Some Poems by Louie Crew

Misdirections

I still want to say about us the bit
that can't be said.   Surely domestic quarrels
can't quite define us yet?  I dream our world
brimmed with wonder, see only catshit
in our bed.  The words I used--wondrous, spirit,
ineffable, mysterious--now, like pearls
discovered false, around my bone cage hurl
accusations.  Lover's doom I call it.

Weary, walking one comes at end of day
to see the destination's back some way
along the road; yet one returning there
discovers that arrival was the air
she'd walked inside, the meadows, brooks
 and fields
he'd hurried through in great expectation.


Driving to Grandmother's Funeral   

These adult noises, Mother,
I first heard wombed inside you.
The veined red marriage bed
in a corner of my dream
pulsates warmth you taught me to enjoy.

The smiles a cabbie draws,
or a lover woos from my lips,
were your smiles
when you spooned my porridge.

Grandmother is dead.
Up early, we drive to her funeral
down the back of this long mountain.
You have never seen the sun rise,
you tell me.

         I pull to the shoulder
just before the red tongue rims the east.
The silence quakes.  We watch, blood-bound.

Quantification      

"These physiologically recordable levels of orgasmic
intensity never must be presumed arbitrarily to be
a full or consistent measure of the subjective
pleasure derived from individual orgasmic            
attainment."
--Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response

I'm here above you, waiting, calculat-             
ing your slow undulations til I lose                 
the pleasure of my own, and making mat-              
ing measure my manhood in terms of those             
climaxes you receive, my cold sperm                  
mechanically spent to bring you joy.                 
How can you really wonder why I squirm               
to get away to piss as soon as coy                    
game is done?  why I hate you and this sad,          
dead, intellectual fuck?  Can you not touch          
me too?  Have I no ego to be fed?                    
J'accuse!  You surely don't love me very much!

Mommy, mommy, give back the pretty toy          
some mean girl's stolen from your little boy.  


A Shaking Spear

My lover's buns are nothing like a God's.
Plate glass is far more rippled than his chest.
His six-inch fuse becomes his only rod.
With no cologne but rankest funk he's blessed.

I have seen glistening men, hirsute or smooth,
but no alluring luster's in his face.
And I've known even yokels less uncouth
clutching their men in graceless long embrace.

I like to hear my lover's tuneful shower,
but any glories there are merely myths,
for though his songs indeed my spunk empower,
the truth is that he all too often lithps.

And yet I swear my man's to me more real
than hunky clones who, unrehearsed, can't feel.


       Bright & Early
                                             
              
         The crab      
              having waxed    
               a black dot    
            to one gray pube,  
            elevates; stretches;
 e n         s    c    u    t    t    l

  h          The                 s.e
  t          sleeper only scratche   s
.


                                       


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