A Poet Online.com: 2022

Gifts Of Christmas

1.

A gift,
For me?
Oh you shouldn’t have!

Is it really a selfless expression of your affection?
A gesture of love?
Or an obligation?

Is it genuine?

Does your gift reflect who you think I am?
Who you think I should be?
Perhaps it’s more about who you are,
Who you want me to think you are.

Is it an object of serious intention?
Designed to awaken?
To arouse?
To cause a reaction?
Or is it just for fun,
A playful reminder of the inner child?

Am I taking this too seriously?
Giving too much thought
To what is impersonal?
Is it merely generic?
A gift that says:
We are not close.

Did you wrap it yourself?
With your best paper?
Or was it the tail end of your least favorite roll,
Reserved for those who do not matter?

Have you actually touched this present,
Or did someone else purchase and wrap it for you?
Did it come by mail from a warehouse?

2.

Will those I love most
Disappoint me with thoughtlessness,
Or will I bask in the warmth of their intentions,
However artfully or clumsily conveyed?

Will my more slow-witted relatives
Prove true to my expectations?
Will the superior intelligence of others
Be clearly demonstrated
And make me feel stupid
For the lack of imagination my gifts reveal?

Will the ego of the gift-giver
Overshadow the generosity of the gift?
Or will the giver’s inferiority complex be manifest,
So sadly displayed by the soullessness of what is given?

Will the gift be of use, of value,
Or merely a cheap trifle soon discarded,
Donated to the local thrift shop?

Perhaps the most important gift of all will be absent,
The gift from the one I love most.

Or perhaps after all the wrapping is cleared away,
When the communal ceremony has ceased
And the gift-givers dispersed,
I will steal away to some private place
And press my lips to the gift I treasure above all,
Its meaning so fervently constructed,
Without form.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Smothered

O my love you are constant
Yet incorporeal.
You have inhabited those I’ve loved
But their wills proved too strong,
Smothering you with petty practicalities.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Got No

I ain’t got no
Ain’t got no.
I ain’t got no
Ain’t got no.

No no no.
No no no.

Got no
Got no
No no no.

No no no,
Ain’t got no,
No got no,
Grammar.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

God's Little Figures

And it was said,
Let us make God in our image,
After our likeness,
And He shall have dominion over all the Earth,
And God we created he Him,
In our image,
From our spirit,
And we so exalted God
We came to believe He created we us,
In His image,
Individual and separate,
God’s little figures,
Made out of clay.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Guru

When my cat sits on my lap,
Forcing stillness upon me,
I hear the distant barking of a neighborhood dog,
The sudden chirping of squabbling birds,
Footsteps down the hall,
The ticking of a clock,
The whoosh of a passing car,
A door softly opened
Then closed,
An airplane,
The scratching of this pen against this paper,
The smell of ink,
The movement of my toes,
The tempo of my breathing,
The sudden absence of sound,
The weight of silence.

When my cat sits on my lap
She reminds me I am living in a world
Of sense and sensation,
My furry little guru.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

God Dog

Once there was a small brown dog who loved God.
He loved God so much
He decided to change his name
To God,
God Dog,
The 1st.

Then,
He began to pee on the furniture
Without restraint.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

They Fall

One by one they fall,
While you,
So busy complaining,
Don’t notice them at all.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Time Keeper

I am the one who turns back time
This chilly gray morning
While wife and children slumber
In the hibernation of Sunday.

I sneak like a tooth fairy
From room to room,
Setting back clocks,
Slipping another hour of sleep
Silently under their pillows,
Hastening the darkening of a season
Already too dark for my timeless soul.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Haunted

Something moves
Within these walls,
Something,
Here,
Now,
With me,
In this room.

I fear this sorrow,
This dark, thick melancholy,
Singing ragged and out of tune,
Stuck,
Obsessed,
Familiar.

Something moves
Within,
Something,
Here,
Now,
A face in the mirror
That knows me,
That is not mine.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Go Gently

Go gently into that good night
For it is no darkened sleep
That comes in the passing there,
No closing of the day,
No dying of the light.

