(BOOK VII – FROM WLM : DISJECTI MEMBRA POETAE)

WLM : THE CATALUNYAN PIECES

by

Warren L. McClure

(Last Revised 07-15-09)

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Thank goodness my culture has not set me to work in a laboratory

observing the wiles of anthropoid rats
but has equipped me with fetishes charms and spells

Thank goodness my culture has not set me to work in a grinding mill

that would make Quixotes of us all
but has sent me tilting against the stars

Thank goodness my culture has not set me to work in a position of power

which would leave me so little time for jousting with mills
but has lent me a wand to master the magic of sounds

Thank goodness my culture has not set me to work as a merchant of note

with a wicked balance and a deceitful bag of weights
but a bag of tricks that I might work my will with words

Thank goodness my culture has not set me to work as a philosopher

equipped with fetishes charms and spells
a wicked wand and a deceitful bag of tricks
that would make Quixotes of us all

Thank goodness my culture has not set me to work

but has left me free to be a poet

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04-01-06
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TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES

(BOOK VII – FROM WLM : DISJECTI MEMBRA POETAE)

01. Title Page

02. Preface Poem (Thank goodness my culture has not set me to work in a laboratory)
03. Table of Contents
04. Owing to a habit I formed in tender years
05. Moments of utter folly these that come and go
06. As the Sun comes up over Miracle Bay and the lights go out on the Rambla
07. Could one but peer into the workings of / the Old Enlightenment's Clockwork Universe
08. Were Hell half as hot as it's purported to be
09. It's on days like these I rather abhor my innocence
10. The misty view from the Tower of Learning swelters under the summer Sun
11. I seem to have lost the battle with Otiosity
12. My wary mind tonight
13. Oh to what lengths will a man go
14. Sketches in the cloisters of the mansions of my mind
15. Once again to return to that Realm where ever and anon one becomes as a child
16. My mind drifts from one contrariety to another these droll days Aurellius
17. Suffused with delusions of grandeur one hopes never to attain
18. Eastward Dawn fiddles with the First Principles of Light
19. I suppose it is a laudable thing to wish to advance the cause of Reason
20. Tonight I am a gargoyle on a cornice of a crumbling edifice in Old Catalon
21. My thoughts this morning are as rambunctious as a riot of butterflies
22. The first freight of the evening has just rumbled by on its way to Barcelona
23. Poised on the doorstep of a Herculean effort
24. All thru the night Hesiod I've bounced along inside my Palanquin of Dreams
25. Here on the beach where I'm wont to lie
26. Leering into the Past with a jaundiced eye
27. Fellow Poets / It was so windy yesterday on the Beach at Rabassada
28. Sniffing the political windbag these gruesome days
29. Scanty recollections these that may provide one with / the rags to make a rug
30. Treacherous waters these over which we row
31. O Scholars
32. Nominally I am an honest man
33. This windy day
34. Was it only a dream
35. End Page
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Owing to a habit I formed in tender years

I find myself again making oceans out of sand
My Muse Pandora washed up on the shore nearby
removes her clothes
combs the cockles out of the hair on her mons
decides her saint is growing too irritable
swims away on a sea serpent with a rose up its nose
while the Moon like a child that can't be found at hide-and-seek
plays peek-a-boo thru the matriarchal clouds
and a bevy of rhymes ripples wryfully by
chuckling to themselves over a cuttlefish's bones
Life's like a pair of old jeans here with a broken fly
open in form and personal in content
shifty loose elusive insecure in need of a belt
So why then when ready-made cinctures lie
so close at hand
does one care to take up paper and pen again
try to create once more on his own new poems
more quizzical word-plays
about freedom and justice and human rights
for the lips of ignoble actors to recite
into the ear of an audience
of ignoble clowns
lines that
like a blast out of the blue
might cause some few others' minds to unwind
send a bolt thru their brains like a primal scream
as they walk over the melodious waves you have made
in the Sands of Time in your ragged jeans
with their modesty too exposed to all the vagaries
of the Wind and the Tide
Why try to create new closures for the mind
in rhythm and rhyme
when the World's already so full of belts for those
such as your own and others'-like
that have come apart at the seams
and have flies that won't close

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11-30-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Moments of utter folly these that come and go

like waves upon the beach
Activities that pursue no end
that leave no trace
like castles built in sand

