Omphaloskepsis

I questioned my eyesight when struck 
By the images in the poetry group newsletter
A review of oneself should make one look one’s best.
But here we are… Stretched, fisheyed and flattened
Parodic distortions in a funfair mirror 

I too have a special view: 
A small sheet of perspex over my belly button.
It can be both an innie and an outie 
It flexes as I clear out the fluff with my little finger.
When my shirt rides up, I look out on the world 
From an unsightly angle where no-one looks good.

If you hear a shutter click
You may have been captured 
And your warped image poeticised
Through my navel glazing

But given that poems can review the poet
And this one questions my judgement and eyesight, so it
Seems I’ve viewed myself through navel glazing
And vanished in the hole of navel gazing.

Don’t worry – I had to look it up too. Omphaloskepsis is a Greek-in-origin portmanteau first coined or used in print by Aldous Huxley, meaning navel gazing. I’ve not read Those Barren Leaves but am reliably informed it is a satire; in general the terms omphaloskepsis and navel gazing are only used positively in the context of esoteric religion, otherwise they point to pretension and/or delusion and makes the gazer the butt (or belly button) of the joke. I assume the Greek is used, rather than Latin (something like umbilicum contemplans? Do I hear John Cleese – “conjugate the verb ‘to gaze’…”) because it sounds even more complicated and foreign. The title of Huxley’s book is itself taken from a Wordsworth poem, The Tables Turned, which exhorts the reader to put down the books (“those barren leaves”) and learn from nature instead. And so after digressions upon digressions we come to this poem.

We know each other and our subject well enough to see The Author is sticking the boot in again. I find it fascinating that he would be so regularly incensed by redacted and yet still attend, which points to His masochism or His judgement. I question the judgement in putting it down at all: the poem jumps tenses and subjects, first reviewing a review before claiming an undershirt eye – a literal not spiritual third eye – which (when not clogged with fluff) also has some kind of analogue camera and print service. Finally, we have a flip: the final stanza (with the faintest concession to rhyme) indicates that the introspection has birthed some form of self awareness – perhaps He is on the cusp of putting down the books, but He’s not there yet! Instead He speculates on the speculation of His navel.

Another reading of the piece is that the bitter bastard has put the boot in, tried to go two-footing with a tenuous malapropism and then falls over, trying to include Himself in the critique to soften the blow. It of course begs the question, isn’t all poetry the glazing on the navel gazing? Wordsworth (not Worth Words?) published his poem telling the readers not to read, evenings out are fodder and just about anything else turns inward as the poet communicates their view.

First draft circa Apr 2026

Rough performance time - 1 minutes, 10

Performed once

Date	Venue
3rd May 2026	Poetry Performance, Adelaide