Marvel

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Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre

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.

Flower Bouquet

In a Nalgene
Bowing towards
My window, this
Bouquet’s green
Leaves. What affords
A sun’s noon kiss?

The stems hollow,
Absorbing water
Is a fruitless task.
The heads will follow,
A wilted daughter,
An aging mask.

But yet their tone,
Their optimism in
The petals that reach.
Their hope alone
Is a prism in
A grayscale speech.


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

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

Old Snow

The waves are growing towards the sky,
As quiet as a breath’s reprise,
The amethyst but a residue,
Lingering from the recent sun.

As if none revived these dormant seas
Of third day’s snow with sheen gone dry,
The luster of this patch long spun,
Its enchantment holds but few.

The season is far from begun,
Shadowy patches no longer new,
Evaporated is the sense of ease,
Left only with a half-hearted, “Why?”

Perhaps the jejune that I drew
Reminds me of what should be done.
In this plain of sameness, void of try,
Join me as I leave for the trees.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Thirty-Five Degrees

The drizzle sideways from the bluster
Playing triangles with the ground.
Long ago this lost its luster
It only serves to maim and fluster
The colors that this autumn found.
Mutes are all left in a cluster
Trodden that they make no sound
When stepped upon. I cannot muster
The logic that this went around.

And as the precipitation fatter
Finds its way to swirl the street
It escalates from pitter-patter
As the frosts inquires, “What’s the matter?
Since when do ice and water meet?”
The rain slides quickly down the ladder,
And punches frost so as to greet.
The crystal fades, the earth grows sadder
And it at last gives way to feet.

Fickle temperature oscillates
Gives way to water, then to ice,
It beguiles them both with hopeful fates
But in the end it denigrates.
As if for fun that would suffice.
As if they both were given gates
That they could never traverse twice,
As if capricious weather hates
Them both for not quite being nice.

And though I say I would despise
The paradox in freezing rain,
I cannot help but realize
That though it brings the frost demise,
It also can fall prey to pain.
The promises, the whispered lies,
The coaxing that the breeze can feign,
I see it all before my eyes,
But they are blinded save their gain.

Unpublished Material, ©2010 Cali Digre