Works whose purposes escape us like

the feeble echoes from beyond
the wide Mediterranean's
horizon

Sounds we would interpret but can't quite

because they're not expressed in words
nor antonymic forms
like Dark and Light

Things one can hear in the inner ear

that can't be seen nor touched but which
our minds insist
exist

We wait

The Wind may bring them near

Time may mute the noise they drown in
The Tide may turn the Sea
a cloud may pass so we may catch
their simulations like
reflections in a mirror

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04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

As the Sun comes up over Miracle Bay

and the lights go out on the Rambla
as the turtle in its leafy carapace struggles to get out
thru a hole in a pocket of the Past
a hole thru which fortunes are lost without our ever knowing it
I breach the walls overlooking the Sea before Tarragona

Perhaps I will be rebuked for writing poetry this early in the morning
before the Sun has had a chance to fully arrive
but the Event moves right along toward its inevitable close
even tho some thief has stolen the silverware
for the feast of words that's about to commence

Thus having entered Tarragona by a devious route

before the Hours are on the rise
bearing my injured Rectitude from another state
in a bun-basket full of poetic prowess
accompanied by my self-pitying Harp
with names and objects just beginning to converge
and shadows becoming things
adverse conditions that forbid me to ascribe come into play
freckle the bay-scape below me like fishing boats
coming in from the Sea before a storm breaks
connoting aspects hitherto unthinkable
for we fishers after freedom and honor and justice among men
swashbuckling about in our hob-nailed seven-league boots
our hearts full of hubris and self-righteousness
aspects like the irony in the up yours God made when he died
or the chagrin on the arrogant face of the Sphinx
when Oedipus solved its puerile riddle
aspects that cause one's pucker-strings to pucker
that cause one to pause to reconsider
the worth of whatever one's life is all about
to pinch the air to smell the roses

For who knows how the air will smell when it's been pinched
or why when the rose is plucked
the bush still pricks

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04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Could one but peer into the workings of

the Old Enlightenment's Clockwork Universe
one would find
it all in shambles now
all run down
with God no longer round to wind it
Thru the ruins one's thoughts might muse in pessimistic mode
like euphoristic gazelles on stilts followed by
daffodils of sounds mounted on crowds
of euphemistic elephants
trampling over the rhododendrons
For isn't it a tiny step from serendipity to
purposiveness
for we gentlemen scholars in our suds
ogling from the Promenade
the Sea of Life below beyond
while attending to the ruffles on our skirts
not yet having learned to wonder much
as tho
Creation having provided us with necks
did not mean for us
to be hanged
Yet how otherwise is one to expound the claims
of the Spirits of the Earth and Life itself against
the Spirits of Fire and Death
without sticking out one's neck
without pouring Water on the counterparts
without improvising airy bridges across the abysmal rims
of bottomless abysses
supported on the nether ends by
aphoristic ad hoc hypotheses like God in Heaven and Hell on Earth
and on the nigh
by euphoristic gazelles on stilts and daffodils of sounds
and crowds of euphemistic elephants
trampling over the rhododendrons

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04-01-06
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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Were Hell half as hot as it's purported to be

it would have a devil of a time topping
the Rabassada Beach on an August day
with the air hanging-ten over a sultry Mediterranean Sea
with the clouds like bare-breasted mothers their naked children should
taking their shadows and secluding them in more sacred places and
leaving to me and ten-thousand other insane masochists
the profane sands of the Beach to bask on
where our hides might be basted by salty waters
and our brains baked by a blistering Sun

Yet were the Devil twice as bold as he's purported to be

he'd have one hell of a time dragging me away
from this Rabassada Beach where I persist
in being burnt to a crisp by an uncaring Sun
while being bashed to bits by waves forsaken by shadows
while being trampled over by paddle-ball players by the ten-thousands
with the hearts' desires of little children still sucking at breast
with feet big as clouds and heads full of hot sand

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04-01-06
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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

It's on days like these I rather abhor my innocence

the life of a man who is free
who has no great stake in the Hereafter
no stars left at which to shake a stick
no desire to see the far side of the Moon once more
all probably due to some nihilistic streak
some astute teacher placed in my brain in my nonage
For I seem to have this hermetic web in my head
from which even the Spider flees
like an enormous alien text taking up otherwise useful space
too heavy for my Psyche to lift
The sombre hue of my life thus
confutes the lowering skies that cloud over the Sun
But most disturbing of all is when Ignorance strikes
when what-I-think-I-know is called into question
as when I find myself confronted by
flagrant contradictions
smelling like roses with tits like Venus de Milo
and bellowing like bulls in estrus
Formless suspicions then suddenly become as brittle as white-hot stones
The intimate passions of a Self in heat which had thought it had seen the Light
are squelched in an indeterminate vat of cold wet Night and explode
Or so it seems to one who would follow a way of life for which
the web in his head
is out of joint

