"omphalos" poems
By David John Mowers
Oceanus, Acheron, Styx and Gyges, Phlegethon,
Phaeacians lament, mourn the loss, Scheria, dissolved in froths.
Virgil’s tale, found correct, a land too good, a nation wrecked,
Nausikaa, burn the ships; their minds released, cool airy nips,
Below the wave, watery grave, submerged to bottom, fathoms by stave,
Fathoms some more, until the whorl, descending to, another world.
Through Omphalos, to Land of Sleep, awaits a beast, where time has ceased,
Darkness here, underworld, cold and frigid, below the whirl,
In solemn grave, souls released, judged and counted, by the beast,
Deeper than, the deep itself, past drowning fairies and dying elves,
Who did mourn them? Those golden men, magic mariners, Mino's kin?
What wrong was seen? What vice not true? What awful sin? What did they do?
One thousand years, first black age, Two thousand more, to find the stage,
Cast off Aries and cast Orion, to find beginning, of Golden Lion.
Man of Heavens, Beast agrees, Bull of Sky, Ox of seas,
Land of Punt, Land of Éire, Ogyges blue, hearts on fire,
All the seashores, all the mines, Tribe of Dan, from ancient times,
Port of Sais, Port of Thera, Port of Lagash, bygone era,
Sailor’s horse, Minotaur, a lyre is crying, strummed guitar, nation dying, abattoir.
Ochre foams to sanguine depth, there they rested, where Kronos slept,
He’ll never answer, he doesn’t care, we’ll never know, if this was fair.
Our hearts in sadness, hands on the gates! I curse you Poseidon!
. . .and your Sea of Fates!
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 7:58 AM UTC
***** of echoes, the virile resonance quaking lust -
Throbbing caverns shudder to ****** inciting vestal musk
Entranced of nocturnal bedevilment - barefaced in galactic greens,
Spores ethereal yet concealed to the Queen
Sumptuous omphalos; her ecstatic womb engulfing the bloom,
Carnal reckonings devoid of Mosaic release as panting creatures swoon
Vigorous pollination morphing the nectarean sheath
Roused stamen shrivel in an animus induced retreat
Again we'll rise to salute our idol
In burning continuance:
Fertility extolled
With pleasure recompensed.
Nov 20, 2012
Nov 20, 2012 at 7:51 PM UTC
kurukshetra grey
but iridescent with the glory of all dreams combined
some omphalos of lusciousness still pumps
an umbilicus of sates
to broadening skies,
parhelion whims
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 11:41 PM UTC
Ahora que me acuerdo, fue así:
Hecho de fiebre, atravesé ciudades hermafroditas
donde las mujeres y los hombres recibían los cuerpos de los vagabundos
y los lavaban en las fuentes,
con el manto de fuego que no cesa.
Una noche saturada de invierno, bebiendo la sopa de la eternidad,
gané mi virginidad y fui otro yo en mí mismo,
porque olvidé cómo responder sobre el misterio de las cosas.
De silencio me armé y salí hacia campo abierto
a traficar imágenes junto a las constelaciones.
Fue entonces cuando indagué la pulpa del mestizaje,
cuando probé la sangre metafísica derramada en Tebas
-es que esa mañana liquidé a la esfinge
Cerca de una Wasserfall contaminada.-
Pies desarmados, peregriné mi jornada intuitiva,
saludé a las moléculas del fruto y a las sombras de la adivinación,
en un árbol vi la doble cifra de mi vida,
y grité, siendo montaña, la genealogía de mi conciencia.
Cuando la purificación se había ya extinguido
troqué el umbral de hueso por el marfil brillante
y así fue que entré en Coroico, urbe flotante,
cual símbolo, por material de sueño ungido.
Ahora miro con estos ojos destruidos
donde la sal del delirio antes tuvo morada,
(intuyo en esa forma liminar, la espada,
el camino que me arrastró al divino Omphalos).
Escucho, a veces, con saturnal resignación,
la crónica de mi negligencia.
