A Poet Online.com: February 2019

Sanity

Denied and defeated in love,
Sanity slowly returns
And I am again a practical person,
Again able to agitate
Over other pressing matters of the day,
Wiser, but no longer weightless.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Saints In Waiting

If we were saints
Living the lives of abandoned insects
Under parked cars
With our antennae finely tuned
Into God’s frequency,
We would praise the glories
Of our tiny lives,
The stray fast-food crumbs,
A patch of dew-laden crabgrass.

Behold this mighty river of asphalt,
My children,
And fear not the larger beasts.
We are the chosen,
And through our selfless purity
We shall inherit this earth.

Not long now,
Our time to come.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Fanatic

We are the true believers.
We will do anything,
Anything,
For the cause.

How dedicated we are,
That we can so easily dismiss
The sanctity of a human life
To accomplish our quest.

We will show God our righteousness,
Our fearlessness,
No matter how many we have to kill.

No compromise.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Saints

The saints so often say
We must give up wanting,
Surrender desire,
Disregard comfort,
Give everything to the poor
And live a life of service
To others.

They are like so many in this world
Who choose a path,
Who fulfill a destiny,
Then declare it is the only path,
The only destiny.

Even saints suffer from certainty.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Do Not Grieve

Do not grieve for me,
For I am standing at the edge of the sea,
With one foot still in this world,
The other in eternity.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Sad

Sad enough
When you try to fly
And fall.

Sadder still
When you do not try
At all.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Sacred

What do you hold sacred?

Not in your places of worship,
Your churches,
Your temples,
Your mosques.

Not in your ceremonies,
Your practices,
Your prayers.

It is no real test
When you are harnessed with the obligations
Of pious behavior.

Show me what you hold sacred
In a crowded parking lot,
When the hunger is upon you
For a really good parking space.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Metamorphic

A rock
Is a rock
Is an idea.

Hold on just a minute!
You say,
A rock is a real tangible thing.

But right now,
I say,
You do not hold a rock in your hand,
You hold it in your mind,
The idea of a rock, that is.

And even when you hold it in your hand,
I say,
It’s the idea of a rock that gives it a name,
That suggests a use.

Yes,
You say,
Such as hurling it at me
So I will stop talking
And go away.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Where Memory Lives

Where memory lives,
Where is this place?

Neurologists can pinpoint the part of the brain
Where memory resides,
Overstuffed file folders
Fading from consciousness with time,
Changed by the imperfections of recall,
Missing chapters reconstructed
By imagination and emotional predisposition,
By storytelling,
By the human habit of constructing a logical narrative
From the random events of a life.

Living memories are different somehow,
Constantly present,
Actively contributing myriad gradations of pleasure and pain
To the unfolding events of our lives,
Content as well as context,
Engaged.

Yes, scientists know where memory is stored,
And perhaps some celestial record of human events
Contains all that we have done,
All that we have thought.
But where memory lives,
Where is this place?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Rush Hour

O this endless sea,
This endless migration
Of caffeine-injected commuters
Across vast concrete,
Squinting against the glare
Of this newly risen sun
In this unremarkable miracle
Of another new day.

I am captive here.

We are flung through finite space
As fast as fate allows
Until
Ahead
A sea of red
And this procession gravely slows.

All are slowed:
The pursuit of success,
The descent into failure,
The approach of destiny.

All are slowed,
Then slowly stopped,
And then we crawl,
Harnessed to the yoke
Of some terrible master.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Like A Rhino

How like a rhinoceros,
My dissatisfaction,
My petulance.
A rhino in a sushi bar,
All thumbs.
A meadowlark in a turbine,
All feathers.
A guy writing this stuff down,
On paper,
Trying to fabricate meaning,
Watching the tip of his pen
Carefully outline letters, words,
Whole incomplete phrases,
Hoping some great dark muse
Will speak.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Reverence

We are taught to revere the old ways
Of our beloved ancestors,
Their ancient wisdom,
Honed over generations
Into this perfect jewel,
Hard,
Prismatic,
Eternal,
An ornament
Worn so proudly by those who know,
Our teachers,
The guardians of all knowledge,
The caretakers of the past.

Impediments.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

A Reminder

I bought a book
Full of wisdom and light.
Inside its spine,
A small, rectangular anti-theft computer chip,
Reminding me,
I live in a nation of thieves.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Rehab

Honesty,
Pure honesty,
Every waking moment.

See the past,
Change the future,
No matter what you’ve done,
No matter how long it takes,
No matter how many times you fail
And fall,
Start again,
This day,
This moment.