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11-30-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

The misty view from the Tower of Learning swelters under the summer Sun this morning
Blisters rise on the brain no pen may prick
The Mediterranean lies mute as before a storm
waiting like an old coquette to reveal her charms
Watching her I feel like a sailor whose ship has just come in
from a trip around the Horn
who can't remember when
he last saw a woman
For even tho she's past her prime
the Mediterranean still harbors beneath her skirts
baubles best kept hidden from ogling eyes
secrets not meant to be beheld by sailors of shallow waters
or by uninitiates
secrets she would discover only to Poets and Lovers
who've been around the Horn

And mysteries impenetrable even to the Wise

who've never sailed Life's deeper seas

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04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

I seem to have lost the battle with Otiosity

composing poesies has not won out over the obfuscations that daunt an idle mind
The Ship of Dreams I would board and conquer
has dropped over the far horizon of the Mediterranean
her sails wind-full her flag still flying
on the way to Tunisia
I seem to be caught in an in-between
where nothing's happening
where there's no something to happen
like on the crest of an event horizon where nothing's moving
as tho my mind were suffering thru
a reversal of hierarchies
Baffled disillusioned
I would turn even the fragmentary and fortuitous into poetry
were it to drift by

wlm
04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

My wary mind tonight

as if empowered by some dire celestial arrangement
avoids all the obvious routes between the stars
leaps from galaxy to galaxy as my pen leaps from word to word
tries to roll back the curtains from Time's tightly-held secrets
with a baroque condescension
Over Egypt a pale Moon rises on a silver plinth
for the day when is close enough at hand
to force painful choices
to foreordain another season of dissociation between
my Will and the Zeitgeist
A wet night this at half-past nine
the latest chapter in a diffident life
surrounded by cupidity bafflingly unsophisticated
before which it is hard to keep a straight face
Or to keep the tongue from a twist
Oddly I feel as if a part of my Own
were clandestinely burrowing within against me
a niggling malaise on a subversive mission
here in my fancy where words lead strange lives
where a book of holy writ can kill wit
and a fairy tale burgeon forth
in an Immaculate Conception

wlm
04-01-06
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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Oh to what lengths will a man go

to establish himself
beside a balmy sea
so lukewarm waves may pound loose sand
up his bum
and the Sun scorch his hide
to the bone

Oh to what lengths will a woman go

to establish herself
on the beach of that balmy sea
as Queen of Tits and what's more
that her buns are better by far
than any man’s wandering eyes
have ever seen before

Oh to what lengths will lovers go

on that balmy beach to prove
their love is like no other love
that's ever been lived before
to what stupendous lengths
only Heaven knows
and poets who hide
behind their beards

wlm
04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Sketches in the cloisters of the mansions of my mind

metaphors stored away in old mahogany armoires
scenes that flash by when you open up the drawers
as when one dreams

My mind seems to be such an open-ended series of disconnections

stored away in hardwood boxes
mobile montages made up of pasts and futures set in motion
every time I lift a lid
mobiles that make me feel as if my blood were being spun in centrifuges
mixed montages of good and evil that keep me up both day and night
wondering which I am

Outside the mansions of my mind

the landscape's all decked out in monochromes
Autocratic Time in his tattered coat of orange and green
stands by with hour-glass running
reaping-hook at hand
ready for the swoop that takes the grain

Were this a dream

surely I could have found a more pleasant scene for the season
and dressed in dearer colors
cobalt cadmium madder lake Pompeian blue

Yet my mind like a multitude of closed-lidded boxes in a drawer

in some centuries old mahogany armoire
in a cloister in a dreary mansion
appears early on to have become anchored in such heavy furniture
that now it seems nearly as immovable as when
that dark wood in which it holds the boxes
rested in Honduran forests

For even in this late hour with its many rooms of ample size
the mansions of my mind loom out of place
They seem to suffer from an embarrassment of riches
And those dearer colors that I so delight in
by my thoughtless abuse of metaphor
glaze over the windows
on which I rely for light

Yet I cannot overcome my yearning for

rich tapestries of words and sumptuous cushions
voluptuous woods and intricate boxes
I can't content myself with simpler forms
witty nocturnes in cerulean blues
natty symphonies in red ochres
but must persist in using muddled metaphors which
the subtle sense within belies

even tho my thoughts fall with a thud on wooden tablets

like weighty trees in sultry jungle forests might
even tho they shake the earth for miles about as they tumble
and can only be drawn out of the woods at night
by teams of twenty horses
because of the flies
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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Once again to return to that Realm where ever and anon one becomes as a child
a child this time that's just taken in its last breath before the sword came down
a time and place where every new life was a prelude to an epic poem
whose sordid details are always about to be consummated

