A NEW POEM?!?!??!?! Well, yes and no. I wrote this poem as a closing piece to my poetry class's portfolio. It's the most recent poem I've written, though that was like about a month ago.... :(
This poem's sole purpose is indulging in sounds and slant rhymes. It's riddled with them. I'm not sure what else to say about it. Meh.
Also, between this poem and now, I contracted mono, the current bane of my existence. Not that you REALLY care, but I'm feeling particularly excusatory or whatever (pretty sure that word is misused, but I'm still construing the meaning I want it to have!!!!)
-CD
Before the Tide Dries,
The patchy thatch hangs strange in the ebb.
A web of wood, if it could, would drain the creek.
The plump branches are bland from leaking and seeping.
Weeping willows with soft plumes keep pillows of seaweed
Submerged in a looming urge to attach themselves to shelves
Of wispy algae. Sleepless fish went beyond their gentle genes
To fight the stream, with their dreamy passion fastened to their fins.
Live! It’s only a sliver of a river, and then the pond! Live for what’s beyond!
Nothing goes where it knows it has already gone. There! To the delta,
The snow melting like glass bows, arching in the parched sun,
Ice pooling on the still cool grass, the last of the white. All so fast.
The complex pleasure of survival. Nothing to measure it next to.
Not cleansing your senses, not dipping your lips in the briny water
Covered in fishy shine, maggots dragging themselves over the surface.
Not letting ambrosia flow over your tongue in sweet erosion,
Pastel fastened to emotions or slanted, rosy, tinted reality.
Not even to silver gills. Not to the last frost lost in the dry islands
Covered in another river’s sand. Not at the cold mouth of the sea
Holding in what it is about to free.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Extended Break
So you may have (definitely) noticed the sparseness of my posts in the past few months. I've been stressed with other life things and haven't been able to keep the stringent schedule I created for this blog. That and I'm (shockingly) poetry'd out for the moment. My poetry class has been super intensive, and having two creative writing classes in a row has fatigued me a lot. What does this mean for this blog? It will still be up, and you bet your behind that I'll come back and post in the future. But for now I need a very definitive, nominalized break. I'll post a poem that I wrote most recently for my poetry class that got a pretty good response.
I'll write again soon, just when poetry seems more of a pleasure than a chore.
-CD
When it is Winter,
The solstice storm takes the old oak hostage
And straps her to the wind
And waves her arms
Fresh limbs
Fall, fall,
Yes, yes to the ground
A child doesn’t see the end of the frost
She is tied to mortality
And dropped into the earth
Fresh limbs
Fall, fall,
Yes, yes to the ground
And now it’s spring
I'll write again soon, just when poetry seems more of a pleasure than a chore.
-CD
When it is Winter,
The solstice storm takes the old oak hostage
And straps her to the wind
And waves her arms
Fresh limbs
Fall, fall,
Yes, yes to the ground
A child doesn’t see the end of the frost
She is tied to mortality
And dropped into the earth
Fresh limbs
Fall, fall,
Yes, yes to the ground
And now it’s spring
Friday, February 10, 2012
Marvel
This is the freshest you will ever get a poem. I did my seasonal outside hand-written poem, and this was finished at 1:31. I then walked back to my room.
Marvel
It is a marvel to be a leaf on a tree
In February. The distinction of survival,
To be bound to your mother like a child,
To be in salvation, hovering over your self-same sea.
That all could be enough for me,
Even if the wind is mild,
The definition of harsh defiled.
The elements are not your rival.
I cannot say the same about the plumes
Of my heart. They wither under the frost
Detached from the skin. This makes decay.
The lanky grass between the stones blooms
Because it opportunizes when a breeze grooms
The snow. It is also where it's meant to stay:
In the presence of winter gray.
And I feel so lost.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Marvel
It is a marvel to be a leaf on a tree
In February. The distinction of survival,
To be bound to your mother like a child,
To be in salvation, hovering over your self-same sea.
That all could be enough for me,
Even if the wind is mild,
The definition of harsh defiled.
The elements are not your rival.
I cannot say the same about the plumes
Of my heart. They wither under the frost
Detached from the skin. This makes decay.
