migrant, writer, work in progress
I followed a path
thinking that it led somewhere
but it’s ended here—
*
It isn’t the road
not taken so much as the
untakeable road—
*
Follow my advice:
don’t follow a path—choose the
made up, pathless ways.
*
**
*
freddie omm
january 2021
*
with apologies to robert frost’s road not taken
– the poem is based on a meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice
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.
we don’t honour time
enough sometimes we forget
each moment’s passing
*
life’s woke in a dream –
desires’ dissolving seasons –
delusional days
*
sprung on by mad gods
our fantasies in the flesh
dissipating time
*
narcoticised nights
splinter in breaking trance beats
time’s passing fancies
*
like comets’ bright tails
outgassing in orbital
periods of coma
*
millennial hours
centuries past in seconds
lit by mortal suns
*
we wake in our beds
making lifetimes’ catwalk love
cosmic comedy
*
ethereal hopes
brighten our dreams like comets
blazing through black night
*
**
*
omm
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
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
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
#haiku by freddie omm; photo by saltanat zhursinbek
#haiku by freddie, pic by david clode via unsplash
#haiku by freddie, photo by charles via unsplash
#haiku, photo by freddie
freddie omm’s Sicilian Haiku, illustrated by lucy henshall, will be published by Mad Bear Books this summer.
#haiku
Freddie Omm”s Sicilian Haiku will be published this summer by Mad Bear Books.
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)
Floris V van Holland
Early in January 1296, Floris V leaves his court in The Hague for Paris, where – against his better wishes – he switches Holland’s ancient alliance with England to one with France. This sparks off treachery among some of Floris’ nobles, leading to his murder in June.
*
in his hall of knights –
mental topers, tumblers, ravers
– mad din of needy bingeing gluttons
*
smoke-shrouds cling to blackened beams
minstrels mock those braying, belching goblet-brandishers
ranting voices drunk
*
alone in that crowd
and at its centre, he sits
a silent moment.
***
*
thoughts like words unborn
in a womb of forgetting
flit through his spirit
*
scared of too much thought
(which drinking puts a stop to
– as if thoughts could drown):
***
*
sacred hopes, our wished-for dreams
float off like swans when we awake
they glide off on the glossy glassy lake
*
worn out by living
(which dying puts an end on
– as if our lives first wear, then strip us bare).
*
as if as if as
if, in drinking, sleep and dreams
and thoughts and words all drowned like shipwrecked memories
*
and yet and yet and
yet we live and breathe and feed our fates,
our lives float free of us.
***
*
he sits with his knights,
his ladies, fools, his dogs and serfs and clowns
one sated, bloated, slumbering moment
*
comes as if to himself
in the din of that great hall
on his island in the lake –
*
sees in that moment
the ghosts of future feasting,
woken when he wakes.
Omm
twelfth night, 2018
Binnenhof The Hague in about 1290
Hall of Knights (Ridderzaal), Binnenhof, The Hague in the eighteenth century
fazed, floris looks out
across the lake from his tower:
chilled, sluggish morning –
*
his household sleeping
off the feast, he’s alone, but for
the stork and the swan
*
one roosting above
on the roof, one swimming below –
fog-filled sky foreboding.
*
he rises from the bed
behind the banqueting hall,
kisses his lover –
*
blessing his domain
– his folk, that mindless morning –
his dark fate untold.
Omm
new year’s day 2018
´
round the munsterkerk
the Christmas market’s dark, stands
and stalls shuttered up:
*
seasonal crowds withdrawn
– spaces of singular silence –
no one left but us
*
contemplating change
in the temples of our heart
where gods die and live
*
lamps hung from abbey trees,
spotlit abbey walls, cast light
over us remnants.
*
Omm
december 2017
this winter solstice
as I love you, love me –
our Christmas blessing:
*
living loving both –
if life means anything
let our thing be love.
*
longest, darkest night,
while Wodan hunts with ghosts all yearning
through skies of glowing spirits
*
may that night purge us all
those ghosts be at peace, in love
again with living
*
in shadowlands of love:
as I love you, love me
this winter solstice.
*
Omm
winter solstice 2017
because I am a poet I love words
that cover up as much as they discover
my otherness, my flights so fanciful to you, my lover
whose wit and song and thought fly free like bees, like hummingbirds –
because you are my lover my true words
close in zooming close-up on our love, which uncovers
inborn lusts, carnal nectars nestling embryonic deep in us – we lovers
so innerly loved – when up we pair in passion, flock as birds
to cling and fuck and flick like flames all through the sweet warm night
like lit, scatterseeded sex, love’s godlike joy’s in flight –
because our gods come multiply, we lovers
– synthesizing each in one, seedlings whose flowering recovers
lush, latent lyric life – transplant into our words
love’s being, life’s meaning – innate and fecund like nectar, bees and hummingbirds.