But first let us turn from this aside

to the handwriting on the wall
and put an ear to it
so we may listen to the voices no one has listened to before
For not only are we the spectators watching from the stands
we are the victims
nor are we innocent of this Massacre of the Innocent

I’ll not test my auditors' patience more by quoting lengthy passages

out of context
bristling with old saws brilliantly rephrased
sophisticated bits of retrospection that bear so much ill-will
they are best consigned to the fire

Yet if this is so it is not enough

For the World still hangs by a rotten thread
like a sword about to cleave thru flesh and bone
slice off an Innocent's head

Thus one wipes the blood from his mental instruments

to keep the edge of inference bright and clean and free of gaffs
so he may laugh up the sleeve of his learnéd coat
of motley green and gold

But that remarkable garment of infinite regress

has begun to unravel at the seams
And the granitic shaft of monumental knowledge on which we hang it
while we view the vulgar show below
has begun to crumble
like the Tower beside the Pond
once inhabited by Swans

wlm
04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

My mind drifts from one contrariety to another these droll days Aurellius
only on rare occasions now does it find itself gazing steadfastly out
beyond the event horizon of its own drear gut
Tho day be gone I still have night
Tho compassed round
by murderous Christi and homophagous Philanthropae
my body nods my will still sings
penitential hymns last heard in Babylon
spouts expiatory prayers learned in Perse at Calydon
while the inscrutable laws of the Universe crumble into crumbs
as Heraclitian fragments of life go flying by
tumbling into ruins
rushed on by the bad breath
of the latest dying god
Even the matrices of all things peculiar to This or That
seem to have come apart at the seams
their rows and columns saunter thru the Groves of Learning
rambling about in groups of threes and fives
and often sevens
tho sometimes droves of eights and twelves
and occasionally elevens
My Muse arrives
brings more baleful news
that Science cannot unravel the enigma of
the Universe
much less the Self
nor unwind one tic of the clock that's toced
nor keep the rot from the brain-bone long
Still the hearts of the three swallows in
my magic staff
flutter like the swift sure wings they were once so wont to drive
thru the evening skies after summer moths
And now and then I still succumb to Awe
that holy delight of the untrammeled soul
felt most often by those of unpolished simple wit
so seldom by the Wise
Yet how idyllic this my situation here in my birthday suit
my body half-asleep my brain half-dead
where ideas like Sarmatians fierce meet heart head on
leave the nape hairs standing on the back of the neck
and electric chills tingling up the spine

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04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Suffused with delusions of grandeur one hopes never to attain

on the edge of that illimitable Ocean absurdity reflects
it seems hardly fair to doubt one's own discontinuities Goethe
But as if by design the absence of facts gives the truth away
for matters too obscure for statistical analysis or operational description
conjure forth this marvelous inanity
to will what one wants and pen it to a page
But wait
the Ensemble of Serial Relationships roars overhead like a thunder-clap
Like a virgin unexpectedly seized by the realization of her true vocation
my Muse gives multiple birth to multiple similes
Out of those sublimated semiotical proclivities that lie between her thighs
proud words desirous of procuring their place in the sun arise
turn the Ensemble of Creative Relationships inside out
like a wet umbrella on a windy day
seemingly incoherent verbosities of little moment
tho much extolled
that induce metaphysical impoverishments into the common reader's cant
that engender confusions of incalculable effect in the minds of the sage
that muddle completely the wits of fools
that occur every time some poetaster's muse crosses her legs rustles her skirts
that were it not for the thunder and rain the Sturm and Drang
would engulf even those of us who give a damn about Poetry
in the Bathos of the Anticlimactic
every time a child falls
every time an arrow flies

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04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Eastward Dawn fiddles with the Four Principles of Light

like the High Priestess of Isis with the faggots for her altar's fire
Over to the right a puling wind breaks open the surf
motivates cavities in stones to murmur
Out over the Ocean a seabird shrieks
a hymn of delight for the gift of morning
soars out of sight into the Mists of Unknowing
My mind awed by this
wanders back and forth thru Space-Time
pauses for a moment at a place in Humankind's infancy
before Sounds became names for things and Science took their measure
a place where Silence maunders mournfully pondering her hurt feelings
where the neme for Awe is the echo of the surf pounding
and that for Joy
a new day dawning

