This is the freshest you will ever get a poem. I did my seasonal outside hand-written poem, and this was finished at 1:31. I then walked back to my room.
Marvel
It is a marvel to be a leaf on a tree
In February. The distinction of survival,
To be bound to your mother like a child,
To be in salvation, hovering over your self-same sea.
That all could be enough for me,
Even if the wind is mild,
The definition of harsh defiled.
The elements are not your rival.
I cannot say the same about the plumes
Of my heart. They wither under the frost
Detached from the skin. This makes decay.
The lanky grass between the stones blooms
Because it opportunizes when a breeze grooms
The snow. It is also where it's meant to stay:
In the presence of winter gray.
And I feel so lost.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Friday, February 10, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Nothing but Questions
Third exercise was to write a poem completely comprised of questions. I wrote this one.
Darken the Frosting
Should I use butter cream or fondant today for the cake?
How on earth is it already four o’clock?
Now, where did I put that cake knife?
Hello? Yes, speaking?
Why is this bowl so slippery?
No, he’s not… may I take a message?
Hello? Hello?
A lady just called inquiring… Why do you look so defensive?
Of course I’m making this for today. Isn’t it his birthday?
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
What do you mean, “Is Callahan a girl?”
Is Ms. Froid a man?
Oh, so you want me to darken the frosting? How?
Do you even understand how hard it is to roll fondant?
No one’s gonna tease Callahan about this cake… Really,
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
Oh please, don’t throw it away! Don’t you know how hard I’ve worked?
Please, please… Just, who’s Ms. Froid?
Someone from work? Oh, okay…
So am I just someone from the bank?
Can’t you help me clean up this mess?
Someone’s gonna slip and fall on this butter cream!
Oh, you’re leaving? When will you be back?
Samuel? Samuel?
Can I still use the fondant today for the cake?
Why is this cake knife still out?
Why so slippery?
Did it touch my wrists?
Oops.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Darken the Frosting
Should I use butter cream or fondant today for the cake?
How on earth is it already four o’clock?
Now, where did I put that cake knife?
Hello? Yes, speaking?
Why is this bowl so slippery?
No, he’s not… may I take a message?
Hello? Hello?
A lady just called inquiring… Why do you look so defensive?
Of course I’m making this for today. Isn’t it his birthday?
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
What do you mean, “Is Callahan a girl?”
Is Ms. Froid a man?
Oh, so you want me to darken the frosting? How?
Do you even understand how hard it is to roll fondant?
No one’s gonna tease Callahan about this cake… Really,
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
Oh please, don’t throw it away! Don’t you know how hard I’ve worked?
Please, please… Just, who’s Ms. Froid?
Someone from work? Oh, okay…
So am I just someone from the bank?
Can’t you help me clean up this mess?
Someone’s gonna slip and fall on this butter cream!
Oh, you’re leaving? When will you be back?
Samuel? Samuel?
Can I still use the fondant today for the cake?
Why is this cake knife still out?
Why so slippery?
Did it touch my wrists?
Oops.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Uhhh....
So this time finals hit and I gave no notice of a hiatus. For this I apologize.. sort of. These past few weeks have been incredibly turbulent, hence the lack of posts. But don't worry. I'll be at a loss of commitments once I go home for break, so expect a lot of cathartic poetry. Trust me... it will happen.
To tide you over, here are a pair of poems I wrote in response to my abuelo's passing. They were not really about him but rather for me coping. My sonnet "Orange Peals" was also about him, though he was still alive at the time.
SO.... yeah.... here's some stuff.
Cremation
My psychiatrist made me do this exercise so I wouldn’t kill myself:
Draw anything that was bothering me
In detail
And take a match to it. That was happiness: cleansed, liberated pain.
It worked well
Some of the time,
But most of the time
I just sat there, watching the graphite ignite and sputter,
The scraps of paper withering like idealists on a pyre.
I would hold my hands over the flames and let them pinch me.
The ashes breathed like an old man:
Reluctant, but purposeful,
Violent, but natural.
When they died they turned blue.
I left the heaps on the driveway.
The world makes a good urn.
When I was no longer trying to kill myself,
My grandfather died.
He could have used the exercise more than I did.
He liked living
Some of the time,
But most of the time
He would contemplate in silence,
Chewing his cheek until his eyes watered,
Imbibing every facet of regret.
So of course, at his funeral, we took a match to him.
I just sat there, watching the blanket dissolve
And pinching myself.
Abuelo is dead.
Abuelo is dead.
