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?

35

So today ended my six weeks in Norway. It was quite sad, I must admit, but I will look forward to returning someday soon. Upon leaving, I got to thinking about who I was the last time I was there and how I could have never dreamed that I would be the person I am today. It's sort of crazy. I've been keeping my journal from the last time I was here and likewise almost don't remember being that person. I'm not saying that I've become a better person or a worse person. I'm just different. Different sense of humor, mannerisms, perspective.

Moral: When we are living, it's hard to see both where we've come from and where we're going.

I cannot say exactly when
Any return seemed rather cold.
Regarding now, could I say then
On where I’ve come from, where I’ve been?
The future could not be foretold.

So time is victim of this theft
Where gradient is quite in lack
And recollection far from deft:
What was I like when I first left,
And who will I be when I come back?


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

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

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

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

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

SUPER LATE

Hello all-
So.. I was traveling again this weekend and it was all hectic and stuff, so I couldn't get in a post yesterday or today (technically). But here it is finally. I got a middle seat on a very obnoxious flight. So much to write about.


22B

Between Movement
And Vision,
I have neither.
Both’s passive derision
Implies any improvement.
I’d bide with either.

In forced freedom
From the glass pane
Or the aisle,
I find my simplest bane
Is watching the greed some
People rile.

So simple if they
Could not make me watch
Their little lives
And little hearts blotch
My life. Have I something to say
About how their life drives?

All I hear are dismembered
Words and phrases that
Mean nothing to me.
Tweens scream like a cat
That has just remembered
It is free.

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

Christmas Eve

Mumbled greetings, fumbling hand,
Shaking only as a motion,
Perhaps none of them understand
Why on earth we do this band
Of formalities. A shallow ocean.

I’m sad to say that every day
Our time is but a muddled cloth
Of noise and poorly kneaded clay,
Converging to a shade of gray.
We squabble over a tasteless broth.

But in an evening what does matter
Is brought forth in a sudden white.
She does not take to heart such flatter
And feels no need to promptly shatter
A thing filled with simple delight.

Our claims can only go so far.
As if we knew none of violence,
We hold each snowflake as a star.
Their sheen makes the night popular.
The world watches her in silence.

Unpublished Material, ©2010 By Cali Digre