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04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

I suppose it’s a laudable thing to wish to advance the cause of Reason

but offhand right now
I can't think of one good reason why
So much empty talk from our Goethes Socrateses Kantians
the only function of which is to support
an easy-going self-satisfying arrogance
in those of an intellectual bent who too
in these their own narrow times and places
are prisoners of the Horizon
the same Horizon that limits fools and poets and charlatans
and you my Perspicacious Auditor
and me

Yet how excruciatingly difficult it is to be humble

to putter about quotidian tasks that must be done
when once you've sensed the Universe of Wisdom
out There
beyond the Boundaries
when once you've imagined yourself to be
One of the Truly Wise

Yet how can one be sure

Like a vagary in a closing sentence

in an ode to pomp and circumstances
this cries out for exposition
titillates the brain and stirs the mind to contemplation
causes the mouth to gape and murmur wistful sighs
lets the Angst inside you trickle out

Oh how you'd like to close that sentence out

even if only by some chance bit of luck or intuition
some incontrovertible sign from Heaven even
that would show the World that you are One
of the Truly Wise

even something silly like the happy end result

to that fumbling experiment you once dreamed up
with a fulcrum and a beam of light
and accomplished in your nonage all on your own
in a moment of freedom terror and delight
that tilted the Moon just a bit your way
without the World ever knowing it

something that would let you know

at least in your own heart
that you are right about yourself
that you are truly One of the Truly Wise

And you would happily do that sophomoric experiment

over and over again
if you could only remember where you stood
on that lugubrious day

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04-01-06
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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Tonight I am a gargoyle on a cornice of a crumbling edifice in Old Catalon

an edifice with flying buttresses and soaring arches
with spires that once connected Heaven and Earth
and a spiraling staircase leading down to Hell
I overlook a cobbled street no wider than a bier
that twists and turns and circles round
The stones with which it's paved are made of flesh and bone
They burn like a Ring of Fire

I was not always a gargoyle with my bum stuck thus to a crumbling cornice
For I began as a sanctimonious self-appointed Guardian of
the Sacred Vessels Within
that hold the Ancient Verities
But once anointed with the hairy oils of myth miseducation and downright lies
and having been poked and prodded by the Disparities into rhyming
I found myself wandering sanctimoniously down this Crooked Way
an uptight upright Human Being tho injudicious where
I probed examined measured to a fare-thee-well described
in my Own Poetic Fashion
things as they were
rather than what they seemed

Much to my chagrin
from these brown studies I've had to conclude
things will most assuredly go steadily onward
from bad to worse for Man

Better to be a gargoyle with its bum stuck to a crumbling cornice

Yet strangely I am happy why

Perhaps it's because of this massive structure of the Human Mind that looms behind me
that my Gothic Behind's stuck to
this mouldering edifice with its secret chambers
its spiraling staircases
its whimsical dispassages
that add unaccountable menace and surprise
not to mention insuperable suspension
to this tremor-prone volcano zone that is Existence
this Ring of Fire that's Life

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01-20-09
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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

My thoughts this morning are as rambunctious as a riot of butterflies

fluttering over an open pissoir
as patternless as fallen needles would be under an old pine tree
after a buffet of night-wind and rain
Words mewl in their sleep in unfathomable ululations
Like the rays of the rising Sun beneath the morning mist
they sparkle intermittently on the outskirts of Sound
as when the Sun once high up in the Sky
will glint off the billowy froths of the Sea beyond
and the flakes of fool’s gold in the sands of the Rabassada Beach below
for the Mediterranean does not roar on awakening like the Greater Seas
but echoes the turtle moaning on the bough

So while Dawn pecks thru its shell of haze

flusters about in its wistful nest of dreams
I bustle about to wake up the Sea’s words
grab them while they're still half asleep before their eyes are open
before they can grow feathers and wing themselves away

Later on in the day perhaps

I shall wrap the ones I’ve caught
in neat cachets of rhythm and rhyme
like a water spider
roll them gently over the ripples in my mind
the lands and grooves of my tongue
wear away their jagged edges till
as the billows of the Mediterranean roll the pebbles of the sea
over the troughs and shallows along the shore
they too become smooth and round

Oh how the magic potion of this Mediterranean morning

has made me want to copulate frenetically
with every sweet sound I see
for I sense the galloping hoof beats of the heat-of-the-day
coming on quickly
and a plethora of harsher words

However in this moment of ecstasy all things pass lightly by

even the Sea’s words
in cavalcades of non sequiturs
like the puffs of breeze that dissipate the morning mist away
and like the legions of other subtle happenings
that have come and gone before
they disappear into that
Great-Sea-of-Events-That-Occur-Only-Once
that exists far beyond these Mediterranean shores
in the minds of Prophets and Poets

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04-01-06
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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

The first freight of the evening has just rumbled by on its way to Barcelona
cutting in two the view from my rooftop here on the Anterman
high above the Beach at Rabassada
and the wind-calmed waters of the Mediterranean beyond
The tracks run just below the edge of the Ancient World and the Sea’s horizon
parallel to that World and the edge of the roof I’m perched on
three giant rungs of the Ladder to Oblivion transcending
that Incomprehensible Design we are all part of

Earlier on
on the other side of the tracks
in the sand
were the footprints of a child running
going on and on into the Distance
seemingly with no idea of predestination
every step like a new step that had never before been taken

And here I am Poor Poet pen in hand paper willing

every bone in my body aching
every synapse in my brain longing wanting waiting
to point out some new way astonishingly original

Yet I too have no desire to be party to

some Larger Design
I would rather my works were like
the thoughts behind the footprints of that child
running along the Rabassada Beach
unique
going nowhere
just mine

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11-30-06
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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Poised on the doorstep of a Herculean effort

to cleanse the twaddle from the Augean Stables of Poetry
fashioning the paddle for the canoe I know I'll need
to ride out the River of Feces I know I'll unleash
I would discover to you for your amazement and amusement
my Astute Acolytes
a riddle no less curious and obscene than Absolute Truth itself
discover to your incredulous minds beliefs of the Pseudo-Wise
as ridiculous as the desires of neophytes
who would undergo an askesis
for which they have not been initiated
who would disclose things even the Sage dare not know
and dispel mists impenetrable to human eyes
who would detour from the Path one must take
to reach the bottom of
the Abyss of Knowledge where Wisdom lies
who abhor those mysterious ways of Analogy and Meter
those who would overpower Euterpe with prosaic anekdota
and the quotidian hagiographies of common sinners
and promise to fulfill Poetry’s promise with the Ways of the Heart
those who cannot pronounce much less understand the formulae
that would bring the spells they might inadvertently cause
to a close

I would discover that riddle to you

my Astute Acolytes
but I won't
for the River rises
and I haven't finished my paddle
and I can't find my boat

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

All thru the night Hesiod I've bounced along inside my Palanquin of Dreams
thru labyrinths lined with rows of old imaginative Oaks
trying to fish a fly out of my inkwell
Now at dawn I've sent my eunuchs forth into those Woods to look for Stones
I can hear them scuttling about from bush to bush like tortoises
rummaging thru the muck and mire with their terrible tiger paws
ripping apart umbrages where quiddities like quarks turn into
contrarieties
and unities into quirks
For thus the Imaginative functions in me
It's the only way I know
to hurry along
the creative process to a close
But enough of this talk of Oak and Stone Hesiod
It’s no mere happenstance that I've summoned you here this morn
back from your sticking place in Hades
back into the Sublime
for I need your amiable assistance
in the deepest most essential sense
to help me fish this fly out of my inkwell
so I can impale it
on the point of my pen
and be done with
this poem

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Here on the beach where I’m wont to lie

my Love and my Muse Mnemosyne beside
we three soaking up sand beneath
a multi-colored umbrellaed Sky
with Neptune’s Nymphs sauntering by
shaking the Sea’s spume from
their auburned breasts
splattering the margins of my august wits
rolling ages of pages off my thighs
as the Mediterranean’s waves roll History’s legends
off the Beach
into the Keep of the Deep for keeps
Were Paradise enow Omar a cup
I’d turn it up without a scowl and rest content
to wend my way into Oblivion thus with only this
sardonic smile upon my lips
and the remembrance of my Love’s last kiss
not caring one draught more to quench my thirst
from the fetid Well of Knowledge
nor from Wealth
another grubby
penny’s-worth
Nor everlasting life
Nor caring to leave in the shifting Sands of Fame
one footprint more
or less

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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Fellow Poets

The Wind was so strong yesterday on the beach at Rabassada

it tore pages out of my notebook and worked the Mediterranean into a frenzy
But today the Sea is as calm as a herd of goats
grazing some serene meadow high up on the slopes of Mount Parnassus

Fellow Poets

The Wind speaks differently to those of us who are like the Sea
who know when to listen
We Children of the Universe who otherwise have no predilections