Honesty is the first step,
Pure honesty,
Every waking moment.

From this all blessings come.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In Winter I Scarcely Remember

In winter I scarcely remember
The long and languid days of summer,
The delicate yellow dress
And how its straps fell
From your thin, sculptured shoulders,
How it melted away
From your golden body.

We were perfect together,
Naked,
Unashamed,
Bathed in sunlight,
Love and lust.

We had all day,
All summer,
And the days were long and languid,
Without end,
Without consequence,
So long ago,
Those summer days I scarcely remember.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Reasons

There are plenty of reasons
Why not,
But they all vanish
At the thought of your touch.

All we have in this life
Are moments,
And another moment with you
Is reason enough.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Really

You do not have to want
What the world wants,
Or be what the world wants you to be.

You can be happy without a fortune,
Content without fame.

Really.

You do not have to seek
What the world seeks,
Or give up what the world gives up.

You can be the first of a kind
And the last,
And never mind.

Really.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Reality

For a while,
It looked like it might be dark
All day,
So few actually taking the time
To believe in the sun anymore.

But familiarity breeds belief,
So the sun again appeared
And filled the sky with light.

It is a lesson to be relearned each morning,
That we must never,
Ever,
Take reality for granted,
As if it would continue on its own,
In a vacuum.

Reality depends on us all.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Real Test

Getting old is the real test,
For everything once so easy and automatic
Falls away,
And the energy to resist
Slows,
And the desire for comfort
Anesthetizes.

Look around you my young friends,
It seems so obvious now,
All the letting go,
So manifest in the old.

Never, you earnestly swear,
Imbued with that quick certainty of youth,
Never will this happen to me.

Wait, I earnestly implore,
Battered by the steady decay of years,
Wait and see.

Getting old is the real test.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Real Love Is Not Clever

Real love is not clever.

Real love is clumsy,
Awkward,
Unsynchronized,
Inappropriate,
Embarrassing,
Stumbling,
Falling,
Grasping,
Letting go,
Giving up,
Miserable,
Necessary.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Real Horror

Homecoming

When it all falls apart
And you have nowhere left to go,
Where do you go?

You go home,
To that little house on the corner,
In that little town,
That little room with that little bed,
Still there,
As if your parents knew
You would not make it on your own,
Out there.

They kept your room ready
For your homecoming,
Coming home to where it’s all too small
For this forsaken soul you are,
A child once more.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Rapture

I could say,
You awaken something eternal in me,
The ineffable heart of God,
Resuscitated,
Pulsing through every pore,
Deafening,
Blinding,
Revelatory.

I could invent a dozen different ways
To describe how you make me feel,
How I make myself feel when I am with you.

But when we meet,
Words fall away
And all is rapture.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

My Table And Chairs

If I had no table and chairs,
No house full of possessions,
Then perhaps I would go to an impoverished land
And give what help I could.

But I am bound by prosperity
And frightened by change,
Blessed and confined by the things I own,
That own me.

Whole generations of my family
Have stayed together,
Remained loyal, long-suffering and patient,
Held together by the glue of family heirlooms,
The ancient oak table and chairs,
Houses full of possessions.

Life is short and my time is running out
And I am called.
Yes, I hear the voice calling me
Out into a new world,
But my table and chairs won’t let me go.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Question and Answer

The Question

I know there are some
Who ask if there is a soul.

Yet is it not a surprising question?
As if someone turned to you,
Stopped you on a crowded city sidewalk
And asked: Do you believe in the body?

Belief comes after the fact.

Yes, I know,
We cannot photograph the soul
Or slip a fragment of it under a microscope.

Yet the very idea of spiritless being
Causes something in me to recoil,
Something that cannot deny its own existence,
Something I call,
If I must,
The soul.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Put Words Away

Stop,
Just for a moment
And speak to me from your heart.

I’m weary of polite conversation,
Workplace banter,
Conventional wisdom.

Walk with me outside our preordained roles
And let our words unfold.
Let us whisper love’s confessions in the dark
Then, put words away.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Put A Pat

A Manageable Ailment

I used to think my old friend despair
Was a measure of my distance
From the angels,
But lately it occurs to me,
What with things the way they are,
Angels may not feel too good themselves
These days.

Scratch the surface of this half-sane man,
See despair coursing through my arteries,
Rich, red stuff,
Spilling out from a wounded heart,
Less than poison,
A manageable ailment.

Yes, I manage it.
It flows and ebbs,
Ebbs and flows,
And at its worst
I accept it as the cost of things,
The way they are.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved