migrant, writer, work in progress
Look seaward west where
Sun’s gone down pale mauve striped pink
Cloud dimming shadows
*
That photographer
With his spotlight on the beach
Where people are shades
*
The silver ocean’s
Rippled blue reflecting waves
Whishing softly by
*
Offshore windmills stand
Like far off crucifixes
Harvesting the sky
*
Spirits whisper power
To earth and air and water
Resurrecting time.
*
**
*
Photos of Scheveningen Beach, The Hague, by Freddie Oomkens
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
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
*
**
*
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!
*
**
*
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”.
*
**
*
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:
Photo of the Inchan Tree by Freddie Oomkens taken at Kanchanaburi, Thailand, in 2022
*
**
*
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
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.
*
**
*
In Chelsea Old Church
(December Evensong: 12 Haiku)
*
**
*
In Chelsea Old Church
At Evensong on Sunday
I hope, pray, repent
*
For the coming year’s
Dates – work, duties, dreams – love’s loose
Change of comings, goings:
*
I’m not quite sure who
My confusion of spirits
Would be praying to
*
Jesus seems quite far
Our Father even farther,
Holy Ghost most lost
*
In faith that is ours
To find by quaint disbelief’s
Dark dusty corners
*
Darknesses of this
Church’s memorialised pasts
–
Framing spaces where
–
A handful of us
Sit, stand, kneel, sing and mumble
–
In twilit hangovers
–
There’s darkness that turns
As the world turns its seasons round
To joy and gladness
*
In the shadows, clouds,
Disintegration delights
Dismantling sadness
*
In meadows, poppies,
Gardens by the Thames that bloom
Long centuries long
*
Before Thomas More
Prayed, sang here with Erasmus
Wisteria grew
*
On the Embankment –
Once a low shore – cars now crawl
Past flowers, me and you.
*
**
*
Omm
Note: This poem describes a time when I lived down the road from Chelsea Old Church, along Cheyne Walk, where what is now a busy road on the Embankment (the A3212) was a sleepy village shore in Sir Thomas More and Erasmus’ time. More worshipped (and was upbraided for singing) in the church and added a chapel to the south or river-side of the building which, unlike the rest of the church, survived World War II bombing. The church was rebuilt in the 1940s, retaining many of its original features and fixtures – it’s a powerfully atmospheric place.
I used to join Evensong regularly to contemplate the week ahead.
This year, most services have been cancelled – I hope they will soon be able to reconvene, and these twelve haiku (one for each Christmas Day) are humbly dedicated to that outcome.
The painting is by Henry Pether (1800-1865). His father and brother were also painters, known as the “Moonshine Pethers” for their addiction to the hooch and liquors they illicitly brewed in seedy stills on the banks of the river moonlit scenes.
Another of my poems with links to this part of London, Ghosts of Cheyne Walk, was published here last year.
My upcoming book, Migrant Shadows – Sicilian Haiku, will be published by Mad Bear Books in early 2021 – with all profits going to support refugees.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
The vine writhes in wind –
Sunsoaked leaves, darkening grapes,
Ripening season
*
**
*
Freddie Omm
August 2020
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
I stood up to you,
Then disappeared.
O
Even now
up to you
I stand
*
Not invisible,
Although unseen, unknown, still
O
I stand up to you.
*
**
*
31 years on.
We greet and salute you, Yu Yan Yip—and all who stood and stand up to faceless tyranny.
Peace.
§
freddie omm
Sunk in the mundane
like a pebble in a pond.
*
How rise up again?
*
**
*
Freddie Omm
Feast of the Ascension
21 May 2020
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
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
This Spring’s a Psycho
Come to take our lives away
While we hide inside
*
This March, Spring is Loss
Of what we thought was control
Of our little worlds
*
This March, Spring’s gone mad –
Scattering buds of sickness
Seeding fit bodies –
*
This Spring is Zombies
The Undead with the Living
(No one knows who’s who)
*
This Spring is stealing
All our money, our nest-eggs
For a rainy day
*
This Spring spawns madness
We hide ourselves away but
Still the virus comes
*
(No wonder we’re scared
And sad and buying loo rolls
To wipe it all away)
*
Crazy thief of Time
Of plans, hopes, closeness, futures
Still the virus comes
*
While we stay inside
The season of life unfolds
Sick blossoms of death
*
Days stretch into days
Blank nights of feverish dreams
Of gone, better times
*
Like blossoms floating
On vague streams our memories
Drift down to the sea
*
Those gone, better times
When once we sang in crowds now’s
Still, deserted streets
*
As we shelter from
These threats we’ve never seen
One small comfort’s true:
*
While you come for us,
Psychoid virus, we know death
Soon will come for you.
*
**
*
Freddie Omm
March 2020
*
**
*
I took the photo in Villach (once the home of Paracelsus the Alchemist) last month.