Go gently into that good night
For you have received the gift
And have no need to complain.

Life goes on
In ways we cannot imagine.
Life goes on
In ways we cannot explain.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Give Me The Passing Stranger

Friends are delicate creatures
And require delicate care.
Give me the passing stranger,
My middle finger in the air.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Contact

Imagine you are from another world,

An explorer.

As you journey through the Milky Way

Your radio wave detector locks on to a signal,

A signal from planet Earth.

It is your charge to seek signs of intelligent life,

Aided by a spacecraft traveling from point to point,

Eliminating all intervals between departure and arrival,

No longer needing to fold time and space.

You decipher the radio waves

Embedded with random records of humankind,

A people prone to conflict and violence,

Whose entertainments are filled with conflict and violence.

Your spacecraft is cloaked,

Invisible to Earth telescopes

While you study these earthly beings,

Their strengths and weaknesses,

The global conflicts

Without resolution,

The suffering

Without resolution,

The steady destruction of the planet,

Without resolution.

After all your studying is through,

Would you make contact?

Would you dare?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Happiness Has Wings

Happiness has wings
Of dust
And light,
So fragile,
Just a thought
Can tear them from the sky.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Gentleness Has Gone

The gentleness has gone from our lives,
We are too busy for it now.
Our lives are loud, brash and bold
And our children grow up without parents,
Playing on cement.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Punishment

Can you imagine living a thousand years?
Every reflective thought
Awakening hundreds of painful memories,
An avalanche of regret.

I am nowhere near a hundred years old
Yet I struggle to resolve past indiscretions
With only limited success.
Try as I might, I cannot sanitize the truth of my past.
I cannot undo the injuries I’ve caused,
No matter how fervently I try to heal the wounds.

It’s not that my life has been without joy,
Without moral achievement,
Without love,
But a more mature honesty now calls me
To unrepress the intimate knowledge of my sins,
To face them honestly,
And,
At last,
Render the long-delayed verdict of my conflicted soul.

The punishment has already begun.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Just Happy, That’s All

Here they come,
A lady and her dog,
A diminutive dog,
Galloping to keep pace with his mistress,
His little legs a blur.

Here they come,
And I swear this little fluffy dog
Has a smile upon his face,
So happy to be out in the larger world
Beyond the backyard,
So full of energy,
While his mistress strides on determinately,
Talking on her small plastic phone,
Talking about a plan that fell through
And what she plans to do,
About it.

She doesn’t see me as I walk by.
She doesn’t see the fading orange of the dusky sky
Whose wind-whipped clouds paintbrush the horizon.
She doesn’t see the hillside shadows
Or feel the sudden chill coming on.
She doesn’t hear the evening chorus of chirping, chittering birds
Or even the sound of her own footsteps.

Her life is complex,
So many decisions that must be made.
She weighs them,
While her little dog trots jubilantly along,
Panting,
Smiling,
Just happy,
That’s all.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Everything I Say Is A Lie

We’re all pretty much the same
Except for those who are different,
But then most of us are different once in a while,
Which makes us all pretty much the same,
Except for those who are only sometimes the same
And mostly different,
Along with those who will be different most of the time
After years and years of being mostly the same.

Some of the others will be the same as they were
And continue to shift back and forth,
While still others among them
Will sometimes be different and the same simultaneously.

Some will think they’re different yet remain the same,
While others will think they’re the same,
Not realizing how different they truly are.

Many will hardly think about these things at all.

As for me,
I guess I’m pretty much like everybody else,
Trying in vain to be the same,
Yet not really that much different at all.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In Winter

Darkness,
Too early now,
Crushing,
Unmistakably mean.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Filling

When at last the lover leaves intensive care,
All is a fragile balance on the edge of relapse.
One must re-learn the enjoyment of simple things:

The bitter spark from a cup of coffee,
The sweetness of sugar on the tip of the tongue,
The penetrating warmth of the sun
Shimmering through the crisp afternoon breeze,
The pleasure of another hour,
Another day,
Filling, filling, filling
That dark and dangerous place
Where love was.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Free Fall

You and I are not content,
We want what we do not have.

