Rino Barillari, King of Paparazzi

22 June 2024 by 6 Comments

Harry’s Bar, Rome, on Via Veneto –

Where the king of paparazzi waits,

White bandage on his cheek, like a raw scar

Of honour – is heaving, full of Dolce

Vita‘s cream, in Rino’s memory –

Illustrious as some vague delirious fantasy

Of his gilded past… – He’s snapped back to the

Present, as out walks Gerard Depardieu

With his companion, Magda Vavrusova:

Sad scenes of sordid violence ensue –

*

Recalling Rino in his pomp, maybe,

Scourge of glitterati outside all the bars;

But now, he says, the street is like a cemetery

Thronged only with the lonely ghosts of stars.

*

**

*

Photo by Ziogiucas via Italian wiki

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the sea spits out a fish

1 March 2024 by 1 Comment

two crows watch the beach

until the sea spits out a fish

flying and then dying on the sand

*

two crows pick this fish

to pieces, scoff down their feast,

fly on back inland

*

—the crows are lucky

all the gulls were gone—they’d have

had to fight for food:

*

they’d have lost it,

weren’t it only witnessed by

a passing poet.

*

**

*

Omm

*

*

**

*

Photo by F. Oomkens

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku chain, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: , ,

work in progress: sketch of snow, dunes, sea and dog

18 January 2024 by 6 Comments

 

when we want to live

a life more lit and touched with

fire we need the beach

*

where sea throws us waves,

surf singed with feels we can’t share

like words lost in storm

*

light snow drifts on dunes

while wind blows cold and dry, we

walk down to the shore—

*

foam flies from the waves

like smoke, rolls on soft wet sand,

the dog sniffs, bites it;

*

sunlight’s lying on the beach–

wet, shining now the ash-curled waves sink

reflecting sky:

*

clouds of flame and ash

float through blue, hidden heaven

soaking into earth

*

sky, flames, snow and wind, waves, foam and sand,

they and all of it are never still not ever but they move us

through us as we walk, wish, stand–

*

what I see, I write,

and with my words I try to

catch the snow and light

*

**

*

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by F. Oomkens

 

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Crowning Charles

4 May 2023 by 7 Comments

*

This crowning of a king

Is a strange, uncomfortable thing:

*

Among the watching crowd:

A pleasant peasant madness;

On our screens: choreographed grandness

While unseen cops arrest and make all protest voiceless;

And he who is crowned

Bares visible sadness.

*

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Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii

17 October 2022 by 3 Comments


A poem by Ummidia Quadratilla, on learning that her husband, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in the Vesuvian holocaust. The family’s seaside villa in Pompeii (now known as the Villa of the Mysteries) has just been destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, and the family died while helping their household to escape. Ummidia Quadratilla, a Roman-era Messager of the Tabernacle of Gaia, had stayed in Rome. Selections of her poems appear in The Dark Gospel and are translated by Freddie Omm:

Sweet home, bodies loved

Before the ash and pumice storm:

Thoughts, loves, lives, buried

*

Words too crushed to speak

My loss through lasting love now

Silence covers all—

*

Busts, scrolls in libraries,

(Like grapes left liquid in the press)

Some burned, crushed, some saved:

*

We can only wait

For the centuries to come

To uncover us

*

**

*

Filed Under: freddie omm, Gaia, Gaianism, haiku, haiku chain, poem by freddie omm, poetry by freddie omm, Tabernacle of Gaia, the dark gospel, Ummidia Quadratilla Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

musing

23 August 2022 by 2 Comments

Peaceful as the dawn

of spring above Lake Como

one silent morning

*

the windows open

while the still soft air wove fresh

sweet scented coolness

*

on our skin we felt

our gentle touch our hands our

lips our mouths musing

*

peaceful as fresh dawn

of spring close by Lake Como

that silent morning

*

wrapped in our lovers’

waking warmth—help us remember,

daughters of memory!

*

**

*


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Meditation LIV (Philippe de Saint Maurice)—on the unknowability of love

12 August 2022 by 1 Comment

This haiku is a translation of one of Philippe de Saint Maurice’s Meditations (the 54th).

As so often with translations of Philippe’s Meditations, whose originals are in a mix of Aramaic, Ancient Greek and Latin (languages in which I’m far from fluent), I’ve relied on intensive discussions with Philippe himself to arrive at the English. This unconventional practice is justified only by Philippe’s perfect command of English in all its forms, as well as of the ancient languages he first used to compose his Meditations.

love is simple yet

impossible to understand:

best just let it be.