Still deserted streets –
Spring’s forgotten earth, lovesick
in times of quarantine
*
We’re isolated
Beings – lone, socially-distanced
Bodies in disease:
*
Now in spirit we
Should touch each other’s hearts, share
Droplets of airborne love
*
Spread lockdown loving
Through springtimes of quarantine
Till the virus leaves.
*
**
*
Freddie Omm
March 2020
things we feel will not
die for want of words to speak
them – those feels will stay
*
your breast warm on my chest
heart and tongue’s incoherence
dissolving in sex
*
how our words run free
of sense when what we feel speaks
more than we can say
*
love shifts forever
infusing lust’s hot moist mouths’
fluent sweet nothings
*
the love we feel gone –
ghosted, holed in our hearts alone
swells in silence still
*
love remembering
each wordless stroke of the tongue
bodies becoming
*
that loss sends us mad
whose griefs we know shall not pass
so we stay still, still
*
love like roots in earth
grows deep, inarticulate
all through tacit seasons
*
till we cry our loss
pain blurred blind – we’ll not be heard
nor seen as we are
*
love is a virus
spreading our sweet infection
mingling genes, bodies
*
this is how these words
might speak to those who hear and
feel their inner sense: –
*
if what we felt died
through lack of words to speak it
this is how it ends –
*
**
*
freddie omm
20.02.2020
February ink
Scrawls dark promises on sky
Written in love’s shade.
*
**
*
Freddie Omm
February 2020
Poets play with words
like kids with toys – in this way
We all are poets
*
(When our thoughts are cut
up full of rage we need a
Monosyllable
*
If we want to make
things complicated we get
Polysyllabic) –
*
We all play with words
to shape our worlds according
to our needs and wants:
*
Whether or not we
think life’s a game, only words
can change the metaphor.
*
**
*
Freddie Omm
30 January 2020
*
**
*
I wrote and published this one on the same morning – this morning. Like many other recent haiku, it is based on one of Philippe de Saint Maurice’s Meditations. The photo was taken on Scheveningen beach recently. The pawprints in the sand are Coco the Dog’s (the copyright, to all of it of course, remains mine!).
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.
For millenia, humans
waited for god to show up
Now we are furthest
*
from belief – closest
to meeting god in person:
Unwelcome stranger –
*
Forever mortals
on earth forget our fate is
Eternal promise
*
Eternal waiting
for the life that has no end
Mortals forever
*
Unwelcome strangers
to their own lives and planet:
Strange and unwelcome
*
Until they embrace
the passing of all that flows
and streams us is all.
*
**
*
Haiku and picture by Freddie Omm
(Loosely translated from an original Meditation by
Philipe de Saint Maurice)
*
**
*
The photo was taken at Scheveningen on a windy afternoon last month when the sand was seething along the beach in noisy funnelflows.
hey josephine kate
welcome to this wild wide world
you will grow in love –
*
each newborn baby
has wise ones who come to bless,
bring gifts, praise, omens:
*
caspar, melchior,
balthasar – kings with gold, frankincense
and myrrh – following a star.
*
written in the god book
we glow like spells of unspelled words
on the unscrolled page
*
will we float in light
like morning mist on frost still white
as night’s evening dawns –
*
will we make our homes
watched by the gods of ourselves
scanning our future?
*
written in that god book
spells untold on unscrolled page
speak the unspelled age.
*
**
*
freddie omm
epiphany 2020
Our cousin, Josephine Kate Bader, was born on Christmas Day 2019, making triply apt this Epiphany welcome on Twelfth Night, the night of the Magi’s visit.
The Magi, or Three Kings, bringing their gifts to the baby Jesus, from a 6th century mosaic at Sant’Appolinaire Nuovo, in Ravenna.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.
before the snow falls….
this winter, we’ll warm ourselves
with wine and firelight
*
within tall sheltering walls
we’ll lighten lovelost shadows
through this longest night
*
green-winged chiffchaff calls
warbling from the weeping winter willows: –
woke spirits take flight
*
**
*
freddie omm
the hague
winter solstice, 2019
*
The chiffchaff (pictured below) has an onomatopoeic name evoking its song (cf Dutch: tjiftjaf; German: Zilpzalp) – even though the trilling chirrups of the chiffchaffs I’ve heard sound more like chee chee than chiffchaff. (And how, in any case, could a bird produce an ff , let alone an lp sound?)
Most chiffchaffs who breed in Europe migrate south in winter, but they seem quite keen on the continent, arriving earlier in spring, and leaving later in autumn than other birds.
Avian heralds of global warming, many of these summer colonists are now becoming permanent residents, overwintering by Dutch and Belgian coasts, the English Channel, on southern Welsh and Irish shores, in Normandy and Britanny, and along the Mediterranean.