We are acquisitive by nature,
A long line of hunter-gatherers.

We want what we want.

You and I will never be happy
Until we get what we cannot have,
For desire is a free fall.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Would You?

With mortality on my aging mind

I lately wonder, dear one,

Which of us will be the first to go?

I wonder what should I do

If it’s you?

So much depends on the time and place

You leave the race

For the great beyond.

If I awake early some overcast morning

And stagger halfway to the kitchen

In desperate need of caffeine,

Then stop and return to our bedroom

For forgotten slippers,

Finding you breathless and cold,

Should I call 9-1-1 right away

In my sleepy state,

Or would it be wrong to have a cup of coffee,

Or two?

Would you object?

Would you?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Where Has The Time Gone?

In a moment of sobriety

I realize I am much to old

For a relationship with this flirtatious young woman.

Much too old,

In fact,

To pursue romance with her mother.

Even a bit too old and infirm

To date her grandmother,

Surprisingly spry for her age.

Sick of sobriety

I retreat into my illusions

And late afternoon naps.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Our Neighborhood

She was somewhat attractive,

Somewhat bedraggled,

Clearly out of place in this million-dollar neighborhood.

The police agreed,

Called to investigate her wanderings,

On a Sunday,

Clearly not a professional

Considering all the neighborly activity:

Washing cars,

Weeding gardens,

Walking dogs.

She was somewhat attractive,

Somewhat bedraggled,

Hanging on to a hint of her twenties

But soiled and worn from years of drug abuse,

That hollow stare of the meth addict.

Her wrists cuffed tight behind her back,

Patted down,

Pushed into the back seat of the squad car,

One foot still free,

Stubbornly resisting.

The police found a meth pipe,

Some meth,

Credit cards with other people’s names,

A small knife.

She had three outstanding warrants,

One a no-bail felony warrant

For stabbing a John who got too rough

In the motel on the street next to the freeway

Where she hooked when the drugs and the money ran low.

She waited in the squad car

For the woman who saw her in a neighbor’s backyard,

The woman who could identify her,

This prowler,

So out of place in this pleasant neighborhood

On a sunny Sunday morning.

“She has no business being in this neighborhood,”

The officer told me,

Shaking his head with a smile,

Wondering what I too was wondering:

What was she thinking?

She sat quietly,

Familiar with what was ahead,

The pain and confusion from withdrawal kicking in hard

As the squad car pulled away.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Old Lobster

Old Lobster is jostling for space

In the crowded restaurant aquarium,

Stripped of weaponry by rubber bands

Clamping claws shut.

The aquarium is small.

The ocean was large.

The bait was enticing

And the trap was sprung,

Old Lobster lifted into the sky

Where lobster angels live,

Escorting lobster souls to lobster heaven,

Where decisions about lobster reincarnation are made.

But now Old Lobster is in this limbo,

Neither heaven nor hell,

This place where Old Lobster waits,

And waits,

For the fickle hand of fate,

To choose.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Just One

Married so long,

No longer two.

Just one.

Still room for differentiation,

For contradiction,

For physical distinction,

(Of course.)

But observations,

Conclusions,

Products of two ingredients

In a single recipe.

The previously single being

Asserts on occasion,

Contends,

Yet soon retreats from soliloquy,

Unused to being alone.

Yes, that fearsome word,

Alone,

Ever threatening old lovers

Who will not live forever,

Who will lose the echo of the soul,

Married so long,

No longer two.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In This Space

Somewhere

Between the body and the mind,

Between the physical and the spiritual,

Between action and thought,

There is this space

In which I construct

A poem.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In Motion

Yesterday,

Was it only yesterday?

This flower was a bud

In a small translucent glass vase

That once belonged to my grandmother,

A passionate gardener whose flowers were her children.

Yesterday,

Was it only yesterday?

This flower was a bud.

Today,

This flower is a bloom.

It opened quickly yet I did not see it move,

Even though I must have passed by

A dozen times or more.

