List Poem Exercise

This was an exercise due in class for today. I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I've been so busy that I decided to post it. We were supposed to use repetition effectively. I decided I liked to write about fall.


The leaves sleeping on the pine branches,
The leaves resting their ardent oranges and reds,
The leaves reaching their fingers to one another,
The leaves tumbling when the wind tickles them.

The breezes meandering through the thicket, like
A creek suspended by needles. The breezes picking up
The fire from the grass, joyfully, to celebrate the end
Of an epoch only captured by green. The breezes
Interlocking, changing course with
The breezes that never caress the ground.

This matted earth, partially wrangled from wear,
This matted earth, nearly soiled from the stale,
This matted earth, completely close to the past seasons.

What was August? Could anyone remember?
What was the heat like? Is the lawn still bleached?
What was of the solstice storm? What architecture was lost?

This deconstruction is natural. Time for us to observe
This deconstruction and acknowledge the skeletons
This deconstruction makes of everything. Forever,
This deconstruction will be prompt, it will be needed.

Unpublished Material, ©2011 Cali Digre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.

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.