Shall I Compare You

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

spring 2020 (health, love: spring springs)

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

Love in Times of Quarantine I

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.

Love in Times of Quarantine II (Lockdown Loving)

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