Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii


A poem by Ummidia Quadratilla, on learning that the family’s seaside villa in Pompeii (now known as the Villa of the Mysteries) has been destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, 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

*

**

*

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

december blessing (haiku)

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

haunts (haiku)

            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

 

in neverland lost


Strength (RIPped) – haiku puzzle

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

– love’s words run still (twelve haiku)

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

February ink

Scrawls dark promises on sky

Written in love’s shade.

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

February 2020

Coming Together (haiku chain)

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.

Stranger (haiku chain)

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.

chiffchaff (haiku chain)

 

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.


we come alive

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.

haiku

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.

gulls

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

woke like song (haiku chain invocation) – for all the lovers everywhere

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

veneralia (love changelings) – haiku chain

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

  • Veneralia was a festival held on 1 April in honour of Venus, Goddess of Love (Aphrodite to the Greeks). Women bathed together, crowned in myrtle, in the goddess’ honour. The festival was specifically focused on Venus’ attribute as Venus Verticordia – alluding to an aspect of the goddess as a “changer of hearts” – in this case, her ability to transform lustful love into chaste or platonic love. In this poem, the changing of hearts is seen in the context of a constancy of love that continues even when the love objects change.
  • *On 21 March 2019, the Spring Equinox, there was a full worm super moon. Looking from my window in The Hague, I saw an irradiated sky of swift moving clouds whose intermittent gaps opened a flood of stunning illuminations. They lit up everything like the flash of sudden universal compassion that can come with a new love, undermining cynicism and suffusing all in a bath of warm golden light.
  • Photos by Timothy Dykes and Guzman Burquin; Venus Verticordia by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

valentine possibilities (haiku couple)

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)

ghosts of cheyne walk

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.

salle des pas perdus – poitiers

hall of lost footsteps

fugitive hot whispered words

scabrous ancestral songs

*

judgments from the court

of love whose lust-drunk troubadours

inspire my spirit:

*

a joy for living

a past that never passes

a loss yet unlost

*

in this hallowed space

– oak beams, flagstones, marbled walls –

still footfalls echo

***

I long for you much

as I listen to music

whose sadnesses touch

*

my heart still aching

from madnesses and rage that

haunt this rabid present –

*

let’s celebrate life

in songs of now, here, as in those

footfalls of the past

*

we find in absence

a beauty missing in presence

sometimes, timeless love

*

**

*

Omm

1 january 2019

reignite – haiku chain

Night. A single star

Burns, smudged by smog, smokelike clouds

Then blotted out. Dark

*

As my mood when you

Are gone – warmth and light snuffed out

Like a single flame

*

As the waxing moon

Is smothered behind storm clouds

Passing blind below

*

We absent ourselves

In darkness, deep depressions

Hiding from the sun

*

We dig a hole in

The plot of our own story –

Gotta stop digging:

*

Look up, wrap ourselves

In glowing glory, endless

Potentiality

*

Sea, sky, stars and moon

And this solitary earth

Spinning round the sun

*

That storm seething past

Stokes our sluggish blood till time

Reignites the sky.

*

**

*

Omm

September 2018

holy ghosts – haiku chain

all our holy ghosts

live in us, and we in them –

love’s eternal haunting:

*
blithe spirits spook us

from deserted dunes – singing

sands, rustled by winds –

*
heartbeat-storms roil round

the beach, rouse stomping wildness,

clamour in our veins:

*
we are the children

– and parents – of the past

in love’s family

*
whose children succeed

give birth to generations

for eternity

*
mother father child

live and grow and give their love

timeless trinity

*
all our holy ghosts

live in us as we in them

we are love eternal

*
Omm

Spring 2018

new year 1296, the hague – floris wakes in the binnenhof (five haiku)


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

winter solstice: christmas blessing – five haiku

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

 hollywood kilonova

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



zuiderstrand, the hague

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





1989 – everything is now – 2017

Photo by Filipe Almeida via Unsplash

 

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 

  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

sexy, slightly scary (her sweet self)


She’s sweet like a friend

Yet sexy, slightly scary

Like no one other

  *

You like her. She smiles

The smile of one who knows that

That liking you feel

    *

Likes her for her self

Like she wishes she could too

But she doesn’t like

    *

Like herself… She says

She can’t explain how she likes

What she likes in words

   *

She has this dream

In which she merges in her

Lies of love with others like

     *

She’s living some truth

Neither selfish nor selfless

– Like her to be both –

     *

Sweet, wholesome, love-scarred

And sexy, exposed – scared that

She’s just like herself

     *

But is not herself –

Like no one else is oneself:

We’re like each other.


on ventura beach: haiku chain

ventura keys bay

ventura keys bay

*

borne on a loose-tongued tide

when dolphins sang in our bay,

i swam alongside.

*

learning my english

in california, oh yeah –

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

kool-aid cookies

 

photo(2)

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

who am i (lana wachowski)

for lana wachowski

001Lana-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…)

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)