The advice—if “best just let it be” is indeed advice—is unlikely ever to have been followed by lovers in the painful phase of passion, but is apt for the kind of unconditional love to which many meditators aspire.

While Philippe never echoes Krishnamurti (say) in injunctions to simplify experience by ceasing to think, love’s simple unknowability is something to which he often returns. He refers elsewhere to love’s “mystical mystery” and in this Meditation seems to say that love should be accepted, left to run its course, and not analysed or attempted to be “understood”.

 

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, Love poetry, love poem, Philippe de Saint Maurice, poetry Tagged With:

person

5 June 2022 by 2 Comments

*

**

*

From Tank Person to

Person, transitioning, stillI

Standing up to power

*

I became one with

The tank, then we dissolved, gone—

Person can return.

*

**

*

Omm

from conversations with my friend

Yu Yan Yip

*

**

*

The photo is of a rare and wondrous Inchan tree, over 200 years old, in Thailand, which bears two different types of fruit, the In and the Chan, at alternating times each year. In a similar way, one person may develop two different, alternating kinds of being, at alternating times, while remaining the same, consistent person.

This poem is part of a series inspired by the experience of Yu Yan Yip, previously known as Tank Man, who has been on the run and transitioning for many years.

The previous poems in the series are:

– Tank Man

– Tank Person

Photo of the Inchan Tree by Freddie Oomkens taken at Kanchanaburi, Thailand, in 2022

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Rotterdam, Bright Monday

20 April 2022 by 2 Comments

Rotterdam in spring

sun’s eastering glow—winter’s

in shadows, past us,

*

Past us, waking fresh

soulsakes, godsakes born in light—

burning bright Passion.

 

*

**

*

Poem and photo by Freddie Omm

*
Notes:
– Bright Monday is a name for the Monday after Easter.
– This haiku chain is based on a Meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice—albeit the original was written in and about Jerusalem soon after the Crucifixion.
– In this poem, as in Port Vendres (September 2021), “godsakes”—and their relations, “soulsakes”—are again evoked. Godsakes and soulsakes are aspects of being human, according to the Tabernacle of Gaia.
– The central wording of the haiku chain—“past us,/Past us”—contains the idea of past selves, as well as the more literal idea of winter now being in the past, in Rotterdam’s hemisphere, at least.
– “Passion” refers both to Yeshua’s Easter narrative (Christ’s Passion) and to the passion all humans can feel, regardless of religion—the word is rooted in suffering, with a transformative tendency toward regeneration (or resurrection).

Filed Under: easter haiku, freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, meditations, by philippe de saint maurice, Philippe de Saint Maurice, poem, poem by freddie omm, poetry by freddie omm Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

the brave new year wakes

7 January 2022 by 7 Comments

Haiku and pic by Freddie Omm

*

the brave new year wakes

all unconscious of her being

like a child star born

*

on-screen, hopes and fears

of future years—young, unsung

–past all forgetting—

*

puffed, angel-kissed face

unswiped the tears that time will

meanly bring to smudge

*

her moist, smeary cheeks,

dimpled now, her first cry

a wave or blast of waking life

*

washing over us

with some vague sense of our own

blazing potency

*

—yet uncertain too

of fresh madnesses ahead,

the brave new year wakes.

*

**

*

Freddie Omm, January 2022

*

Note: This poem is the third section of a triptych of poems.

The others are: autumn blaze away (and next year be a blast) and new year’s eve, oudejaarsavond 2021.

The triptych starts with autumn (the left hand panel), then comes new year’s eve (central panel) then this one, the brave new year wakes (right hand panel.

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new year’s eve—oudejaarsavond 2022

31 December 2021 by 8 Comments

driving home for new
year blue but hopeful for the years
gone past and yet to come—
******
skyline, trees, headlights
smudged on night’s smeared-up palette
wiping all away
*******
in the wash and wake
of darkness blinded, dimmed by light
while morning’s stirring

*******

*******

*******

31 December 2021

haiku and photo by freddie omm

Filed Under: freddie omm Tagged With:

autumn blaze away (and next year be a blast)