The lanky grass between the stones blooms
Because it opportunizes when a breeze grooms
The snow. It is also where it's meant to stay:
In the presence of winter gray.
And I feel so lost.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Catharsis
This term has been the roughest term to date for me, by far. I've had some serious problems with one of my courses (Hint: not creative writing.... THANK GOD) and have thus had to find a lot of ways to destress myself, some working better than others.
Not surprisingly, poetry has been GREAT! I wrote this particular poem by hand in one of the reading rooms in the library yesterday. I literally finished it in fifteen minutes... It was crazy. Good to have, though. Really needed it.
Apathy
The brass fittings on my brain are too atonal
For what I want to complete right now,
And so I venture, incognizant of "how"
Into the facets unknown. Null.
At times I breathe a propensity of eternal
Questions with the caveat that I pursue them,
But with their immensity I rue them,
Preferring the silence in nocturnal.
One day I'll remember the joys of curiosity,
Rolling in uncertainty, sighing at naïveté.
But have none of that desire today.
The indifference. Its lulled viscosity.
This second thing is something I wrote in Spanish class not two hours ago, so it is FRESH! We're studying poetry now in Spanish and my prof had us practice by writing quatrains. I wrote this and later shared it with the class just to prove to my prof that my writing in Spanish was not entirely "incredibly deficient." I pumped this out in two minutes. I'll include a crappy literal translation.
En la lengua de colores
Hay la gran actividad
De ser bello como flores
Pero lleno de piedad.
"In the language of the colors,
There is a great activity
To be lovely like flowers
But full of piety."
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Not surprisingly, poetry has been GREAT! I wrote this particular poem by hand in one of the reading rooms in the library yesterday. I literally finished it in fifteen minutes... It was crazy. Good to have, though. Really needed it.
Apathy
The brass fittings on my brain are too atonal
For what I want to complete right now,
And so I venture, incognizant of "how"
Into the facets unknown. Null.
At times I breathe a propensity of eternal
Questions with the caveat that I pursue them,
But with their immensity I rue them,
Preferring the silence in nocturnal.
One day I'll remember the joys of curiosity,
Rolling in uncertainty, sighing at naïveté.
But have none of that desire today.
The indifference. Its lulled viscosity.
This second thing is something I wrote in Spanish class not two hours ago, so it is FRESH! We're studying poetry now in Spanish and my prof had us practice by writing quatrains. I wrote this and later shared it with the class just to prove to my prof that my writing in Spanish was not entirely "incredibly deficient." I pumped this out in two minutes. I'll include a crappy literal translation.
En la lengua de colores
Hay la gran actividad
De ser bello como flores
Pero lleno de piedad.
"In the language of the colors,
There is a great activity
To be lovely like flowers
But full of piety."
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Nothing but Questions
Third exercise was to write a poem completely comprised of questions. I wrote this one.
Darken the Frosting
Should I use butter cream or fondant today for the cake?
How on earth is it already four o’clock?
Now, where did I put that cake knife?
Hello? Yes, speaking?
Why is this bowl so slippery?
No, he’s not… may I take a message?
Hello? Hello?
A lady just called inquiring… Why do you look so defensive?
Of course I’m making this for today. Isn’t it his birthday?
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
What do you mean, “Is Callahan a girl?”
Is Ms. Froid a man?
Oh, so you want me to darken the frosting? How?
Do you even understand how hard it is to roll fondant?
No one’s gonna tease Callahan about this cake… Really,
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
Oh please, don’t throw it away! Don’t you know how hard I’ve worked?
Please, please… Just, who’s Ms. Froid?
Someone from work? Oh, okay…
So am I just someone from the bank?
Can’t you help me clean up this mess?
Someone’s gonna slip and fall on this butter cream!
Oh, you’re leaving? When will you be back?
Samuel? Samuel?
Can I still use the fondant today for the cake?
Why is this cake knife still out?
Why so slippery?
Did it touch my wrists?
Oops.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Darken the Frosting
Should I use butter cream or fondant today for the cake?
How on earth is it already four o’clock?
Now, where did I put that cake knife?
Hello? Yes, speaking?
