even when you have a month pass to the entire public transportation system in Oslo.

The dinner deep in our gut,
We ran on the platform. Our climb
Was too slow. The doors violently shut
On sunglasses and broke them somewhat.
The T Bane sure likes things on time.

Perhaps the trade was not so fair.
Offerings can be rather sundry.
The metro door had taken its share
For transporting us everywhere.
But I guess we were all hungry.


Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Double poem

So we're reading A Doll's House by Ibsen in my literature class, a play I wasn't familiar with. I enjoyed and decided to write this poem about Nora, the doll in her husband's house who asserts her freedom. So yeah. If you haven't read it, sorry, but if you have, here you go. This one doesn't really have a moral either. I didn't have one in mind; I just wanted to describe Nora.

A doll, maniacal
Dancing, they clapped
As you did your track.
But beyond the brass
You saw your liberty.

The wires snapped
On your back.
You held your mass
Like an uprooted tree,
Like virgin wool.

Do you lack
What would pass
For apathy,
Or a meager pull
To adapt?

Break the glass,
Break from me.
But careful,
You are so apt
To crack.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Inconsistency is my middle name

Or at least it should be. No poem today again. I'll do double duty tomorrow I PROMISE.
On the bright side, this time I'm warning you guys

Two poems... again

These are poems twenty and twenty one. I experienced severe writer's block yesterday and instead of manning up and admitting it, I just went to bed. However, I compensated for that today during the beautiful bus ride back from Bergen. That was a lot of B's.

The first poem was written after seeing this view of this:



It dawned on me at this point that no matter how many pictures I took, I would never capture the full beauty of the scene, which frustrated me. So I wrote this to whine.

Moral: human capacity of feeling far exceeds the capacity to convey it

Endless, endless, they vex
Me, and as the vistas go wan
I strain myself for precision.
Write perfection, undo knots
And explain it as my vision.

But I’m only human.
My feelings are more complex
Than my words.
I get close to my thoughts,
And they fly away like birds.

Also today, we went through different scenery than the way we came. We went up through Hardangervidda, or a mountain range by the Hardanger Fjord and spent a bunch of the time above the tree line. Way more stark but still beautiful.



This poem doesn't really have a moral or anything. Just wanted to prove to myself that I can describe something. Haha.

Not even the trees reach here.
Their branches are finite.
Fog hangs like the porch light
To give what is around it fear.
Oh cairns, the ground to you is dear.

Snow is an eternal creed.
It is pure here, always around.
Too cold for a profane sound.
Survival at least can reap its seed,
Not much more than what you need.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Whoops/ Triple threat

So Wednesday night I had an excuse to not post. I was in a hotel with no internet, but I dutifully wrote my poem anyway. We were staying in a valley, and I watched a mountain darken as the sun went down. This is also one of the first poems I've written in a while with a very strict meter somewhat like some of the old romantic poetry. I've been kind of caught up in romanticism while floating down fjords and going through mountains. Because it's contagious, seriously. You get around nature too long, you start really worshipping it.

Moral: Big or small, the flighty and cowardly have no power.

7/13

The mountains have so few of friends,
For when the midnight here descends
All that they leave are silhouettes.
Who would place hope in any stone
That cannot brave the dark alone?
And so they crumble to their shell.
Like lonely trees that lift their height,
So much they paint against the light.
So much have they in their regrets,
So much their traces have to tell.

Since being in Bergen, I've been busy and going crazy with Grieg. I've always really liked his music, and my favorite piece of his is called "Våren" or "Last Spring." I've always wanted to write a poem to go along with the music, not so much as text but as a supplementary piece. So that's what I did.

Moral: Memories are eternal

7/14

The green is buried below.
But I will always remember
The earth’s hello
Last spring.

Birds deep in the summer sky.
But I will always remember
Their very first cry
Last spring.

I will always remember
Last spring.

And finally, I've tried my hand at writing something a little lighter. Often times I get so wrapped up in my poetry that I don't always inject humor into it. So that's what I'm doing. Just to make sure I still have a sense of humor. Bergen is a lovely but very touristy city, so I've been laughing at the gimmicky/ kitschy things they have for sale that really aren't worth it.

Moral: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.


7/15

A Norwegian flag hat,
An “I heart Bergen” cup,
A magnet with a troll,
You know, the stuff that
Really makes you whole.

I’m not gonna lie.
This truth was thought up
By many, many scholars:
“My friend, you can buy
Anything with dollars.”

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Poem Sixteen?

I think this is poem sixteen? The last poem was two in one, so I guess this is technically the sixteenth.

This poem is entirely in six word phrases and lines, to commemorate the SIXteenth poem and because six word phrases are supposedly the most aesthetically pleasing or something. Seriously, look it up. Entire books have been written like thus. I don't quite understand why.