21 December 2021 by Leave a Comment

cold november mist

dissolving trees in fields of

smudged, frozen furrows

*

there I go dissolving back into my past

*

dim sky shrinks to specks

of spattered grey, behind which,

rumours of daylight

*

lurk, blacked-out memories

of blue, spillage of cold sun

flown, fleeting ashes

*

half-forgotten burned-out futures (some flames could be relit perhaps at last)

*

a breeze to kindle

sparks of pale years’ sunken fire—

blaze up this autumn

*

O autumn please just blaze away (and next year be a blast)

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

December 2022


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winter solstice—yule 2021

21 December 2021 by 3 Comments

the shortest day is swallowed by the longest night

and though the time is festive we can close the darkness out in sleep

until we rise again to greet the waking light

*

last night’s cold moon is waning gibbous and the town shines bright

and while the spreading mist and frost grow thick and deep

the shortest day is swallowed by the longest night

*

we walk this world we wish for warmth and all that’s pleasing to our sight

but nightmare deepfake monsters of perverted dreams disturb us in our sleep

until we rise again to greet the waking light

*

O pity our poor planet filled with foolish deathly viral agents mired in their own shite

they rave and squall around our godforsaken earth and even as we weep

the shortest day is swallowed by the longest night

*

but there’s a ruthless aimless tenderness in nature’s creatures and in you that rare delight

we find when we’re alert to each mere moment whose uniqueness we can keep

until we rise again and greet the waking light

*

now in the southern hemisphere the sun shines at her height

but we are locked in dark and where the shadows creep

the shortest day is swallowed by the longest night

until we rise again and greet the lengthening light.

*

**

*

freddie omm

Filed Under: freddie omm, nature unveiling herself to science, poetry by freddie omm, solstice, villanelle, winter poem Tagged With: , , , ,

tank person

5 June 2021 by 2 Comments


*

**

*

Called a man, then, I

Changed, fluid, freely flowing. Now

I am Tank Person.

*

**

*

Omm

from conversations with my friend

Yu Yan Yip

 

photo by freddie

Filed Under: freddie omm, Freddie Oomkens, haiku, hate crimes, infusion of the holy spirit, meditation on modern evil, poem by freddie omm, poetry, seeds of destruction, sinister forms of mind-control Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ascension 2021

13 May 2021 by 8 Comments

We celebrated last year’s Feast of the Ascension with a single, potently philosophical haiku based on a Meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice (Ascension). Focusing on a pebble at the bottom of a pond, it got a lot of comments about the nature of consciousness, the will to rise up from the mundane mud, and suchlike.

It was a rather uplifting item all round.

For this year’s Feast, we have another of Philippe’s mighty meditations, but this one comes at the idea of Ascension from an altogether more provocative angle, wondering whether Yeshua’s ascension wasn’t perhaps the result of his wishing to escape the judgmental coldness of us killjoy humans – a sobering thought, entirely apt on this day of feasting and celebration.

Becoming sweaty,

They feared their bodies’ passions

Would take them over

*

Sometimes forever

They fought their desires to death –

Thought to transcend them

*

Morals to judge them,

Judgment to condemn and kill,

Death to embrace them:

*

They feared their own love

And so blamed others, made up

Sins deserving death –

*

Is that why Yeshua

Rose up to heaven – to escape

Our killjoy death-wish?

*

Tired of being judged,

He left us to our cold, mad,

Delusional lives.

*

**

*

Omm

Feast of the Ascension, 13 May 2021


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Mistletoe

9 January 2021 by 2 Comments

Mistletoe clusters

On tall bare wintry poplars,

Pale, poisoned berries

*

Sowing witches’ brooms

With Saturnalian seed

To spread love’s shrouding

*

Solstice potency:

Nurturing nest, fast food for birds,

Spring’s bees, butterflies

*

But all’s veiled, still, now—

This short midwinter moment

Death’s reared in beauty

*

Breeds life in sticky

Clinging, skeletal branches,

Mistletoe clusters.

*

**

*

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, poetry by freddie omm, winter poem Tagged With: , , , ,

Shall I Compare You

1 January 2021 by 5 Comments

This new sonnet riffs off Shakespeare’s 18th:

…for all those whose love is so fresh and strong it can seem unreal, here’s a sonnet for each and every one of us – Happy New Year!

Shall I compare thee you to a summer’s day… something you’re not?—

To me, you are living poetry

(Not some wordy simulation that can’t be)

And you’re the very essence of what’s hot—

Though similes like darling buds may grow

The sense of us, approximating us,

You’re as unique, incomparable

As our love will always be—deep, unfathomable:

And aren’t all of us much more than sensually defined

Both as couples, and as twinned lone souls (sometimes of one mind)?

