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

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

POEM ONE

So this is the first poem of the resurrected Digre Poem Project! I'm super excited to be starting this again. They are all inspired by random stuff that happens during the day. This inspiration came out of looking out the window at a bus stop and seeing this one lady looking back at me. I started wondering -yes, this was during class- how different time would be if she and I, or any two people, switched places. I came to realizing it wouldn't actually change all that much; we would create our own realities, or our own times, on the contexts we're given. Finally, each little ten-line poem will generally have some sort of moral. Not all of them. Sometimes I'm lazy and get taken in by stuff that doesn't have any higher meaning but is just pretty. This was not one of them.

Moral: People affect their surroundings far more than their surroundings affect them.

And from the bus stop,
I see her. She sees me.
A different wind, a rain’s second drop,
Imagine if our lives would swap.
It would just be the same, you see.

Though we will never meet again,
We could be just the same soul splice,
Where time balances on the point of a pen.
We are part of the same amen,
And any context would suffice.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

Wildflower in the Cemetery

So with all the nice weather we've been having, little purple wildflowers have started blooming in the cemetery. Though this and other blossoming flora have been fantastic for my allergies, I still can't help but find them alluring.

You take birth for granted,
As if you were a weed.
And how much nature panted
Would not augment your need.

Why do you take your roots
On someone else’s death?
Your beauty so pollutes,
But I could lose my breath.

And how you sway,
How your eyes flow;
Purple in the day,
At night like snow.

How your eyes stare
As I examine your face.
You give a familiar glare.
Have we the same base?

Oh, unknown of fear,
Incognizant to die,
You really shouldn't be here.
But then again, should I?

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