For all that, this slightly bastardised haiku chain isn’t exclusively about chiffchaffs, much as I love their presence and the vigorous, spirit-enlivening brio of their song.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Meditations of Philippe de Saint Maurice, which I’m editing and transforming into haiku, will be published by Mad Bear Books. The Meditations offer insights into spiritual growth. I’ll be posting a few in advance here, interspersed with other work.
The second is surf:
our loves are dolphins
weaving wild unwinding waves
in and out of sight
*
our sentiments are seals
on rocks submerged in ocean
slicked in ceaseless tides
*
our thoughts’ sea lions
flap and flip on cold bare shores
to breed in rookeries
*
our lives’ deep mysteries
will swim and sink and drift through
phosphorescing seas
*
like drops in quick waters
loves, thoughts, lives are liquid
flowing surfing beings
*
**
*
freddie omm
june 2019
text by freddie omm, header pic by pagie page, footer pic by daniel h. tong
Meditations of Philippe de Saint Maurice, which I have edited and transformed into haiku and haiku chains, will soon be published by Mad Bear Books. The Meditations offer insights into spiritual growth, and I shall be posting some of them in advance here, interspersing them with my other work.
The first is gulls:
since I first could think
I always thought that thought
will turn me mad
*
like gull-crawing skies
thoughts can sound portentous as though
from other species
*
voices like aliens
we think into being as
thought will think us mad
*
words crawl crazy like
lingual creatures who can fly
from our mind’s planet
*
whether in rage or
loving-kindness – we know no more
than if we were gulls
*
fly into the sun
illuminate a last thought:
they. we. light. are one
*
**
*
freddie omm
text by freddie omm – title pic by thought catalogue – footer pic by yifei chen
*
**
*
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.
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
I
open up like song
let music play us sing us
melodising us
*
we two wrapped in heat –
loose entangled limbs like riffs
of carnal melody
*
interlaced and lit
lasciviously dangerous
lullabying life
*
our bodies pick up
the pumping of each other’s
heartbeat rhythms
*
in our love for us
we’re lyrical and languorous
climax in chorus
*
wild music wakes us
enchanting and shaking us
open like song
*
our skin pricked with notes
glissando licks quickening us
like a morning shower
*
in our love for us
in trust in truth we give tongue
to life’s loving song
*
II – envoi:
*
for all the lovers
who grew lonely as time passed
silencing their space –
*
music of the spheres
come join us close together
sing us woke in song!
*
**
*
freddie omm
may 2019
*
photo by spencer imbrock
each love is a kiss
melting and mingling – messed-up
unmissable bliss
*
each kiss is a sign:
unspoken love awoken –
timeless Valentine
*
**
*
freddie omm
14 february 2019
*
(illustration by annie spratt via unsplash)
we own our faults but
all those faults do not destroy
the good bits in us.
*
Omm
february 2019
one night in London
I saw the ghost of a child
behind my old house
*
dressed all in white
from another century
in the basement well
*
I watched a while
– she was absorbed in herself –
diffusing through light
*
a veil of darkness
her little body lit up
void translucent shades –
*
face expressionless,
quite absent, as if her spirit
had drained her hereness
*
flowing past in light
like the sun’s in moony night
shining chimera –
*
I could not read her
state nor story from her looks:
she stayed still, mute, slight,
*
radiating calm
acceptance between us. I waved –
then went up to bed.
*
**
*
next night, another
ghost came through the bathroom wall
into the sitting room
*
whilst I sat talking
with my ex-girlfriend’s mother
sure I was mad, drunk
*
visions and sirens
called me, but maybe it was
the ghost of our love
*
the evening after
I’d seen that blank ghost daughter
in not to be light.
*
***
*
Omm
freddie omm’s Sicilian Haiku will be published by Mad Bear Books in 2021.
we all have it in us
this dying for summer this
dawning in darkness
*
like buds at the tips
of february twigs we grow
and feel its stirring
*
springtime inside us
until a cold front snuffs out
our wake for the winter
*
a crocus-white chill
grabs us not from the grave but
its deep dark bed of earth
*
winter clasps us tight
anew and what we wished gone
we take it back again
*
like people waved goodbye
come back and kissed afresh our
winter wishes woke
*
we hug them to warm us
our needs and loves we never lose
we have them all in us
*
Omm
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
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
ventura keys bay
*
borne on a loose-tongued tide
when dolphins sang in our bay,
i swam alongside.
*
i learned my english
in california, oh yeah –
surfing on meaning
*
strange new kid from lands
far-off with paler beaches
i dug those endless sands
*
west of ventura keys
soaked up the lingo in waves,
loghorreic seas,
*
chilled long days drunk down
so deep, my first summer of love,
synaesthetized like
*
a child of the sun –
honey-skied strands, peacemeal love,
kool-aid cookied, fun!