Then, in the lives to come, more darling buds shall grow

To blossom free, just like the two of us:

Our loves as indescribable as real

(Although this near perfection sometimes seems unreal).

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

January 2021

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december blessing (haiku)

13 December 2020 by 3 Comments

days shrink, night e x p a n d s –

light and warmth of close kind friends

make love more intense.

*

**

*

freddie omm

december 2020

*

photograph by siddharth salve

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, love poem, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: , , ,

smile in me

28 November 2020 by Leave a Comment

sometimes when we smile

at some shared joke, it’s as if

you’re smiling in me

*

and we’re one wit (as

it were) in one split

                                                          second

when you smile in me

*

a smile spilt over

from that mere moment of now’s

spillage of pixels

*

past laughter uplifts

us – we’re happiest when shared

smiles float up again

*

**

*

freddie omm

winter 2020

 

Note: The idea for this haiku chain was sparked by Proust, where he describes Swann’s memory of Odette’s laughter just as he is sinking into disfavour with the Verdurin set: …”il voyait Odette en rire, en rire avec lui, presque en lui.” – Un Amour de Swann, p. 282. The memory of shared laughter lifts us, as it does Swann, bonding us in a timeless bubble with those whose passing laughter we share, becoming especially poignant and powerful when that bond feels as though it might break through separation or drifting apart.

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haunts (haiku)

16 November 2020 by 5 Comments

            oaks spread and twist low

            branches close to damp dark earth

            white sand under wind

*

            as time-tinged leaves blow

            rustling past

                                                       migrating birds  

                      vague mists ghost the dunes:

*

          time, fog, wraiths and haze –

           insubstantialities

 

            that haunt us all our lives

*

**

*

freddie omm

november 2020

 

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With:

Loving Light

18 September 2020 by 7 Comments

I

All my life I’ve loved

beaches and the beauty of

being on the edge

*

Where senses merge like

sex in sand and sky in eyes

we are everywhere

*

Feeling a moment

like lifetimes of loving light

from intense shadows

*

While feelings blur like

sea in sand and sky in air

we’re here everywhere.

II

All my life I’ve loved

beaches and their hot bodies

heating everyone

*

(Save folks or times with

lack of lust for life in sex through

mood or age or choice)

*

All my life I’ve loved

soft warm curves that turn things hard

tangling everything

*

All my life I’ve loved

those days when outlines grow so vague

you shape in the flow

*

Like waves washing worlds

that wishes made whole, oceans

smooth and connect us

*

All our lives loving

beaches and bodies and love

make us all hotter

*

And all our lives’ love

lifts us from life’s heaviness:

makes our lives lighter.

III

All my life I’ve loved

light, I’ve left darkness behind

when stuff got murky

*

At dawn if things got

sweaty I might stay on till

stuff got cool again –

*

– I get dark sometimes

too, we all do, but try to

leave darkness at dawn

*

**

*

Omm

September 2020

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O My Days All Blue

14 September 2020 by 1 Comment

O my days all blue

With loves like suns that warm and

Burn us up all through

*

Hot nights of turning

On the spit of sleeplessness

Feverish with you

*

Blazing together

– Days and nights of endlessness

For making love to

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

September 2020

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, poem by freddie omm, poetry

Elysium

8 September 2020 by Leave a Comment

Forever in blue

Light warm day lifts woke souls to

Elysian Fields

*

Light that conceals

Leaks among us and links us

Each in sublime joy

*

West winds fan our passions

Growing golden flowers to garland

Blessed lit up isles

*

Float on light that hides

Night for a bit while gods wake

Heaven is being.

*

**

*

Words and photo by Freddie Omm

September 2020

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in neverland lost

28 July 2020 by 3 Comments


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Strength (RIPped) – haiku puzzle

28 June 2020 by 2 Comments

To go with this little puzzle, some words by Verity Worth:

Becoming strong can come when you fall apart and break down.

You’re overcome by – you melt in – you surrender to – you give your self up to (and in) the present moment.

That moment can be a space filled with overwhelming emotion.

Maybe you are mourning a loss, someone you loved.

Maybe it is the moment itself you are mourning, the intensity of feeling it has evoked that feels as though it’s passing.

You become the moment – the moment becomes you – give yourself to the moment –

You find strength in pulling yourself together, and every time this happens the extra strength seems more, like building muscles.