Abuelo is dead.
Yet I swore he reminded me of scraps of paper.
And I swore I saw him smiling.
When it was all over his ashes were blue
And we put him in a pile.
An urn makes a bad world.
You Stayed Overnight
The night before my grandfather’s funeral,
I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up the whole time
Thinking to myself.
But I didn’t think at all about him
Or mortality
Or anything I was supposed to think about.
I thought about you.
I thought about how we managed
To not touch each other at all
While sleeping on a twin bed
The night before I left for home.
How I nestled to your side like a spear,
Checking to see if you were still alive.
I figured you were; you snore sounded like stripping ropes.
I could predict their pitch and feel them sink into your diaphragm
Like stones. Like pebbles. Like complaints.
You weren’t supposed to fall asleep. You were supposed to leave after tea,
After talking for one hour,
Two hours,
Four.
I’m an atheist, but I never have guests, especially ones like you.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
To tide you over, here are a pair of poems I wrote in response to my abuelo's passing. They were not really about him but rather for me coping. My sonnet "Orange Peals" was also about him, though he was still alive at the time.
SO.... yeah.... here's some stuff.
Cremation
My psychiatrist made me do this exercise so I wouldn’t kill myself:
Draw anything that was bothering me
In detail
And take a match to it. That was happiness: cleansed, liberated pain.
It worked well
Some of the time,
But most of the time
I just sat there, watching the graphite ignite and sputter,
The scraps of paper withering like idealists on a pyre.
I would hold my hands over the flames and let them pinch me.
The ashes breathed like an old man:
Reluctant, but purposeful,
Violent, but natural.
When they died they turned blue.
I left the heaps on the driveway.
The world makes a good urn.
When I was no longer trying to kill myself,
My grandfather died.
He could have used the exercise more than I did.
He liked living
Some of the time,
But most of the time
He would contemplate in silence,
Chewing his cheek until his eyes watered,
Imbibing every facet of regret.
So of course, at his funeral, we took a match to him.
I just sat there, watching the blanket dissolve
And pinching myself.
Abuelo is dead.
Abuelo is dead.
Abuelo is dead.
Yet I swore he reminded me of scraps of paper.
And I swore I saw him smiling.
When it was all over his ashes were blue
And we put him in a pile.
An urn makes a bad world.
You Stayed Overnight
The night before my grandfather’s funeral,
I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up the whole time
Thinking to myself.
But I didn’t think at all about him
Or mortality
Or anything I was supposed to think about.
I thought about you.
I thought about how we managed
To not touch each other at all
While sleeping on a twin bed
The night before I left for home.
How I nestled to your side like a spear,
Checking to see if you were still alive.
I figured you were; you snore sounded like stripping ropes.
I could predict their pitch and feel them sink into your diaphragm
Like stones. Like pebbles. Like complaints.
You weren’t supposed to fall asleep. You were supposed to leave after tea,
After talking for one hour,
Two hours,
Four.
I’m an atheist, but I never have guests, especially ones like you.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
Friday, November 4, 2011
POEM!
I just proved to myself that I can't be away from poetry for too long... While on the way to Cornell with the skating team I wrote this poem about birch trees by the highway. I like birch trees. I also got back into the swing of rhyming. It's nice to go back to things sometime, though you may see a lot of free verse in the future..
The Last Birch
Protrudes like a bleached bone
Out of emaciated soil,
A semblance of decay, a highlight
Of how November makes one alone.
She shivers at the frosted coil,
She shivers at the frosted night.
Her leaves escaped a week ago. They were right to flee
With the vitality, the grass, the flat green,
The violence of a changing scene,
The forest tracing a skeletal sea.
Where are her companions now? Oh, yes.
They splinter from the ground up, like trauma
Seizing hold of a child. But I digress.
A tree cannot feel drama.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
The Last Birch
Protrudes like a bleached bone
Out of emaciated soil,
A semblance of decay, a highlight
Of how November makes one alone.
She shivers at the frosted coil,
She shivers at the frosted night.
Her leaves escaped a week ago. They were right to flee
With the vitality, the grass, the flat green,
The violence of a changing scene,
The forest tracing a skeletal sea.
Where are her companions now? Oh, yes.
They splinter from the ground up, like trauma
Seizing hold of a child. But I digress.