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 11:23 PM UTC
What delightful alchemy this
this metamorphosis of a dream
a condition like an apsiopesis
which assumes I will be back
I inhale the fragrance of this ink
and exhale it as wine
it gives a nice toast
to our love
soaring like a lammergeier
Well in the throes of passion,
it splinters into a flower
the omphalos of which
is a moment awake
beyond rest or relaxation
may we be together forever
_ Vijayalakshmi Harish
24.11.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Nov 24, 2012
Nov 24, 2012 at 12:21 AM UTC
Let us lay in endless greens, and symbiotically allow the day
A simple spinning about the omphalos of heart’s creation
I want to feel the rapturous entanglement of our atoms
Bursting in fruition as melismatic chiming sighs
And in this becoming, vernal musings with parameters repealed,
We glimpse an eternal oculus by sapid lips shared
In this essence chased through time and captured by the instance
Your quantum passion yearns toward the receptacle of prophecy
I, the oracle form a forecast in rhythm’s *****
To find that the plexus of forever pulsates beneath your skin and mine
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 11:17 AM UTC
Imagine that the summer’s stringencies
Have found themselves alone
In a garden, so full of bone
Petunias and bone pansies
That the Omphalos stone, full
Of captive water, full
Of bio-mass, with its
Subterranean flow—exhibits ,
In lieu of flowers—cannot pretend
To be our final fortune’s final end.
Suppose instead the garden is an egg,
Its shell, the sky about to beg
Release from all this heat, a tuft of X,
My friend, a silence, salient, stolen, so complex.
Aug 1, 2011
Aug 1, 2011 at 7:19 AM UTC
As we flow imagining we motivate
our selves to go on,
crack the whip,
try oomph-ala
like… take and read the little book, or swallow
what you're told…
for any mind a thinking thing is companion,
welcome the strange
little light leading on,
for minded beings do not live by bread, alone.
Inside, we see alone.
Outside, I see all one. Am I enlightened,
I ask my closest confidant.
Ah, I utter
as a sigh, slack jawed awe, a we is made
right now --
me and thee, dear, dear reading being thinking
do you mind?
Did I capitalize on your confusion to stick
a point into a bubble you believed?
How would you know?
{1.
Omphalos is the hub of any bubble of being,
center of gravity, if I may
make that assertion
as certain as
may be in these days of knowledge expansion.
May is you word, now. You know.}
Sep 9, 2020
Sep 9, 2020 at 2:01 PM UTC
Low are the crickets of Delphi
With their chirping rays of sunset,
Like Phaethon to photon destructs
Into the fiery ruts of chariot wheels,
Or two eagles flying opposed on stringed vicissitudes,
A bird-yarning of sky from the omphalos stone,
The fulcrum of sung misery, a fishing net thrown,
As the half-bird and half-ion in siren’s undertones
Lure in subatomic orbs of ghostly parabolic swerve,
Into this blued Corinthian evening, self-vibrato,
Rocking like an empty boat from the dock rope,
Or an empty heart, unmoved by its own beating.
May 11, 2025
May 11, 2025 at 10:06 PM UTC
I remember when I first saw you
in such a state,
shifting with the direction of light,
viola shaped,
the boudoir door slightly ajar.
Rings exchanged,
veil removed,
the bells had chimed for us,
and then for
ships in safe harbor.
The pitter patter of
surf cascading in
from an open window,
otherwise hushed,
turnt and *****
dimples showing
whether you smiled or not.
Turnabout was fair play
--azure hues in moonlit pastel
caressing the folds and ties
around midnight’s chemise
--the lure of velveteen
and vast soft canvas of pearl
--areolae circles and quaint triangles
in the thick of things,
gift-wrapped in elegant fur.
Belle-chose, under
the waxing, waning crescent
of dainty omphalos, yawning in chiaroscuro,
red-faced and piqued,
quite shy coming out of the shadows.
The batting of lashes,
the lingering scent of bouquet
--like the seduction of flute song,
I followed and followed
until thoroughly lost within you.
May 22, 2020
May 22, 2020 at 8:42 AM UTC
Hyperbolic ceiling
Of patternless white paint:
Massive human herd.
Fumbling over itself: a mountain
Climbing, climbing, climbing, the bodies
The zombies
And super-imposed on the moving and falling
Of all of us Sisyphus
Are two faces, one mine
Teeth biting lip
Tongue in throat
Intimately, privately,
Darkness on white space.