And yet another part of you feels wasted, emotionally hungover, psychically drained.

The two sides coexist in you, different facets of the same self, two selves within a larger You, like rainclouds amd sun, selves containing many more aspects like scattered pieces in a jumbled jigsaw puzzle.

Neither gains the upper hand for a while, the two sides just about balancing, then matter resolves, the hangover dissipates, it drains away, as is natural, it passes like a cloud.

The pieces can be reassembled.

There’s enough strength in you to grow again.

*

**

*

Verity

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Ascension

21 May 2020 by 26 Comments

Sunk in the mundane

like a pebble in a pond.

*

How rise up again?

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

Feast of the Ascension

21 May 2020

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: , , ,

an empty beach in summertime

1 May 2020 by 5 Comments

Freeform sonnet and pic by Freddie Omm.

Filed Under: freddie omm, poem by freddie omm, poetry, sonnet

the new normal (haiku chain)

26 April 2020 by 2 Comments

What is it to be

Normal when our past, now, is

Newly abnormal?

*

Wasn’t it always

So, and don’t we overstate,

Slightly, the moment

*

We live in – strange times,

Strangely recasting our selves

For the new normal?

*

Isn’t it normal,

When living’s new and strange, to

Hope past lives survive?

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

April 2020

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: ,

Distanced Days (April Blooms)

6 April 2020 by 3 Comments

Here in the now we think of then

And them – of times when we

Could meet outside – touch, kiss, hug – when

We felt like it, so free –

*

That world of honeyed dreans is lost

In isolated dawn

It succumbed in the last spring frost

And cannot come again

*

In April blooms the bees are woke

And drunk on nectar as the evenings wane

They seep and melt through air like smoke –

They may not come again

*

We sleepwalked into viral purgatory

Long distanced days of social dystrophy –

But nightmares fade away at dawn

If we can wake again.

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

April 2020

 

Filed Under: freddie omm, Love poetry, love poem, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: ,

spring 2020 (health, love: spring springs)

25 March 2020 by 3 Comments

in times of sickness

it’s hard to see spring’s beauty

in the littlest things

*

(all the world’s beauty

– sun, skylarks, cherry blossoms –

can’t make this spring spring

*

when all the world’s sick,

only health, love, could ever

make spring spring again –

*

pale flowers grown on graves

look like little things of health,

love: the seeing is all.

*

**

*

freddie omm

march 2020

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, Love poetry, love poem, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: , ,

Coming Together (haiku chain)

29 January 2020 by 6 Comments

In the still soft hours

Of night I wake as if alone

In bed although we’re not

*

Still there in each space

Between kisses in each breath while

We sleep love completes us

*

When we’ve way too much

Unsaid we want to say and

Much unshared to share

*

Even in silence

Our closeness warms us fills us

Speaks us forever:

*

Coming together

After time apart too long

Fills a voiceless void

*

Our lovers’ talk so close

Lasts longer far than mere remembered life

Never really ends

*

While we’re together

Hold each moment hold each one

In fullness of love

*

Even in silence

Still warmth eloquence love

Speak us forever

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

(very loosely translated from an original Meditation by Philippe de Saint Maurice)

*

**

*

I took the photo of the sunset through a window, quite dirty, in San Francisco.

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, Love poetry, love poem, meditations, by philippe de saint maurice, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: , , ,

streaming (haiku chain)

31 December 2019 by 3 Comments


at year’s end we try

to let what’s done and doing

settle in our minds

*

our memories edit

us in a flowing sequence

like a narrative

*

mishmashing hot nights

that wake lush fantasies of

love made (up) just right

*

as kaleidoscopic

impressions make up all our lives,

bye bye bygones stream

*

a vision of us

on waking up in beds we

don’t quite remember

*

to be joyful we should

see life as though providence

really worked for us:

*

(without edits like

random words our streamed stories

make no kind of sense)

*

our dreams of bliss are

real when woke in each other’s

arms in homely beds

*

each day we give fresh

meaning to lives streaming by

loving each other

*

**

*

freddie omm

new year’s eve 2019

*

The kaleidoscope collage is made up of kaleidoscope photos which I shot of various subjects over the past few days, including Coco the Dog, trees and skies, our Christmas tree, etc.