A tree cannot feel drama.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
Saturday, October 22, 2011
New Twist
So I've been sick this past weekend, which is why I didn't get a poem up yesterday... supposedly. But anyways my last poetry assignment in my class was to write a section poem, which I decided to do on the nature of Norway. You will see that these poems are familiar: these were part of my summer project, and I reinterpreted them to create new poems. This was actually really interesting. It was fun to see things redrawn this way. Anyways, yup. I've included the original poem and then the redraw.
7/3
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.
Water Blends Too Well with Things
In its aquamarine interpretation of trees
And people. The softness, serenity of fluid outlines,
The impertinence of detail.
Because they way one moves is often—
More important? No— more conspicuous.
Only the clouds look the same, but that may be because of their
Movement. They float under the lilies like gentle fish.
The breeze sighs among the rocks and some tumble in casually,
The pond catching its breath once they all finally sink.
My face never had so much movement.
7/8
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 think a wolf will mangle
Me by my neck. But, even then, a wolf can be beaten.
By you.”
To a Duck:
Why are you so fragile? Your shivers ripple through
Your glass skeleton. I expect you to shatter, your hollow bones
Whistling like a bent oboe among the reeds.
You assert yourself as if you were an unorthodox question,
Incredible shame for an innocent inquisition,
Grinding out of an indecisive mouth.
I can imagine many more ways for you to die
Than for you to live,
Though I suppose if you weren’t so brittle,
I wouldn’t find you so beautiful.
7/22
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
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.
The Forests in Hallingdal, Vestlandet, Norway
Every glass building in Regjeringsstrøket
Has more of itself on the street
Than in its iron framework.
These trees are older than the government.
Never has Oslo been so lit with flowers and prayer candles, but
Flora grows back every spring, after the forest fires, of course.
A bullet to the head can instantly kill a fifteen-year-old boy.
It takes at least twenty axe swings to fell an oak.
We make cemeteries out of people.
We make churches out of trees.
7/27
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.
A Month’s Aging of the Midnight Sun
There used to be an eternal day, the sun bowing to a point
Then escaping the darkness, swimming back upstream
Into the sky. I suppose it was perseverance.
But the summer aged.
The air is damp from too much movement,
From too much life doing too much too fast.
The sun limps behind the thick clouds,
Its light sallow compared to June.
She sleeps longer now, and sometimes she forgets to wake.
I have not seen her in three days.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
7/3
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.
Water Blends Too Well with Things
In its aquamarine interpretation of trees
And people. The softness, serenity of fluid outlines,
The impertinence of detail.
Because they way one moves is often—
More important? No— more conspicuous.
Only the clouds look the same, but that may be because of their
Movement. They float under the lilies like gentle fish.
The breeze sighs among the rocks and some tumble in casually,
The pond catching its breath once they all finally sink.
My face never had so much movement.
7/8
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 think a wolf will mangle
Me by my neck. But, even then, a wolf can be beaten.
By you.”
To a Duck:
Why are you so fragile? Your shivers ripple through
Your glass skeleton. I expect you to shatter, your hollow bones
Whistling like a bent oboe among the reeds.
You assert yourself as if you were an unorthodox question,
Incredible shame for an innocent inquisition,
Grinding out of an indecisive mouth.
I can imagine many more ways for you to die
Than for you to live,
Though I suppose if you weren’t so brittle,
I wouldn’t find you so beautiful.
7/22
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
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.
The Forests in Hallingdal, Vestlandet, Norway
Every glass building in Regjeringsstrøket
Has more of itself on the street
Than in its iron framework.
These trees are older than the government.
Never has Oslo been so lit with flowers and prayer candles, but
Flora grows back every spring, after the forest fires, of course.
A bullet to the head can instantly kill a fifteen-year-old boy.
It takes at least twenty axe swings to fell an oak.
We make cemeteries out of people.
We make churches out of trees.
7/27
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.
A Month’s Aging of the Midnight Sun
There used to be an eternal day, the sun bowing to a point
Then escaping the darkness, swimming back upstream
Into the sky. I suppose it was perseverance.
But the summer aged.
The air is damp from too much movement,
From too much life doing too much too fast.
The sun limps behind the thick clouds,
Its light sallow compared to June.
She sleeps longer now, and sometimes she forgets to wake.
I have not seen her in three days.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
Friday, October 14, 2011
100TH POST?!?!
