Daily Sketches

So... Merry Christmas/ sixth day of Hanukkah!

I've been busy doing a lot of prose work on the side, and while it's been fun, it has detracted significantly from my poetry endeavors this break. I've also been doing a lot of break-themed activities, and those don't usually mix well with setting goals.

However, I have been doing something super duper informal that I have decided to turn into my form of a game show. In the past two weeks I've intermittently written some very casual free verse on random musings of my day and thought it would be cool to develop them in stages. So that's what I'm gonna do. In each stage I'm going to leave one as a "final product" (the quotations meaning that they will be FAR from satisfactory to me...) and continue to work on the other ones. The stages will occur as follows:

1. Polished free verse
2. Image poems (free verse, but abstract, and... very descriptive)
3. Loose rhyme and meter
4. Structured rhyme and meter
5. Sonnet (English or Italian)
6. Some other delivered formal structure. I'll decide which is appropriate when I get to the last one.

Here are the original six sketches or vignettes, usually written in a couple of minutes and focusing on one simple aspect. I've handwritten all of them in my notebook (sooooo hipster), and they're a tad rough. They'll look much better after the first edit. I'll also give them all titles, because I think titles are very important.


1. Blood Pressure, (I wrote this one on my hand in the parking lot of CVS... YEAH!)

The token of gratitude from the heart,
The pulses straining veins
And pulling my heart hair with care.
I'm strong so my rhythm
Is canonical. Only when important.
Beat with intention.
Beat like a pilgrimage.

2. Untitled (About the print of my bedsheets, written right before I fell asleep)

Are these dots perforations? Stitches?
I want to rip apart the semantics of the words.
Topical? Penetrating? I suppose that to be the needlepoint
That makes one like a rash and the other like a wound.
Yet as a print, neither are so convincing.

3. Untitled

One day I thought nothing of whatever
came between
BAC Corp and Back Group LLC.
I thought nothing of folding paper,
not speaking a foreign language,
how high a squash ball bounces.
I did think of boys with light blue eyes
that complemented the khakis they never wore,
but that is transient. Everyone dresses up sometimes
and their sportcoats detract from their eyes so I don't notice them.
I toss a wad of crumpled paper into the waste basket,
And it lands like a meteor.

4. It Was Sunny Today.

It was sunny today, for five minutes.
I hadn't seen a solar aspect of winter since coming here a week ago.
I forgot the clarity it had,
Beautiful transience, translucence,
The way it skimmed over the wind and the trees.
I turned a corner and it disappeared
Like helium in a vocal cord.
How could something so enveloping
Evaporate so quickly, willingly?
Maybe in another week
I'll remember to be grateful,
But for now,
I only feel betrayal.

5. Untitled

The clarity of today. I can't imagine snow or other...
Assorted...
Figments of the season.
The dry air relieves us of snow,
But of a real winter too.
I imagined it sticking like porridge
On the ribs of the earth,
But all I see is caprice,
Where the frost came
And left
Like a handprint on glass.

6. Untitled

I watched five or six school buses
As they drove in front of me
And I wanted to honk
Because they were going too slow.
I like when things are behind me,
LIke elementary schools,
Hot metal slides,
School buses.
I get disoriented when I'm staring at them
In traffic
On the way to my life.
But I can't help but notice
That we are all going
In the same direction.

Tune in this week for stage one and see which contestant stays as the final product!

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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