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, love, love poem, Love poetry, love poem, narrative, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: ,

we come alive

12 November 2019 by 11 Comments

from the way we act
when we’re in love you’d think love
wounds and hurts us most
*
in life – though things far
bitterer are daily thought and done –
love hits us hardest
*
– at times though we seem not
to even know we’re alive
while we’re here living
*
we can’t remember
our births, don’t believe in our
deaths – all too human
*
errors throughout life
shape our being – our delicate
small blue fragile world –
*
it’s quite likely that
love changes us because love
makes us come alive
*
as time goes past pain
fades but love’s the thing that lasts
to save us from ourselves
*
when we kiss and touch
our loving tenderness makes
hard living softer
*
we come alive then
love ourselves into being
loving mortal gods
*

**

*

freddie omm

*

**

*

This haiku chain is loosely translated from a Meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice.

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, love poem, meditations, by philippe de saint maurice, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: , , , , ,

hurrian hymn

1 November 2019 by 3 Comments


Sounders of the Depths is Emma Talbot’s exhibition at GEM in The Hague (next to the Photography and Kunstmuseum). It features brilliant, visceral installations (photocollage of selected works above). The show’s soundtrack, serendipitously, is a recording of Hurrian Hymn 6, the earliest piece of transcribed music (c. 1400 BC) – and it’s serendipitous because I wrote this haiku chain about it, some of whose preoccpuations resonate with Talbot’s work:

hurrian hymn

as we humans sing

for the goddess of the moon

singing creates us

*

now we come alive

in a forgotten language

past and unsurpassed

*

words from long ages

of birth, death and love relived

make us only us

*

being an offering –

the oldest song in the world

written in our blood

*

printed on this clay

by god through genes of humans

words and melodies

*

our voices swelling

the endlessly singing silence

breath of timeless sound

*

thirty three centuries

in a blind eye’s blink – always

we sing of presence

*

always we are song

mostly so when discomposed

in discord suffering

*

we’re never to be

silenced or wiped out as we

sing ourselves alive

*

**

*

omm

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haiku

31 October 2019 by 2 Comments

in case you’re puzzled –

these are my latest haiku

fresh from instagram

 

freddie omm

*

**

*

The haiku on the bottom right (“Ego Fires”) is based on a Meditation by Philippe de Saint Maurice.

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, meditations, by philippe de saint maurice, poetry Tagged With: , ,

dialogue

15 October 2019 by 6 Comments

Meditations of Philippe de Saint Maurice, which I’m turning into English haiku, will be published by Mad Bear Books. The Meditations give insights into spiritual growth, so I’m posting a few here, interspersed with other work.

The first was gulls, the second surf, and the third is dialogue:

dialogue’s great but with

each their own idiolects

words spin their own worlds

*

**

*

freddie omm

october 2019

The spider sculpture is called “Maman” and is by Louise Bourgeois who associated her mother with spiders (“spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother”). This casting of the sculpture (there is one original in stainless steel at the Tate Modern and six in bronze that go on tours) is visiting the lawn outside Museum Voorlinden in The Hague.

Instagram

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ventura beach revisited

25 September 2019 by 10 Comments

 Freddie in Ventura

*

those amber sunsets

never set but hung in mind

resplendent always

*

many years before

this beach and all that’s on it

were now, were mine

*

time was not what it

now is nor is becoming

each moment stayed whole

*

the waves held me fast

while the wind blew permanence

over solid sand

*

gulls sat in the sky

as if transfixed or painted

by a maker’s hand

*

 

*

a kid on a beach

– in the timeless space of life –

that kid’s always now

*

**

*

freddie omm

ventura, september 2019

*

The first of my haiku chains about Ventura beach was published here in December 2014: on ventura beach. I wrote this new one and took the photo while revisiting the beach last week. 

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, poem, poem by freddie omm, poetry, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

still

5 June 2019 by 1 Comment


*

**

*

Decades pass by, while

Moment of eternity

Stands still, like a tank.

*

**

*

Omm

*

Photos of tank in Ukraine taken by Dmitri Bukhantsov in February 2022 and added, with thanks to Dmitri, to this post later.


Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

i burn for your love (lit lust) – may haiku

11 May 2019 by 6 Comments

fresh spring rains pass by –

mist like smoke seeps up from earth,

buried burning warmth

*

i grow in your heat –

pulse beats in the furrowed hearth

of this maykissed field

*

moist excited skies

spread out wide like heavy thighs

fecundating space

*

i burn for your love

lit lust lifts my loins my life

planting fresh new seeds

*

**

*

freddie omm

Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku, haiku chain, Love poetry, love poem, poem by freddie omm

veneralia (love changelings) – haiku chain

31 March 2019 by 7 Comments

love is unchanging

but like the moon looks different

with each month coming

*

from bright new closeness

of a full worm supermoon*

illuminating us

transfiguring all

the sleeping world with budding

love awakenings

*

as each mood succeeds

mood and sad and happy mix

we’re changelings in love

*

our inconstancy

moves, begets us, forgot in

guiltless venery

*

our loves’ festival:

bathe in the pools of Venus

crowned with myrtle

*

rediscover the

endless beauty of new fresh

never ending loves

*

**

*

omm

  • Veneralia was a festival held on 1 April in honour of Venus, Goddess of Love (Aphrodite to the Greeks). Women bathed together, crowned in myrtle, in the goddess’ honour. The festival was specifically focused on Venus’ attribute as Venus Verticordia – alluding to an aspect of the goddess as a “changer of hearts” – in this case, her ability to transform lustful love into chaste or platonic love. In this poem, the changing of hearts is seen in the context of a constancy of love that continues even when the love objects change.
  • *On 21 March 2019, the Spring Equinox, there was a full worm super moon. Looking from my window in The Hague, I saw an irradiated sky of swift moving clouds whose intermittent gaps opened a flood of stunning illuminations. They lit up everything like the flash of sudden universal compassion that can come with a new love, undermining cynicism and suffusing all in a bath of warm golden light.
  • Photos by Timothy Dykes and Guzman Burquin; Venus Verticordia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Filed Under: freddie omm, haiku chain, poem by freddie omm, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

the alien within us – haiku chain

28 March 2018 by 2 Comments

we photoshop out

the alien within us

retouching our selves

*

to present profiles

that are shareable and bland

we become other

*
migrating exiles –

those aliens outside us

beyond the pale walls

*
and who am I then

an alien inside you

apt to be expelled

*
when you draw borders

for my refugee heart, we

live a little less

*
free to be as we

are in our core and essence,

unretouchable

*
irretrievable

inalienable us:

search for us in vain

*

Omm

March 2018


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space in our mind

9 February 2018 by 2 Comments

there is a space in our mind

where thoughts are formed

which we do not express

when let’s say you catch a glance of someone

in the street

who smiles and you smile back but pass by

and forget about them

although you’ve never known them to start with

until days later you wake

in the night

from the darkness of a vanished dream

about some other person and their smile

that passing instant returns like a flash

to you vivid as lightning and fades as quickly

in bleached black

yet has left its impression

as if imprinted on your brain

so when you look away a shadow

of it still is there smudged

in faded pigments

like the glimpse of a ghost

of something you don’t quite believe

in

or a déja-vu of such familiar oddity

that it’s unsettling and draws you close

in

as a lover lost from long ago

who seems suddenly close and wants to hug

you back from your absence to feel

the sort of things that you cannot describe

*

 Omm

8 february 2018


Filed Under: freddie omm, Freddie Oomkens, poem, poem by freddie omm, poetry Tagged With:

1989 – everything is now – 2017

24 July 2017 by 7 Comments

Photo by Filipe Almeida via Unsplash

 

our summer of love:

high on hope, hardcore uproar

remixing our lives

*

dance in those muddy tribal fields –

surging acid nights – wild orgasmic waves

entranced, crowdy hazy drums

 *

all one together

when sunset shades to sunrise –

stay up forever!

 *

heaven in a rave

morphing bodies, spaced-out time:

starstruck eternals

  *

raucous, thrilled and chilled

travellers, mutating beings

stagger on the stars’ stoned threshold

*

in love’s euphoria:

kiss our forever lovers –

softcore love hardwired in all of us

  *

heartbeat to heartbeat

ecstatic, loved-up pulses

– everything is now –

*

Omm

summer 1989 & summer 2017

         Photo by Muhammed Fayiz via Unsplash

Filed Under: cosmic cycles, creativity, darkness fades, Festivals, freddie omm, Freddie Oomkens, free expression, god, haiku, haiku chain Tagged With: , ,

in our happy hour 

8 April 2017 by 2 Comments

  in our happy hour

  blooming among wild tulips

   sappily sprung in spring –

  *

   fresh April showers fall,

  sweeten earthy sluggish veins –

    riffs of birdsong wake

    *

       liminal lovers

    on the season’s bare threshold,

     shivering off the cold –

       *

    shed our chrysalis clothes,

      winter’s pale accessories,

        emerging nude, fresh –

         *

    limitless like love

    shaken from hibernation

        in our happy hour

__________________
freddie omm , april 2017

Filed Under: freddie omm, Freddie Oomkens, haiku, haiku chain Tagged With: , ,

sexy, slightly scary (her sweet self)