Fellow Poets

For others the Wind whistles by like an express train to Barcelona

the superficial glances of the uninitiated glaring from its windows
their lives knit thru and thru by an Intimate Coherence
of which only the few of us

Fellow Poets

possess an inkling

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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Leering into the Past with a jaundiced eye

that sees thru walls
how difficult it is to be lenient with those
one once thought wise
those from whose lips Truth once dripped
into the Cup of Life
or so one thought
as ambrosia drips
from the lips of gods
So what assurance has one now
these laconic days
that one's new masters
haughty arrogant self-righteous
as those of old
are any more the wiser
than were they
And these that would be so
to our children's children
What hope have we
that they will be
capable of seeing thru jaundiced walls
how ignorant will they be
of what it means
to be truly wise

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Sniffing the political windbag these gruesome days

can impart a profound unpremeditatable feeling of imminent disaster
as one who would adventure out might well have experienced
while traveling thru a foreign country where diarrhea is endemic
without a roll of toilet paper

And it is indeed a rash person who would travel thus

or a fool who cannot foresee the dangers

So let us approach these matters at a snail's pace

sluggards that we are
explaining away adverse facts as scientists do poetry
as clouds reflected by the surface of the Sea
when there's no storm in sight
or as peripatetic illusions that will last only as long as light
For we would not want to tantalize those infants terribles
suffused with desires that strain the leash to be released
desires like murder and concupiscence
infants terribles who have at beck and call deep-seated blind mean forces
like their priests and poets
to make their wills come true

And as any journey more than a day must be made

somewhat in darkness
let us wait till night to accomplish these adventures
especially those sordid adventures where nothing is not without its odor

So as on those trips abroad where diarrhea is endemic

let us drape our words as we would swords
in intricate symbols and delectatious allegories
and not forget to take along
an extra roll of toilet paper for that ignoble night
when we find ourselves again back home
locked in our own drear water-closets
with a rampant case of mental shits
from trying to lord it over others

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Scanty recollections these that may provide one with

the rags to make a rug
that may augment one's understanding of
the will to fly
intermittent childhood reminiscences that keep turning up
in circumambulant circumstances
giving birth to unexpected metaphors
fathered by dark unintelligible emotive powers
inaccessible to the intellect
powers that when used often result in those of us who are poets
going forth to the ends of the Earth
arriving unable to bear our own names
Such powers become more pressing by the hour
for the pen daily becomes more weighty than the sword
Nor would I care to speculate on the cause that underlies
these unconscionable adventures out on which
we decadent scholars should keep our mouths shut tight
our errant thoughts to ourselves
and those selves tucked away in ivory towers without windows doors

I would be happy to leave the matter thus

in this assuredly opaque state
were it not that I need a window for my rug to exit by
so I may sail out over the unbeaten pathways
of Impercipience

For I would arrive at some new place strange and unusual

tho all my powers belie

But perhaps I've said enough already

to explain why this will most likely never come to pass

why my rug won't fly

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Treacherous Waters these over which we row

incredibly subtle and potentially surprise-filled
where it is easy to disparage to be profoundly deceived
here where ingenuous questions are not asked without great peril
for the god dwelling below these Waters is Dispater
the Father of Shadows

Yet is it any the wiser here above these Waters

kow-towing to the god of Jesus Mohammad Moses
and to the anti-gods of Science and Reason
who only allow you to be heard so as to sing them praises
or to make a profit by kissing their roods
or to excel by drinking their blood
or the blood of those they consider lesser human beings

I could fill pages with the petrified sediment of their adoration

or by a truncated airing out of the horrendous acts perpetrated
in their gods’ names or in the names of Science and Reason
were I willing to putrefy the atmosphere
for on the frameworks of my mind
vestiges of belief in them still cling like shattered windows
cobwebs of stained glass casting jagged shadows
into corners of what were never well-lit rooms

There their unenlightened priests like spiders speak

in eulogistic whispers in
an uncommon jargon knowable only to their masters and
like misers surreptitiously count the koine of the Common Realm
that they in their righteousness suppose
belongs wholly unto each of them
while they eye the treasures that remain in the others’ hands

Should one follow where they lead

or is it the wiser course to stay
to become a bard of heresy and embrace
the Father of Shadows' World here beneath these Waters
where there are no frameworks windows spiders
yet where one is free to ponder
to become a thorn in the side of Science and Reason
and the god of Jesus Mohammad Moses