I always seem to neglect summer. I write extensively for spring and fall and winter, but summer for me is the middle child. In it I'm either waiting for fall or missing spring. But I've decided to give it the attention it deserves. One thing I've always found about summer is that it is the shortest season and it goes all out, in heat and sunshine and daylight hours, but then it slips into fall very quickly. That's why I wrote this poem.

Moral: quantity does not always surpass quality.

Oh summer, your boundaries so defined:
Don’t you know how to live?
Does pacing matter in your mind?
I think that is not so.
You run only for the go,
Until you have nothing to give.

But I suppose that is allure.
If not now, then not again.
If not killing, then the cure.
Black and white, now and then.

Two poems in one

This is the double poem that I promised. It's also in blank verse, kind of. None of my stuff is really in blank verse, because I make it all rhyme in some way or another. I'm not quite sure what brought about the inspiration for this one. It came out on its own terms and was a surprise to me while I was writing it and I was seeing what it was becoming.

Moral: lies kill people, because people who are not in reality are not alive.

Never guess. Exert yourself until
You know that whatever you doubt
Is incapable of falsehood. Often lies
Sew themselves so that their thread
Is borne neatly from the reality.
But when its truth is found out,
What happens? Does your breath still?
Do you flounder at the duality?
Lying does not make the liar dead.
Rather, it’s just how the victim dies.
People cannot exist outside the realm
Of truth. Truth is our oxygen, our blood,
Our creator. And it can be withheld.
A killer dissociates a person from the real
In whatever way. They alter the truth
When the victim believes. They overwhelm,
They multiply, they dictate what to feel,
They survive, caked on like mud
And they swirl, and then they meld!
Behold a dystopia in its youth.

No poem today

Seriously. I'm exhausted right now and want nothing more than to sleep. I'll make it up somehow later in the week. Maybe I'll post a longer poem or something. Yeah.

:(

XIII poem

This is an example of a poem that doesn't really have a clear moral message. I wanted to keep playing around with my more artsy side and write a more descriptive poem, once again inspired by Sognsvannen. Sognsvann deserves its own label for inspiration. Anyways, note the huge run-on sentence that is the first stanza and how the words spill over onto the other line, like a wave spills over onto the shore.

Well, I guess this kind of has a moral of some things just don't come back, while some do, but I'm not going to press it like I do with the other ones.

The heartbeat of the lake is aud
ible from the coastline and col
ors swing from blue to a god
ly gold that sticks to a hull
bottom of a boat that drags it
self along the ground like a ser
pent before it leaves forever to sit
uate itself on a silken path of blur.

Not a wave upon the shore.

It doesn’t greet you anymore.

The twelfth poem

I've been spending a lot of time at Sognsvannen, a lake on the north side of Oslo where I've started running every other day. About 5/6ths of the way through my run, I always take my sneakers and socks off and dip my feet in the water on this beach. Today I watched a duck going about its business, eating and stuff, before it turned to me, saw me, and flew off. It made a very lovely wake because the water was so still, which inspired this structure.

Moral: There is always someone above you and below you. You are fearful and to be feared.

The duck swam.

Its feet made waves
In a perforated triangle.

And the duck spoke: “I am
A master now. My choice saves
This certain grass from being eaten.

“But oh, I am so far from the highest view.
The danger I feel! Often I fear a wolf will mangle
Me by my neck. But, even then, a wolf can be beaten.
By you.”

Unpublished Material ©2011 Cali Digre

Eleven? Yeah, I think so.

I'm gonna be honest; I looked at my screen for a while before I came up with this one. I even had written half of another poem. I was in a big mood for some structure playing, and so I tried out a new style called a Tanka. It's a Japanese five line poem whose first and third lines have five syllables while the rest have seven. Unfortunately, I looked at that poem and realized that it was not going to come out, so I started from scratch.

Keeping the whole playing with structure in mind, I decided something new: DIFFERENT SIZED STANZAS! As you can see, the first stanza has two lines, the second three, the third four, and the final has one. It ended up working very well with the new theme I came up with about rain. BECAUSE IT FINALLY RAINED TODAY! It never actually rains here, I've hypothesized. The sky threatens you, then the clouds leave, then they come back the next day. Seriously. I think the structure ended working out great with the poem.

Moral: things get resolved in one way or another.


Things sure have a style,
Like the sky: suspense.

I suppose the anticipated
Holds a certain glory
When strain is dissipated

And nothing is tense.
This is the weather’s story.
Because, as I saw, for a very, very long while,
This hanging remained,

But finally it rained.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

o ha1 r0ses

So I just looked outside and saw some roses growing on the side of the dorm. This inspired this poem. I wanted to play with some structure. I've been doing a lot of two five-line stanzas, so I cut them up thus. And the first and the last line end with "roses;" the first stanza implies that roses are divine (hence the sole capitalization). However, when it is shown that "All can be Roses," they don't lose their status so much as "All" reaches the same level. Yeah, that's an explanation.