11 March 2017 by 1 Comment


She’s sweet like a friend

Yet sexy, slightly scary

Like no one other

  *

You like her. She smiles

The smile of one who knows that

That liking you feel

    *

Likes her for her self

Like she wishes she could too

But she doesn’t like

    *

Like herself… She says

She can’t explain how she likes

What she likes in words

   *

She has this dream

In which she merges in her

Lies of love with others like

     *

She’s living some truth

Neither selfish nor selfless

– Like her to be both –

     *

Sweet, wholesome, love-scarred

And sexy, exposed – scared that

She’s just like herself

     *

But is not herself –

Like no one else is oneself:

We’re like each other.


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our epic birdsong (haiku)

22 November 2011 by Leave a Comment

online utterance

a perpetual orphic stream –

our epic birdsong:

*

the greatest human

works and thoughts, our dearest dreams,

will end in a tweet.

Filed Under: freddie omm

othertime

2 May 2011 by Leave a Comment

othertime

i dreamed a dream of life, and lived it in my sleep
and when i woke i saw through a ghost’s eyes:

a scrawling world of vacant cemeteries,
queasy seas of memory, reflections deep,
and muffled beyond purple coral banks, skies
unfathomable as eternity…

… i thought it was the vanished i could see –
void significant nothings, truth-packed lies,
unrisen suns, eclipsed in tenseless space.

for i was a poet of when
and now and then
saw written in your face
love stuff that words forgot to write –

while palpitating in our hearts tonight
are words in blood which leave no other trace
but of another self, another place
whose vanishings recur, but always out of sight.

                            *

we live a poem of when, but otherwhere
and othertime – like ivy spread on vines –
creep through our veins: chance, undeciphered signs,
runes and symptoms of things which are not there.

like shadows in a maze of moonshine
we black out, eyeless and pale in the night –
but when cold dawn dissolves us, hold on tight
together, two syllables that overspilled the line.

being alive at all
even hearing quite another call
is being blessed
in incomprehension, in difference;
and inner reflections on our innocence
are inattentive to our interest –

all to the good – beyond reason and rhyme
we live a poem of when, that otherwhere and othertime.

                                                                            freddie
                                                                            easter 2011

Filed Under: easter 2011, freddie omm, poems by f.k. omm

happy snaps – easter haiku

23 April 2011 by 1 Comment

i snap happiness
and in an easter egg-hunt
i happen on it.

       *

i happen on it
like an egg under a bush
in springtime hatches.

       *

snip-snap-happy now
a shutter on opening
floats in reflections.

       *

float on in a flood
sun seasoned petals swirling
butterfly wings past.

       *

i happen on you
no matter what the season
springs of happiness.

                                       freddie
                                      easter 2011

Filed Under: easter 2011, easter haiku, freddie omm, happy easter snaps

skim, scan and scroll

3 March 2011 by 2 Comments

nicholas carr, in the shallows, says the internet saps creativity.

by altering neuroplastic highways in our brains, it erodes our memories: thanks to google, we don’t have to remember anything anymore.

it is a sinister form of cortical re-mapping.

for, if creation is combining cognitive fluidity with intuitions and memory, a dependence on surfing is bad for it.

carr’s book is well reviewed by jim holt in the london review of books.

Filed Under: cortical re-mapping, creativity, freddie omm, internet saps creativity, jim holt, london review of books, memory loss, neuroplasticity, nicholas carr, poincaré, sinister forms of mind-control

verbosphere

27 January 2011 by 4 Comments

(this is the first poem i wrote on my bebook)

verbosphere

can’t feel – no sound, no birds
here in the verbosphere
there are no stars
(except as four-letter words)
nothing rough nor nothing blue
no knives to hack you scars
no coldnesses of words untrue
uncut the story clear
(we are all a missing clue).
but what could be more dear
when we is me and me is you
than this silent verbosphere?

Filed Under: bebook, freddie omm, online poem, poem, poetry about the internet, verbosphere