“I’m an immensely private person,” Michael said,
His hand clasped in mine, the bodies
Moving across the white skin of his face, too—he
Stuttered—and then he
Stopped—
Remaining.
I nodded as things passed
From blue to red to back; as things
Throbbed, everything so ******
Blood pulsing
Into my body from his, from
The veins in the ceiling.
Oneness, omphalos, the knife faltered
His
Chest was my chest, like his hand, and I
Felt his inhale,
His lungs my lungs expanding contracting,
The human herd still
Dancing dialectically
In sync with the moving mouths and kissing lips
Of super-imposition.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 11:34 AM UTC
Alchemy is the art of the far and near as is poetry.
Prima Materia. ****** alchemists groping, questing.
The Face of God. Omphalos. The Chapel Perilous.
Lost path through invisible forest. Hazard.
Base metal to gold. Ignorance to wisdom.
Crucible of transformation. The Rosy Cross.
Inner distillation. Metamorphoses. Essence.
To be bathed in the breath of infinity. Crystalline.
Quantum foam. Particles. Waves. Plenum of possibilities.
Moving through the world of illusion,
seeking the sacred glory of fusion.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 2:03 PM UTC
⸎⟆⥉⦕⫯⟴ Ode to the Count De St. Germaine ⸎⟆
Dearest Count,
I know you watch and listen.
It is through you I set sail upon this ship of thoughts
To you, to whom, I christen.
These polysemic effulgence do, alas, waxen, wane,
but seldom in vain.
In antediluvian silence drawn,
manifests in hyperborean dearth
a logos, sir in autochthonous rebirth.
Their, hierophantic murmurs will obfuscate,
the omphalos of matter, still inchoate,
where perichoresis in vertiginous tide
the fractal that doth assuredly bide.
A palimpsest of null embrace
where these false augurs drink from hollowed urns,
and time itself forgets to turn.
Perfidious orisons, whisper-thin,
in circumflected aeons spin,
converging on the cusp of naught,
where paradigms in silence rot.
A chrysalis of paradox,
enshrouds the fey, unbridled clocks,
that chime in fugue, then dissipate
beyond the hinge of latent fate...
The pericombobulatory grand design
deliquesces in auctorial decline!
(Syncretic palingenesis unspools,
within the aether’s epistemic pools,
a syzygetic parallax unweaves
the thaumaturgic spoor that time bereaves.)
For naught but vacuous profundities remain,
a simulacrum of the arcane mundane,
where in sesquipedalian grandeur lies
a syllogism clad in grandiloquent guise.
Ouroboric concatenations of antinomian design,
circumvolute within paracryptic paradigms malign,
as obmutescent theogonic vestiges coalesce
in the eidetic zymurgy of aphasic largesse.
Metagnostic palimpsests, fracto-linear and obtuse,
catachrestically wane in hyperchromatic profuse,
whilst locutions, effulgent yet contrite,
obumbrate the paramorphic tautology of night.
A transcendental abecedarium, paralogical and vast,
consanguineous with the inexorable umbrage
of our shared Jungian past,
germinates within the syntagmatic—
Ever relaxed or ecstatic,
Coalesced to pragmatic,
Lugubriously emphatic.
Within this hypostatized ratiocinative mire,
where sophronistic axiom and non-being conspire,
one finds but an echolalic, chimerical gleam,
an ontosemantic palinode to the dream.
The Archetype realized.
The Alchemist mystically re-materialized.
Count, oh Count.
"Wherefore art thou," indeed,
in this : our time of greatest need.
Feb 24, 2025
Feb 24, 2025 at 4:23 PM UTC
Out of the blackness
milky-white eminence rises
omphalos umbilus of the world
dripping venom and solace
in equal doses
Is not creation myth
of sunrise or moondance
****** charge of being
connection of ether
asserted from nothing
Uncoiled sss thick body
glowing colour grey
black edged scales
vast hood of metallic
green lozenge flanked
by blind yellow flash
Out of blackness the
milky rainbowed cobra
source of destruction
of chaos of growth
Apr 10, 2016
Apr 10, 2016 at 8:10 AM UTC