I'm legitimately surprised that I made it this far on this blog. If you had told me last year that I would be still writing fairly regularly, I would've patted your head and told you to divorce yourself of your idealism. But yeah... this actually happened. Thanks to all my regular readers; I would be lying if I said that you all are my reason for maintaining this blog, but I do certainly appreciate the support I've gotten :)
So in honor of this momentous occasion, I decided to do my once a season write-up outside on the Green. I usually write in nice weather, but yesterday it was drizzly and kind of gross. This is a sonnet. However, because my class is all about me trying new things, this isn't your typical Elizabethan or Italian sonnet. This is a modern sonnet: no iambic pentameter, no fixed rhyme scheme. It does, however, have more skeletal aspects: the fourteen lines, and the volta or "turn," that changes the mood between a group of six lines and a group of eight. Without further ado, here it is
Orange Peals
I have the damndest time peeling this orange.
The trauma of its gory failure will retain in my nail beds:
Pressure too little, pressure too great.
The rinds pattering into my waste basket like hail,
Its own measurement of time: thick, saccharine exhalations every twelve seconds or so.
An organic pointillism makes a canvas out of milk cartons, blue wrappers, taciturn tissues.
Wanting to prolong the mnemonic nocturne of skin on plastic,
I stop and look at the oak tree outside my window.
Its rind is peeling too, peacefully, like a new year's ball celebrating the early rain that gave it this color.
The process is consensual, and each liberated leaf illuminates itself on the asphalt.
It doesn't even need a breeze; they both let go at the same time.
They synchronize the pealing of both clocks:
The one accepting death,
And the one accepting loss.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
So in honor of this momentous occasion, I decided to do my once a season write-up outside on the Green. I usually write in nice weather, but yesterday it was drizzly and kind of gross. This is a sonnet. However, because my class is all about me trying new things, this isn't your typical Elizabethan or Italian sonnet. This is a modern sonnet: no iambic pentameter, no fixed rhyme scheme. It does, however, have more skeletal aspects: the fourteen lines, and the volta or "turn," that changes the mood between a group of six lines and a group of eight. Without further ado, here it is
Orange Peals
I have the damndest time peeling this orange.
The trauma of its gory failure will retain in my nail beds:
Pressure too little, pressure too great.
The rinds pattering into my waste basket like hail,
Its own measurement of time: thick, saccharine exhalations every twelve seconds or so.
An organic pointillism makes a canvas out of milk cartons, blue wrappers, taciturn tissues.
Wanting to prolong the mnemonic nocturne of skin on plastic,
I stop and look at the oak tree outside my window.
Its rind is peeling too, peacefully, like a new year's ball celebrating the early rain that gave it this color.
The process is consensual, and each liberated leaf illuminates itself on the asphalt.
It doesn't even need a breeze; they both let go at the same time.
They synchronize the pealing of both clocks:
The one accepting death,
And the one accepting loss.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
Saturday, September 24, 2011
EXCITING NEWS!
I've yet to share this with you all, but I got into English 80 at my school, which is the intro creative writing course. What does this mean? POETRY IS MY HOMEWORK! It's wonderful, it's actually multitasking to upkeep this blog! What I'll be doing is posting all the poems I write for that class up here to share with you guys, starting with the one today. Our first assignment was to write a poem that "meanders" a bit before it gets to its meaning (I write a lot of these poems, but they all have to be fresh. So no recycling allowed). This poem I wrote today on the subject of tea. I'm an avid tea drinker and probably drink more of it than any of your European grandmothers. I've never utilized tea as a metaphor in my poetry, let alone think about the symbolism that it can convey. And I like it. You will definitely see more poems about tea in the future.
Side note: the teas I describe in the end of the first stanza are white tea (made from baby tea leaves, I like to think of it as young tea), rooibos (not really tea but an herbal variety, full flavored and very energetic, for lack of a better word), Gunpowder tea (usually a green tea, which is mature leaves, named so because of how they're packaged to look like bullets and often stored in metal containers), and Pu-erh (oolong tea fermented in caves, most oxidized, "oldest" tea leaf I suppose). They are in some ways different stages in the tea's life, as well as humans (birth, adolescence, war, death).
You now know more about tea than you probably ever cared about.
DepraviTea
In under three minutes, a teakettle
Produces a raspy postlude.
The leaves bloom in the heat,
Their diffusion, their perfumes
Caress the clarity, suggest a mood:
Simple white, clean and sincere,
Rooibos from Bourbon Street.
A musket green with notes of metal,
Oolong stored in tombs.
But the actual tea is one to fear.
Harmful if swallowed. Do not ingest.
Once it is tossed, no one grieves.
The essence is the sole value.
We drink our tea with little haste,
Unaware of travesties,
Incognizant of our profanity,
The sin we never knew.