*
Omm
in hollywood, our
sublunar gutter-cosmos,
the walk of fame shames
*
collapsed stars, black holes
collide, merge – an afterglow
of platinum, gold
*
counterstellar dust,
like that brute shapeshifter’s lust
ravishing Leda
*
rapist in swan’s form:
sky father, king of gods, power
launched in Helen’s face
*
engendering revenge –
Iphigenia, Clytaemnestra
and Argos dead (the dog…)
*
this darkwebbed media:
supernova’d starfuckers
named, shamed, bollocked up
*
chorus of neutron sleaze:
lost starlets – tricked-, sucked-, fucked-up –
patriarch swansong
*
now mobs bay and rip
lives apart in shitstorm tweets
of #metoo fascism
*
in our black hole of fame
everyone’s-got-it-infamy –
carry on hollywood.
*
Omm
october 2017
from boardwalks buried
in the bed of that steep dune
you step on the beach –
*
sandscapes shift, air-borne,
you’re a visitor here, as
timelessly moving
*
as sea waves wash off
infinite fictions of earth –
mere specks on a spot in space.
*
Omm
october 2017
sun, sand, sky and sea:
here i sit and write my words
elementally
*
as my dog chasing birds
– or their chatter when they flee –
sense is to words
*
seeking expression –
while we too might seek release
in sweet sensation
*
loving inner peace,
our minds, our bodies set free –
revel in release
*
merge into ocean
like a riff of poetry
in tidal passion
*
shore’s simplicity
sweet edge of comprehension:
sun, sand, sky and sea
every time I glance out of the window, love,
grey clouds slink down into our valley deep
and filter out all colour: grey above,
below, and grey behind our balcony when sleep
creeps up like time on light, and all around our space
the mist coils spreading from the glacier
of kitzsteinhorn, and river salzach’s waters race
and roil beyond the moor’s dark clumps of birch and alder
where wagtail, dipper, and sad willow warbler
chatter cross the fens beside the spa’s hot springs.
around us in the town, the fog clings
to the streets, a scattering of ghosts without a face –
we sip a schnapps, our spirits warm, and love
each other, smiling, dissolved into the place.
Ganton Street Soho.
At a café called Sacred:
Cloud-splodged blue sky crossed
By pink, white lightbulbs,
Old facades of painted brick.
The dog is panting
On a pavement stained
With smudges of the unknown,
High sun casts shadows –
This poet’s waiting:
On the walkways footfalls pass
Shut shops, tourists snap.
Summer 2016
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
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…)
This little parable, like a fairy story, is utterly unlike most people’s idea of Kafka, reading like an enigmatic tale for children:
a place where jackals and arabs might meet
Reading this story to his daughters – and seeing their delighted reaction – inspired Matthue Roth to create My First Kafka: Runaways, Rodents, and Giant Bugs, which is published this week.
The idea is long overdue – for almost a century, Kafka has been imprisoned in a Kafkaesque prison not of his own making.
It’s high time someone set him free.
eduard von keyserling’s masterpiece of literary impressionism, waves (wellen), has never been translated into english before.
it is now being attempted over on oomkenscom…
the bay of puck on the baltic sea, setting of keyserling’s “waves”.
Hilarious debunking, by Kathryn Schulz, of The Great Gatsby.
If I don’t agree wholly, it’s because I think the novel’s iconic stature is deserved. In persuading us of its greatness, its shortness helps, too – allowing readers to supply a lot of the thematic power Fitzgerald merely sketches in.
Having said that, Schulz does land some telling punches – “third person sanctimonious” is good as the narrative voice Fitzgerald gave Nick in Gatsby – and this was something which someone just had to say roundabout now, with the umpteenth (well, fifth) Hollywood treatment hitting the screens.
Her brother was only 16 when he stabbed her more than 100 times, in April 2012.
She’d returned to Sweden a year before, fleeing an arranged marriage in Iraq.
Knowing the possible consequences of her brother’s concern for the family “honour”, she always slept with a knife under her pillow.
Local authorities, terrified of upsetting sensitivities, ignored repeated warnings from the anti-honour-killing group Tank.
The boy duly killed his sister. Originally sentenced to eight years, that sentence has been halved in light of his age at the time of his crime.
Court slashes sentence in ‘honour killing’ case – The Local.
david foster wallace–lavishly admired depressive and novelist who killed himself eight years ago–is the subject of three new books now reviewed by thomas meaney, who concludes, in a mixed metaphor of baroque exuberance, that:
to be the master distiller of the times for a generation is no small feat. It requires a willingness to dirty your hands in the culture to a point at which most novelists would flinch. It means being willing to swallow boredom whole.
wallace’s greed for drugs was, apparently, as epic as the taste for tedium meaney ascribes to him, but neither could numb his life-consuming depressions.
he poured his preoccupations with modern life’s minutiae into knowing post-modernist prose, intellectually flashy, emotionally absent.
his reverential treatment of items which used to be thought unworthy of such (TV pre-eminent among them) is getting tired and dated today, but his books are beautifully emblematic of his time.
bunny de neude is a burlesque artiste in the thriller i’m writing.
by coincidence, there’s a square in utrecht called de neude, on which stands this statue, thinker on a rock, by barry flanagan.
it is a cross between rodin’s thinker and bugs bunny.
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| Bunny de Neude (Thinker on a Rock) by Barry Flanagan |