Rotterdam, Bright Monday

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).

here

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

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

ventura beach revisited

                      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. Here’s a shorter edit of the poem on Instagram.

surf

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

*

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

space in our mind

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


shoredays, yoredays: seven haiku on a beach

DSC02124

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

DSC02120

endings & beginnings

my new year’s message this year is this quaint little ditty. i was writing out the fair copy this morning when i was interrupted not by a man from porlock but a mother-in-law from neuss bearing presents. so i had to finish it on a fresh sheet of paper which i then stuck together so you can see that the interruption came at a pertinent point:

endings & beginnings31122013_00000

for those who cannot decipher my writing:

 

                                                                  endings & beginnings

                                                                  (in a winter’s garden)

BEGIN with the word that comes first, like light

from a twilit winter’s garden, when soft rainfalls

drop on dewy, leaf-pocked grass, showering bright

like a sudden flow of MOMENTS through the calls

of a goosequilled V tooting past, this starry night…

*

I sometimes try to freeze TIME, so it stops

and in an INSTANT feel and think all blend

and merge within MOMENTS—consciousness drops

like heaven’s rainfall in a winter garden—

inconsummate, unbegun, word without END,

*

but now SOMETIMES I forget such somethings,

and in your love I’ve found SEASONS to care

about the here, NOW, not some perfected place where

there are no more ENDINGS and BEGINNINGS.

                                                                                              freddie o

                                                                        viersen, 29-31 december 2013

 

love became a lonely land: autumnal haiku chain

leaves on loam

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

*

wan sun's waning light bled slow blind trails

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

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:

Billie Holiday: Deep Song

earthgrazing haiku

moon and bay

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

coco looking for her own tail

(“earthgrazers”, by the way, are meteors which fly close to the horizon, slowly, in the early evening… i like the way it could just as well describe us humans – and animals, too – grazers all upon this earth)

 

 

she lifts her veil: a vision – three rondelets

 

I was in the Musée d’Orsay last week and took this picture of a striking sculpture by Barrias (Nature Revealing Herself to Science).

(From this angle her limpid marble eyes have a disconcertingly full, yet vacant look, brimming compassion yet somehow indifferent – although that may be a fanciful not to say pretentious notion…)

Coincidentally, I have been working on a poem called She Lifts Her Veil.

It consists of three rondelets – a charming medieval French lyric form.

The subject of the poem isn’t medieval exactly nor is it really about the grand Victorian personification of Nature Unveiling Herself to Science. It’s more about modern men and women and how they see each other:

 

she lifts her veil –
a vision: blank, dilating eyes,
she lifts her veil.

you breathe, the smell of her inhale,
flushed lips mouth fire – as flames chastise
brazen flashing immodesties –
she lifts her veil:

*

they see her face –
fragrant and nude, beyond the pale:
they see her face

itching to put her in her place –
frustration makes them bluster, flail,
so helpless – lewd and sexed and frail –
they see her face:

*

she drops her veil
lets it float, fall, fade where it lies…
she drops her veil

to speak her peace – a piece of tale
embodies what she prophesies,
when in the mirror of our eyes
she drops her veil.


freddie omm, spring 2012

verbosphere

(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?

past lost lies

past lost lies, by f.k.omm

it’s an old poem i wrote back in the day.

it is an octet and goes like this:

. . . i have spent my day procrastinating
each hour postponing the next, so sad
to be without the love i want so bad
as my past lost lies, insinuating
each one into my soul, driving me mad
with lust to be once again without lust
to lose you, let you go with timeless trust,
the best i had, or ever dreamed i had . . .