Why is this bowl so slippery?
No, he’s not… may I take a message?
Hello? Hello?
A lady just called inquiring… Why do you look so defensive?
Of course I’m making this for today. Isn’t it his birthday?
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
What do you mean, “Is Callahan a girl?”
Is Ms. Froid a man?
Oh, so you want me to darken the frosting? How?
Do you even understand how hard it is to roll fondant?
No one’s gonna tease Callahan about this cake… Really,
What is the matter with lavender frosting?
Oh please, don’t throw it away! Don’t you know how hard I’ve worked?
Please, please… Just, who’s Ms. Froid?
Someone from work? Oh, okay…
So am I just someone from the bank?
Can’t you help me clean up this mess?
Someone’s gonna slip and fall on this butter cream!
Oh, you’re leaving? When will you be back?
Samuel? Samuel?
Can I still use the fondant today for the cake?
Why is this cake knife still out?
Why so slippery?
Did it touch my wrists?
Oops.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Silence has fallen?
Yeah, I've been really busy this term, and for this I apologize sincerely. BUT... I'm in a poetry class! This means that I get to write poetry for homework even though it's just for fun! So here are two poems I've written as part of our exercises. One of them I like (the first one) and it's a blank verse exercise, so everything's in iambic pentameter. The second sucks (the prompt was vague... some sort of enjambment exercise? I didn't understand it and I think it shows), but I figure I might as well share it. I'll be posting more soon, since I'm acclimatizing myself to the term... But here they are!
My Grandfather Sits in the Cemetery Where He’ll be Buried
I practice saying “Florida” out loud.
The etymology is Spanish, but
I cannot fathom what it means. The moss…
The Spanish moss conquers its mannequins
And casts its net to catch the katydids,
Cicadas. How it smells of catacombs.
But this moss does not grow in Colombia.
Just purple orchids, roses pink as health.
I see these flowers all around me now,
But only as a tool for mourning. Graves.
I think this is the plot they’ve set aside.
La mía. Look at all this Spanish moss.
My mother killed herself right after church
When I was twelve. She smelled of fens. I cried
So hard I had forgotten that she died.
I buried her, later my sister too
The same way. This is how I coped with death.
Good Friday: when guerillas scalped my son
Because he didn’t know to shoot a gun
When running towards the victory of peace.
And yet in all these contexts, all the same.
I’m fluent in this dialect of loss.
I practice saying “moriré” out loud.
The Romances are all from Latin, but
The etymology of “death” is Life.
Because I was too lazy to fasten the strap,
My watch regrettably reveled on the concrete at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis
five minutes before curtain.
I trusted its proclivity for survival,
Even though the encrusted rivets
Suspended
Themselves in the gears.
The more I shook it
—I didn’t realize this until I took it to the jeweler three months later—
The more the flimsy steel arched its back,
And the onslaught
Of minute semblances of time
Got caught in dormant skeletal alloy caverns.
The poetic whimsy of busting your watch
Until its innards resemble
A human sacrifice…
All on accident
Of course.
It wouldn’t suffice to say
That how time employs itself
Is so evident in what we
Possess.
Otherwise, we would all be skeptics.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
My Grandfather Sits in the Cemetery Where He’ll be Buried
I practice saying “Florida” out loud.
The etymology is Spanish, but
I cannot fathom what it means. The moss…
The Spanish moss conquers its mannequins
And casts its net to catch the katydids,
Cicadas. How it smells of catacombs.
But this moss does not grow in Colombia.
Just purple orchids, roses pink as health.
I see these flowers all around me now,
But only as a tool for mourning. Graves.
I think this is the plot they’ve set aside.
La mía. Look at all this Spanish moss.
My mother killed herself right after church
When I was twelve. She smelled of fens. I cried
So hard I had forgotten that she died.
I buried her, later my sister too
The same way. This is how I coped with death.
Good Friday: when guerillas scalped my son
Because he didn’t know to shoot a gun
When running towards the victory of peace.
And yet in all these contexts, all the same.
I’m fluent in this dialect of loss.
I practice saying “moriré” out loud.
The Romances are all from Latin, but
The etymology of “death” is Life.