Seen or unseen,

All is in motion in this inconstant world,

All the little children,

In the blink of an eye,

Gone.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Can Wait

I could list my faults,

My sins,

But I’ve done it all before.

I’ve asked forgiveness

And forgiveness was given.

So I’ve resumed my condemnations

Of all those who have sinned against me,

Who have yet to ask my forgiveness.

I can wait.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Colored Lights And Carousels

Artists want more than appreciation.

They want attention,

Detailed inspection,

Uninterrupted concentration.

But alas, even the Great Works engender scant attention

When wedged between a thousand masterpieces

Haunting mausoleum halls and hallways,

Each of merit.

Museum enthusiasts hungry for culture sidle by,

Stopping now and then to impart meaningful explanations

To their novice companions.

Those august galleries,

Giving way to the surrender of representation,

To text lettered on canvas,

To cacophonies of splashed colors,

To the unmethodical arrangement of objects

Intended to amuse and confuse,

To the weight of absence.

This is art now:

Immediate,

Skin deep,

Colored lights and carousels.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Being

Being poor,

Being rich,

Being anything gets in the way.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Because I Am An Old Man

Because I am an old man

I am expected to stifle my passion,

Dampen my lust.

But I am an animal,

And nature will not let me go.

Because I am an old man

I will confine all longings of the flesh

To the realm of my imagination

Where they may run relatively free

As long as they do no real harm,

For even my imagination

Is not without conscience.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

At Any Moment

If I told you I’d found paradise

And knew the way there

It would be partly true.

Yes, I’ve been there,

On occasion.

I get back there,

Once in a while.

But if I spent my days

Lecturing about paradise

As if it were the house in which I lived,

Then, that would be a lie.

I live in the real world

Which contains all possible sorrows

And joys,

At any moment,

In no particular order.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Fly

Here,
In this beautiful world,
A fly is trapped in my house.

Trapped.

It's buzzing madly against the window glass,
Certain there must be an opening,
Beckoned by the light of the outside world,
The outside world,
Just a fraction of an inch away,
An impenetrable fraction of an inch.

Here,
In this beautiful world,
Where all things are possible,
This Garden of Eden where life explodes,
Where love and hate contend,
Where joy, real joy is actually possible,
A fly is trapped in my window.

I get a clear plastic cup
Reserved for such rescues
And capture the exhausted creature,
Gently sliding a square of cardboard beneath
To prevent escape.

Here,
In this dangerous world,
Where evil survives and babies die,
A fly was trapped in my house
And I opened the door,
And I let it go.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

First Impressions

Each person I meet starts out as God,
Then they almost talk me out of it,
But I know God is in there somewhere.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Ark

I hear faint whispers,

Far from this devouring sea.

I am lost,

Waiting for pestilence to pass.

That all things must pass,

Small comfort to the despair of this place.

I press my hands together in supplication,

Not knowing what to ask,

Knowing only that some things must stop

Before other things begin.

Epidemic

Addicted,
So easily,
So quickly to myriad petty attractions
Beckoning from these now ubiquitous devices,
Clutched so feverishly in hand,
Transfusing.

We are entranced,
Enchained as any needle-injected addict,
Beyond choice.

What hidden addictions were ever so omnipresent
Before this age of technological obsession?
Are we uniquely infected?

Is this new epidemic an interruption,
Or a harbinger?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

~ Photograph by Russ Allison Loar

Click on photo to enlarge

Sympathy

The Final Question

Father's Day

Will

How long is a moment?
To a baby?
To a star?

Our lives are a collection of moments,
Falling through time,
Falling even through death,
All the way into eternity.

This place is a moment,
Even the universe is a moment,
For all that is not permanent will pass,
And all that passes is momentary.

So tell me,
What is permanent?

Everywhere I look,
Everything I learn,
All that I know tells me
The most permanent thing of all,
Will.

Even after our expanding universe is pulled apart,
Stretched into a soupy, cosmic protoplasm,
Some sort of microbe will struggle to exist,
To persist,
Either in this dilapidated universe
Or in some other, younger place.