Since writing this I have continued to ponder

And I must say I've become a prick if nothing less

Percipient Readers
I must apologize for posting only fragments
I know I only confound the matter more
But at least in this manner
as a poet I may not be accused of attempting to create
a Science of Thaumaturgy or an Eschatology of Science
but of only trying to puff out the briefs in my portfolio
by creating doubt and incredulity in the minds of others

such as your own

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WLM: CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

O Scholars

as we embark this auspicious day on yet another sordid study of mankind

let us hitch up our skirts so our linens won't drag in the Past's dirty waters
nor let us sing Songs of Diffidence to the Indifferent Gods
till we are arrived at that translucent pool where transcendence disappears
and our minds have become once again as transparent as Gypsies'

O Scholars

let us not sing Songs of Diffidence again

till we are come to that enchanted land irrelevant to all save poets
where fraudulent experiences such as Force and Cleverness peter out
into well-formed strings of word essences of maximal import
there where the first glimmerings of what will be must emerge
thru those outrageous diamond like facets of Oughtness
in which the scenes of our Pasts' most vaunted accomplishments
are flashed back on us like from so many false jewels
so all can see what could have been otherwise
had we really been wise

O Scholars

let us not sing Songs of Diffidence to the Indifferent Gods

nor mingle our thoughts in congratulatory eulogies
till the scene in our minds changes
lest we find ourselves still in the Realm of the Self-Righteous
where the curtain never closes

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Nominally I am an honest man living the life of a responsible citizen

my heart possessed tho of all the cant equipage and tricks of the poet and thief
For I take great delight in the little I take for granted
my Pride my Vanity my Passion for Deceit
I often encounter these personified while walking brusquely down long halls
lined with purple and glass
prancing like Princes of Peace on their way to Armageddon
who would lay waste to all Outward Appearances
Yet at other times
on another level of perception
I find myself bolting thru doors without hinges
altering my psyche to become what others want
hankering to the squeaky sounds of cultural screws turning
thru the Dark Ore beneath my feet
just below the surface of the pit in which my mind stands
like Hercules
up to its navel in cultural crap
seeking there for what little I might unite
a word a phrase an off-rhyme perhaps
that could possibly be
worked into a novel thought unique
never imagined before

My thoughts move from this Pit to the Sky-Sea above

where the Wind gathers in the last rays of the Day
takes them by handfuls twists them into mares' tails
before it begins to drive the Chariot of the Sun
thru the Netherworld of Night

The ensanguined World closes like a mahogany box

inside which no languid line no fault no potent impulse lingers
only the persecuting odor of decay and a hint of lingering doubt

The Train of Night bears away my Tlinglit coffin of thoughts

The iron towers of the City of Fire beyond
stand out stark hard abrupt sharp like Deco Art
like apocryphal figures steeped in dread

Am I to be one with those small weak-willed men of faith

whose only claim to fame is someone else's dream
who bear witness merely to what is crumbling of its own discord
Or shall I resist rebel destroy
like a Prince of Armageddon
tear hinges from doors
drapes from walls
shatter glass

The Earth that sleeps beneath my timorous feet

trembles as tho deep within it
in the Old Molten Ores that acquiesce just below the crust
a terribly wicked God
is about to wake

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

This windy day I find myself on a knoll by the Sea

with Evening slipping quietly away along the Beach at Rabassada
like a woman's shadow
mysterious enigmatic surcharged with symbolic intent
In my inimitable naïveté I try to unclothe her with words

Evening slips by like a woman's shadow

here where I sit beside these troubled Waters
here where I await the spreading ripples of the inevitable
with only a suspicion of light in the sky

Evening slips by like a woman's shadow

along the Beach
turns
takes the old Roman road narrow and desolate
back into Tarragona
passes silently out of sight

How imperceptibly Night approaches

Evening slips by like a woman's shadow

closes the Iron Gate
between the two Stone Gods
Day and Night
places the covers over the cages of her birds
unleashes her dogs
fondles her cats

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES – SUMMER 1992

Was it only a dream

that summer in Spain
you and I hand in hand
walking thru ruins of Empires of Old
building our own

Was it only a dream

walking along the sands of the Mediterranean
you and I holding hands
living our lives as we would wish them to be

Was it only a dream

that I was King of Catalon
walking the ramparts of a towering castle
and you were there beside me my Queen
holding my hand

Was it only a dream

that you and I hand in hand
danced with giants
and drummed out the Devil
while the dwarves looked on

Was it only a dream

the doves in the bower
the sweeps whisking by

Did this all really happen

that summer in Spain
in the young days of our love
Or was it only a dream
in the afternoon of our lives

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WLM : CATALUNYAN PIECES