Because I was too lazy to fasten the strap,
My watch regrettably reveled on the concrete at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis
five minutes before curtain.
I trusted its proclivity for survival,
Even though the encrusted rivets
Suspended
Themselves in the gears.
The more I shook it
—I didn’t realize this until I took it to the jeweler three months later—
The more the flimsy steel arched its back,
And the onslaught
Of minute semblances of time
Got caught in dormant skeletal alloy caverns.
The poetic whimsy of busting your watch
Until its innards resemble
A human sacrifice…
All on accident
Of course.
It wouldn’t suffice to say
That how time employs itself
Is so evident in what we
Possess.
Otherwise, we would all be skeptics.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 Cali Digre
Monday, January 2, 2012
Daily Sketches III
Right now I am on a plane on my way back to campus... AND I'M SO EXCITED!!! Hope everyone had a happy new years and yadda yadda yadda and I was busy being cultural at EPCOT (every bit ironic as it sounds...) and ringing in the new year and sleeping and not getting tan. But I just finished writing three of the image poems, which are not really as "imagey" as I thought/ hoped they would be. They have an elaboration on some images that I made, but a few just really really resemble another free verse with more in-your-face imagery. But yeah... Here are the three that I've written. I'll have the other two ready maybe a little later...
1. Blood Pressure,
Grateful for it like a pulse
Of silver, a blue straw tapping
A rhythm in quiet exhaustion.
To worship this percussion
Is to love the simplicity of strength.
Iambs flock from the mosque
To every place they are barely required.
The missionaries of the bare essential.
2. Flat (final)
“Topical” is like a glacier pouring itself out onto Aconcagua,
The relationship between a finger and grimy asphalt.
“Penetrating” is like grass roots on a sidewalk crevice,
The tenacity of a fault line burying itself into the skin of the earth,
The way I peel an orange.
The way space peels away a neutron star.
I know about the latter than the former,
But only because it so resembles “pain.”
Is my head on this pillow “topical”
Or “penetrating?”
3. Dressed Up
A folded copy of a partita that resembles a peony
sits on my desk behind you.
The thick notes dot it with inky dew
in a language that you can’t speak but I can.
I weigh it in my hands, knowing paper doesn’t bounce,
but nor does a squash ball.
Nor does a pillow.
I lie restlessly on this score flower because
I just don’t understand you.
The way the ink smudged resembles a cerulean,
like a puddle at Disney World.
Your tie matches the copyright origami matches your eyes
and so I do not acknowledge any.
They all blur together like autopsy skins
of the victims of asphyxiation.
Then, out of the blue, I give up.
I throw away the peony because
I am sick trying to learn how you made it.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 (WHAT?!?!) Cali Digre
1. Blood Pressure,
Grateful for it like a pulse
Of silver, a blue straw tapping
A rhythm in quiet exhaustion.
To worship this percussion
Is to love the simplicity of strength.
Iambs flock from the mosque
To every place they are barely required.
The missionaries of the bare essential.
2. Flat (final)
“Topical” is like a glacier pouring itself out onto Aconcagua,
The relationship between a finger and grimy asphalt.
“Penetrating” is like grass roots on a sidewalk crevice,
The tenacity of a fault line burying itself into the skin of the earth,
The way I peel an orange.
The way space peels away a neutron star.
I know about the latter than the former,
But only because it so resembles “pain.”
Is my head on this pillow “topical”
Or “penetrating?”
3. Dressed Up
A folded copy of a partita that resembles a peony
sits on my desk behind you.
The thick notes dot it with inky dew
in a language that you can’t speak but I can.
I weigh it in my hands, knowing paper doesn’t bounce,
but nor does a squash ball.
Nor does a pillow.
I lie restlessly on this score flower because
I just don’t understand you.
The way the ink smudged resembles a cerulean,
like a puddle at Disney World.
Your tie matches the copyright origami matches your eyes
and so I do not acknowledge any.
They all blur together like autopsy skins
of the victims of asphyxiation.
Then, out of the blue, I give up.
I throw away the peony because
I am sick trying to learn how you made it.
Unpublished Material, ©2012 (WHAT?!?!) Cali Digre
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