It’s what pushes a single blade of grass
Out of the ground
Toward the light of our dying star.
It’s what awakens us each morning
And sends us out into this particular world.
It’s the most eternal thing I know,
Will.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The White Deer

After years in the forest,
Walking through the woods,
One snowy morning
A white deer,
So rarely seen,
Never seen by me,
A ghost in the clearing,
Not haunting,
A messenger,
A vision of my innocence
Before I lost faith with this world,
When the future was infinite,
When all things were possible.

There,
In the forest,
A motionless visage in the snowy woods,
A white deer,
Its penetrating gaze piercing my soul,
A ghost sent to remind me,
Telling me,
It’s not too late,
Never too late for reclamation.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Reassembly

In the middle of being busy,
Did you ever stop,
Struck suddenly by the feeling of meaninglessness?

I stopped,
And for a moment of extinguished hope
Contemplated the futility of my life,
Considered the finality of death that ceases all striving.

Then I made myself another cup of coffee,
Added a spoonful of sweet cocoa powder,
And felt happy holding this warm drink in my hand,
Returning to the tasks at hand,
All the many reasons reassembling.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Falling Asleep

When thoughts blur into one another
And edges soften,
Places lose their place
And words all run with so
For understand if nothing when
You startle awake,
Surprised you were asleep,
And awake is so uncomfortable,
A confusing dream,
And asleep is just fine
At last
For now in soft clouds
Where nothing is individual:
Good-bye . . .

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Falling

I pause for a moment,
Breathe deeply,
And try to consider my infatuation for you
In the cold, clear-headed light of reason,
And at last
I begin to see you as just another person.
I watch you from a distance
And see that you are not unlike others
Who come and go within my gaze
Without stirring my emotions so.

Then you see me and say hello.

I come closer and take your hand,
Look into your eyes,
And all reason disappears.

No direction,
No gravity,
No time of day,
Falling, falling, falling.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

This Mother's Prayer

God,
Oh yes that troublesome word,
She has trouble with that word,
Visions of blind obeisance,
A fairy tale euphoria,
Ignorance,
Superstition,
A certain lack of precise intellectual focus,
Oh yes she has trouble with that word.

Yet in her most private, personal moments
Something like a prayer emerges,
If only as the last obligation
Of a mother whose children have left home,
Her children,
Out there somewhere.

And so she prays,
Trying as we all try
To bend the course of destiny
To our will.

Atheist that she is,
She will not abandon her children
To a godless world.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Failure And Success

What seems so clearly to be failure
Will turn out to be only part of what happened.
What seems so clearly to be success
Will turn out to be only part of what happened.
The story of your life is so much more complex
Than the simple words:
Failure,
Success.

Leave this shorthand to the obituary writers
Who are compelled to sum up a life
In cold, calculating column inches.

Do not dwell on failure.
Do not dwell on success.
Live in the heart of each moment
And behold the terrible majesty of it all.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Love Is Not Like

My love is not like anything,
For “like” lacks the arrow of truth
That strikes the heart,
Sending electric pain through every synapse,
Pain that is not the love.

My love is not like anything,
For “like” lacks the chemistry of truth
That spikes giddy euphoria in the brain,
Euphoria that is not the love.

My love is the cause of effect,
Love which is not like anything,
But itself.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Exposed

It’s not in the words,
All the words we say to each other.
It’s not in the obligations,
All the obligations we place on each other.
It’s not in the memories,
All the memories we keep of each other.

It’s not in the past,
Not in the future.
It’s here,
In this moment,
In this embrace,
Exposed.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Was Flying

I was flying,
Swift and sure
With the lift of a hand,
A miracle on demand.

But more than the addictive bliss
Of flight,
Or the intoxication
Of height,
I was most proud
Of my position above the crowd,
Most proud
And most alone.
I was the only one.

Out of loneliness I descended
And flew closely by,
Urging all to try.

But not one would leave the ground,
So sadly I ascended
And flew once more above them,
Unnoticed,
Without sound.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Exercise Day

There he goes,
This pasty glob of goo,
Jogging a little,
Now walking,
His shorts too tight,
His T-shirt too small,
His head bowed and dripping with sweat.