Are we steeped tealeaves?
Are we the this kind of humanity,
Exploited of our victories,
And then left to waste?
Side note: the teas I describe in the end of the first stanza are white tea (made from baby tea leaves, I like to think of it as young tea), rooibos (not really tea but an herbal variety, full flavored and very energetic, for lack of a better word), Gunpowder tea (usually a green tea, which is mature leaves, named so because of how they're packaged to look like bullets and often stored in metal containers), and Pu-erh (oolong tea fermented in caves, most oxidized, "oldest" tea leaf I suppose). They are in some ways different stages in the tea's life, as well as humans (birth, adolescence, war, death).
You now know more about tea than you probably ever cared about.
DepraviTea
In under three minutes, a teakettle
Produces a raspy postlude.
The leaves bloom in the heat,
Their diffusion, their perfumes
Caress the clarity, suggest a mood:
Simple white, clean and sincere,
Rooibos from Bourbon Street.
A musket green with notes of metal,
Oolong stored in tombs.
But the actual tea is one to fear.
Harmful if swallowed. Do not ingest.
Once it is tossed, no one grieves.
The essence is the sole value.
We drink our tea with little haste,
Unaware of travesties,
Incognizant of our profanity,
The sin we never knew.
Are we steeped tealeaves?
Are we the this kind of humanity,
Exploited of our victories,
And then left to waste?
Friday, September 2, 2011
Uhh... hi?
I'm terrible with starting things in the beginning. I write my poems backwards, write my intro paragraphs last, and hate hate hate coming up with titles. If you ever wanna see the nexus of my poems, read the last two lines.
Except this one. This one just started at the beginning and kept going. This is about a month's worth of poemlessness in my system fighting its way out in this pretty cynical piece. Anyway, as per usual I've been writing about the weather and the landscape, and how I cannot stand Minnesota summers. For me, they're just a humid incubus and do nothing more than make me sick and feel perpetually overheated. I also dislike it because many days in the summer are just endlessly the same. Winter can have surprises, good or bad, and it is a much more divisive season. People love it or hate it, deal with the snow or relish it. Most people uniformly think "yeah, summer's nice."
What an introduction. Here's the poem.
Rotten August
The trees are just an imprint
Fading in the humid light
At the end of August. The birds,
They look at migration as a glint
Of hope, of salvation through flight.
And what do I feel? I cannot say.
The summer exhales, and her words
Crumble in the flooded grass, decay.
Is this what the end of creation looked like?
Is this what the creation of our end conveys?
I cannot be sad or admire these matted days,
Not when death hasn’t made a strike.
Except this one. This one just started at the beginning and kept going. This is about a month's worth of poemlessness in my system fighting its way out in this pretty cynical piece. Anyway, as per usual I've been writing about the weather and the landscape, and how I cannot stand Minnesota summers. For me, they're just a humid incubus and do nothing more than make me sick and feel perpetually overheated. I also dislike it because many days in the summer are just endlessly the same. Winter can have surprises, good or bad, and it is a much more divisive season. People love it or hate it, deal with the snow or relish it. Most people uniformly think "yeah, summer's nice."
What an introduction. Here's the poem.
Rotten August
The trees are just an imprint
Fading in the humid light
At the end of August. The birds,
They look at migration as a glint
Of hope, of salvation through flight.
And what do I feel? I cannot say.
The summer exhales, and her words
Crumble in the flooded grass, decay.
Is this what the end of creation looked like?
Is this what the creation of our end conveys?
I cannot be sad or admire these matted days,
Not when death hasn’t made a strike.
Friday, July 29, 2011
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
"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
Sunday, July 24, 2011
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
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
Friday, July 22, 2011
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
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
Monday, July 11, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Poem dos
This poem was inspired by a snippit of information I heard at a lecture I attended about Norwegian history. Apparently during the Black Death it was commonly believed that the waves of people who died were caused by a powerful witch. When she used her rake, most died but some survived. When she used her broom, no one survived. Thought it was a very interesting image. Enjoy!
Moral: Death is arbitrary.
She uses her rake on us,
To sweep
Our mortality in a rustle
In one
Motion, with the grime.
The broom goes thus:
All souls go to sleep,
No light, no muscle.
She spares none,
Some of the time.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
Moral: Death is arbitrary.
She uses her rake on us,
To sweep
Our mortality in a rustle
In one
Motion, with the grime.
The broom goes thus:
All souls go to sleep,
No light, no muscle.
She spares none,
Some of the time.
Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre
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