Moral: The tragedy is not that some things are inherently evil, but that they think themselves incapable of becoming good.

o Roses,
you quiet touch
of passion!

how so much
falls ashen
and supposes

itself a ration!
the life it closes
is not such.
All can be Roses.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

NUEVE

So today I felt like doing a little throwback. I revisited an old favorite structure of mine: AAAAB CCCCB. Of late I've shied away from it of late because I think that it gets a little bit kitschy, but for the sake of sake, I decided to try it again.
Second throwback: me complaining about the weather= quintessential Cali poem. If you do not remember, in the spring all I did for poems was either whine that it was almost spring, wasn't spring, raining, snowing, snowing too late, or looking at pretty flowers. The weather here has not been particularly good, according to the natives, and it really hasn't. Yesterday was the nicest day we had since I was here, and it was supposed to be nice again today but then I woke up to monotone skies. Though it COULD be nice tomorrow. But in general, lots of overcast and brinks of rain. It didn't actually rain today but it seemed so impending I couldn't help but put it in a poem.

Moral: nothing is predictable. Not even authorities are always right.

The silver coats the road
As if it were immortal code
To act as though it all flowed
In harmony. A certain goad
Gave false hope to a tide

Of possible ways to hunt the time.
Often life gives way to a crime
Like lounging. Nothing. Sublime.
But the roads today are mostly grime.
I think that the weatherman lied.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Sad face :(

I have absolutely nothing for today. I feel terrible but I literally cannot come up with anything. This is probably the most severe writer's block I've had in months. So, bear with me. The only remedy for these things is patience. Imagine that my brain is a bunsen burner that has been randomly snuffed out by a 9th grade boy who does not want to witness a double replacement reaction. I'm just waiting for a flint stone to spark something up again. And it will. Eventually.

No, that was not some sort of stanzaless, formless, new age sort of poem. That was an excuse.

Oh, and happy fourth of July.

Wait a minute....


SPARK

Moral: countries are not people; people are countries, and therefore countries cannot be described like places or things.

What can you tell
About what is home?
It is certainly not the loam
That gives one his spell.
It is but the mind.

So a country gives way
To what its people feel,
And do, and think, and real
Changes occur each day.
No nation can be defined.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Poooooooem (7 o's long)

Today I took a hike in Nordmarka and around Sognsvann and encountered this:



Since this pond was so smooth I literally couldn't tell what was it and what was the sky, I decided it would make a nice poem.

Moral: things may be similar, but they are not the same.

Water blends too well with things,
As if it were all on single strings.
A certain place finds my eyes,
Not to be described as one noun.
They clouds are gray, this place like ashes.

And so I watch it, and I
Am positive that this is the sky.
But a little boy splashes,
And then I realize
I’ve been looking down.

poemsix

While reading outside today I watched a group of girls move two benches together and talk amongst themselves. I don't know what they said, since they spoke Georgian, but when they finished talking they seemed much happier than when they started. This has nothing to do with anything else I did today.

Also note the rhyme scheme is ABCBA, symmetrical like a clam. I don't need to tell about the obvious clam/oyster imagery here either.

Moral: Sometimes a friend's ear can solve your problems. Friendship itself is to be treasured.

Opened like a clam,
A closed circuit, perhaps,
It faces its twin.
Fervent conversation traps
Itself, gram by gram.

They had sat on this bench,
And the one across from it,
With musings still within.
They expelled all of their grit,
And pearls formed from that quench.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Cinco／五

So I have returned to a model that I used a little bit in my last poem project: using two languages in a poem, and then MASHING THEM TOGETHER! Since I have now picked up Japanese as well, I can add it to the mix. And Norwegian will be coming along, eventually, so I'll have SO MUCH FUN! But seriously.

Of course, these poems will have accompanying translations.

This poem didn't really have any specific inspiration today, just felt like mixing some languages up. Note that the Japanese section is a haiku: the "feet" (syllables in English) correspond to kana (Chinese characters, hiragana, katakana, basically each little entity), though I cheated because I do not know some of the kanji, so I just used hiragana syllables instead. HEHE.

Moral: beyond us has much to offer, but we are often afraid.

Si jalaras a la cortina,
¿Qué verías? La esquina
No tiene mucha para oferte,
Quizás seas demasiado confortable.

窓から見て、
けしきが待っている。
一緒に行こう！

(Mado kara mite,
keshiki ga matteiru.
issho ni ikou!

Pero tanto miedo tiene tu espíritu.
ばかだ！こわい過ぎる。
(baka da! kowaisugiru.)

TRANSLATION:
If you pulled at the curtain,
What would you see? The corner
Does not have much to offer you,
Maybe you are too comfortable.

Look from the window.
The scenery is waiting.
Let's go together!

But your spirit has a lot of fear.
You are a fool! You are too afraid.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre