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