on being conscious:

5 January 2023 by 10 Comments

From a Meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice, une entité mystérieuse by all accounts, best known for his Meditations, selections of which I’ve been tinkering at these past years. This one skates the edge of profundity and platitude in characteristic, unsettling Maurician manner:

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On being conscious:

–We are dewdrops in the dawn

Of sunshine on the thirsty lawn:

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We are sparks that fly

Through deep and darkening night sky

Till rainclouds quench us.

 

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Having spent time recently in Thailand I was able to reconnect with Philippe de Saint Maurice and go through some of his Meditations.

These two haiku on consciousness are part of a longer sequence called revelation realisation, but they stand well alone.

I took the photo on Bang Niak beach on the Andaman coast of Thailand last month (December 2022).

For those interested in epic literary hauls, translations of the Meditations are coming along fine and will be shared in Book Seven of The Dark Gospel; I’m sharing the odd snapshot and highlight as I proceed.

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musing

23 August 2022 by 2 Comments

Peaceful as the dawn

of spring above Lake Como

one silent morning

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the windows open

while the still soft air wove fresh

sweet scented coolness

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on our skin we felt

our gentle touch our hands our

lips our mouths musing

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peaceful as fresh dawn

of spring close by Lake Como

that silent morning

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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”.

 

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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,

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Past us, waking fresh

soulsakes, godsakes born in light—

burning bright Passion.

 

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Poem and photo by Freddie Omm

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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).

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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

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Sometimes forever

They fought their desires to death –

Thought to transcend them

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Morals to judge them,

Judgment to condemn and kill,

Death to embrace them:

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They feared their own love

And so blamed others, made up

Sins deserving death –

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Is that why Yeshua

Rose up to heaven – to escape

Our killjoy death-wish?

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Tired of being judged,

He left us to our cold, mad,

Delusional lives.

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Omm

Feast of the Ascension, 13 May 2021


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real

23 January 2021 by 2 Comments

how if we try to

do something like change the world

we can and we can’t

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achieve all we want

by force of will alone that’s

just delusional

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when the world around

is just as real as we are

our will is not all

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yet in our mind lives

a universe just as real

as any other

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being all we want

needs an equilibrium

a balance between

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haiku chain and photo by freddie omm

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here

14 January 2021 by 4 Comments

I followed a path

thinking that it led somewhere

but it’s ended here—

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It isn’t the road

not taken so much as the

untakeable road—

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Follow my advice:

don’t follow a path—choose the

made up, pathless ways.

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freddie omm

january 2021

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with apologies to robert frost’s road not taken

– the poem is based on a meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice

Filed Under: haiku, haiku chain, omniscient narrative, online poem, poem, poetry, poetry by freddie omm, postmodernism, selfhood, the dark gospel, Uncategorized, writing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

In Chelsea Old Church

28 December 2020 by 1 Comment

In Chelsea Old Church

(December Evensong: 12 Haiku)

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In Chelsea Old Church

At Evensong on Sunday

I hope, pray, repent

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For the coming year’s

Dates – work, duties, dreams – love’s loose

Change of comings, goings:

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I’m not quite sure who

My confusion of spirits

Would be praying to

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Jesus seems quite far

Our Father even farther,

Holy Ghost most lost

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In faith that is ours

To find by quaint disbelief’s

Dark dusty corners

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Darknesses of this

Church’s memorialised pasts

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Framing spaces where

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A handful of us

Sit, stand, kneel, sing and mumble

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In twilit hangovers

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There’s darkness that turns

As the world turns its seasons round

To joy and gladness

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In the shadows, clouds,

Disintegration delights

Dismantling sadness

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In meadows, poppies,

Gardens by the Thames that bloom

Long centuries long

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Before Thomas More

Prayed, sang here with Erasmus

Wisteria grew

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On the Embankment –

Once a low shore – cars now crawl

Past flowers, me and you.

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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.

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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.

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Verity

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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

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(all the world’s beauty

– sun, skylarks, cherry blossoms –

can’t make this spring spring

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when all the world’s sick,

only health, love, could ever

make spring spring again –

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pale flowers grown on graves

look like little things of health,

love: the seeing is all.

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freddie omm

march 2020

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Untitled Haiku

30 January 2020 by 2 Comments

Poets play with words

like kids with toys – in this way

We all are poets

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(When our thoughts are cut

up full of rage we need a

Monosyllable

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If we want to make

things complicated we get

Polysyllabic) –

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We all play with words

to shape our worlds according

to our needs and wants:

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Whether or not we

think life’s a game, only words

can change the metaphor.

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Freddie Omm

30 January 2020

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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!).

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Stranger (haiku chain)

23 January 2020 by 3 Comments

For millenia, humans

waited for god to show up

Now we are furthest

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from belief – closest

to meeting god in person:

Unwelcome stranger –

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Forever mortals

on earth forget our fate is

Eternal promise

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Eternal waiting

for the life that has no end

Mortals forever

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Unwelcome strangers

to their own lives and planet:

Strange and unwelcome

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Until they embrace

the passing of all that flows

and streams us is all.

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Haiku and picture by Freddie Omm

(Loosely translated from an original Meditation by

Philipe de Saint Maurice)

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The photo was taken at Scheveningen on a windy afternoon last month when the sand was seething along the beach in noisy funnelflows.

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

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

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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

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

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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

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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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surf

21 June 2019 by 5 Comments

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 first was gulls.

The second is surf:

our loves are dolphins

weaving wild unwinding waves

in and out of sight

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our sentiments are seals

on rocks submerged in ocean

slicked in ceaseless tides

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our thoughts’ sea lions

flap and flip on cold bare shores

to breed in rookeries

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our lives’ deep mysteries

will swim and sink and drift through

phosphorescing seas

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like drops in quick waters

loves, thoughts, lives are liquid

flowing surfing beings

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freddie omm

june 2019

text by freddie omm, header pic by pagie page, footer pic by daniel h. tong

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gulls

17 June 2019 by 3 Comments

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

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like gull-crawing skies

thoughts can sound portentous as though

from other species

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voices like aliens

we think into being as

thought will think us mad

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words crawl crazy like

lingual creatures who can fly

from our mind’s planet

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whether in rage or

loving-kindness – we know no more

than if we were gulls

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fly into the sun

illuminate a last thought:

they. we. light. are one

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freddie omm

text by freddie omm – title pic by thought catalogue – footer pic by yifei chen

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