*
like surf out of reach,
lyrics drift through smoke-tinged breeze
on ventura beach.
kool-aid cookies
now, then, soon – shoredays,
wave-lapped hours, wind-spun and warm
like summer kisses
*
blown in midwinter
distillated on our lips
blissed out, oh! timeless
*
yoredays – flown, but here
with you forever, come spring
and the buds and birds –
*
skies drunk on light, blue
till blacked-out, then flopping blank
on a spinning globe
*
summerled like myth,
tripping out on dewy toes –
yoredays, yours, mine, theirs,
*
the only sure thing
left is love in all our lives,
strewn along the dunes
*
days of sun, shoredays –
all transilluminated,
hewn in memory
for lana wachowski
… who am i, and when
wachowski to wachowska
metamorphosized
♥
was there a moment
before i became me? – no,
and yet i wonder…
♥♥
what turns us queerly
recast in a different film
to act against type?
♥♥♥
(type?) (without a face?)
life’s not some single screenplay…
(type?) (without a cast?)
♥♥♥♥
we ask ourselves this
not knowing if an answer
ever was, will be:
♥♥♥♥♥
never yet someone,
neither a nonentity
nor quite nobody
♥♥♥♥
mostly we don’t ask
for fear of wondering, lost
in rapt selflessness
♥♥♥
one eye on the road
which tears our lives inside out
one hand on the wheel
♥♥
and we become one
body, not anybody,
don’t ask who am i…
♥
♥♥
♥
22nd January 2014
note:
i admire lana wachowski’s work a lot and also her general attitude to stuff (as far as one can make out from her few public statements) – she combines humour with intelligence and experimentation – artistic bravery, openminded energy, a sense of inspirational anarchy…
i wrote this poem in one go last night just after i’d been thinking about her life so far.
(it is likely to get edited, tweeted and played with, being in the nature of an experiment, one of my haiku chains…)
leaves like love let go
spiral down to snoozing earth,
dark, russet-brown loam.
*
when fall took those leaves
love became a lonely land—
warmth withdrawn, wan sun’s
*
waning light bled slow
blind trails of mud and sodden
footsteps veined with ice
*
where ghosts shadowed past,
skulked all through that leafless land
to haunt our autumns…
*
stark, unfelled, strange-boughed—
love’s remains in lonely land:
bare old beeches, clumped,
*
storm-ridden and gaunt,
sheltering our homeless hearts,
winterblown—like us,
*
love’s a vagabond
wandering to a nameless place
of endless leaving—
*
on tracks untravelled
from fall to spring, we will see
leaves, let go, return.
leaves, let go, return
___________________________________________________________________________________
– I originally wrote this haiku chain on Twitter — a bad habit of mine — poetry on Twitter being so hit and miss, nobody’s looking for it — but I find it a good place maybe for knocking out a first draft.
– When I’d written it I thought Love is a lonely land was a new phrase but then I checked and I saw I had actually lifted it (subconsciously…) from an old, sweet song.
– This was Billie Holiday’s beautiful, mournful Deep Song (by Cory and Cross), which includes the line:
Love lives in a lonely land
and ends:
Love is a barren land, a lonely land/A lonely land.
– That’s a song I must have listened to more than a couple dozen times since childhood (my parents also loved Billie Holiday).
– At any rate, my haiku chain has ended up as a sort of retort — a positive echo if you like — to the somewhat bleak sentiments of Deep Song…
– So thanks to Billie, Cory and Cross!
– And here’s their song in all its glory:
moon and bay
In Dorset last month one evening after tea – and till well after midnight – there were some excellent meteor showers.
Spread out on our backs, on a tumulus on the clifftops above Higher Eype, we watched them.
I wrote this haiku chain about it:
earthgrazers
(meteor showers over the dorset coast)
peckish at tea-time:
pot warmed, kettle on the boil
as the light draws in
around the cottage –
fog furling up from the sea
all this moist evening
our minds soaked, softened
in warm cups of reflection,
dunked choccy biscuits –
scones with clotted cream
and jam, gentleman’s relish
on hot buttered toast.
we climb up the hill
to the clifftop tumulus,
sheep and cows around –
the sky inking in
those unscrolled constellations
crawling with time’s myths,
scanning heaven for
asteroids and meteorites,
bright trails clustered in
radiating lights,
mirrored waves, blank deep waters
where night takes a breath,
and then we look out
– wide-eyed, longing no longer –
appetites replete,
scattered meteor showers
sketch the intermittent sky
with points of parting:
radiant perseids,
earthgrazers, cosmic debris –
while we watch, starstruck,
and only the dog
is still on the hunt for more,
chasing her own tail…
dorset, august 2013
coco looking for her own tail