It’s early Saturday morning,
Exercise day,
And he trudges down the street
In this quiet, upper-middle-class burb
Listening to music
Through tiny earphones,
The same exact music
He listened to thirty years ago.

It’s exercise day
And by God he’s going to make it
All the way around the misshapen loop
That belts his neighborhood.
He restarts a slow jog,
His floppy white hat is damp
From his sweaty, hair-challenged head.

It’s exercise day
And he is determined to run
The rest of the way home
Where he will reward his valor
With a piece of cake
In a bowl of milk.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Giving Up

Enthusiasms

When we made love
You may not have anticipated
I would write it down
And send copies out into the world.

You may have thought
It was no one else’s business.

You are right,
Of course,
But I just can’t help myself,
Love’s enthusiasms being what they are.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Enough

I saw a boy riding his bicycle
Deep in some imagination
Without any bills or job or wife
Or children or war to worry about.

He did not know he was in heaven.
He did not need to know.
Being there was enough.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Vaccine Of Prayer

How much immunity from a single prayer?

How long does it last

Before needing a booster prayer?

What is the prescription?

Once, twice, three times daily?

Before, with, or after a meal?

Do the elderly need to pray more than the young,

Fighting off the demons of old age?

What about the young?

So unaware of consequence,

So smug.

Are they temporarily forgiven

Despite their lack of prayer?

The recklessness of young and old alike

Cry out for contemplation,

Contemplation that engenders prayer.

Yet praying may become a rehearsed recitation,

A wish list.

What are we really asking for?

What do we really need?

The Long Meeting

Rehearsed expressions of passion
Go on
And on
While whispers scatter about
Like dead leaves blowing
Across a fallow field.

A man stands up and leaves the room,
Another stands and stays.

A woman too old for her curled wig
Follows her purse out of the room.

But most of us stay
And cough
And listen to the sound
Of a small airplane
Lifting someone high into the night
Above the twinkling light
That looks so charming from afar.

Here we are.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Truth Of Youth

We were attracted by the truth,

A truth we shared

About so many things,

Life itself,

Actually.

We put life on a slide,

Slipped it under a microscope lens.

Voila!

Our beliefs confirmed.

Our unanimity of youth,

Inspiring romance,

Lust,

Eventually,

Marriage.

We grew older.

Now we spend our days

In hand-to-hand combat.

Elders

How blurred our ancient lives
In the sure, fixed gaze of youth,
Our lives filled with suffering
And precaution.

Live now!
Shout the young,
And when they die
In some orgiastic frenzy of being,
We shake our heads and click our tongues
Knowingly,
As if we were never young,
As if we had never longed for flight.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Life Went On

It was Sunday,

And many millions
Living in the most powerful nation on Earth
Spent most of the day
Watching the big football game on television,
Cheering,
Moaning,
Screaming at the electronic moving pictures of football players
Running back and forth and sideways,
Trying desperately,
Valiantly to get hold of the football
And take it to one end,
Or the other,

Of the green plastic space

Some still call a field.

The Last Day

Pretend this is the last day of your life.
Really believe it.
Then, walk around in your life.
Examine this life you have made.

Look closely at the rooms where you live,
The pictures on the walls,
The empty spaces.
Look in drawers at random, scattered objects.
Listen to what each object tells you.
See the images each possession makes in your mind.

Speak with each member of your family,
Each friend,
Knowing these will be the last words you say to them,
The last words you will hear them say,
The last time you hear their voices,
See their faces.

Take note of the finality of each action
As you travel through minutes,
Every task you will never repeat
As you travel through hours,
The end of everything as the day hurries by.

See all you will never see again
Before the sun sinks below the horizon
And darkness fills every corner.
Hear all you will never hear again
Before the moon travels across the sky
And consciousness recedes as you slip into sleep.

Breathe in the delicious air that fills you with life
As the sound of your breathing slows,
Then stops.

~ ~ ~

Awaken tomorrow,
Surprised to be alive,
Filled with joy as you move through sunlit rooms,
Hearing the outside world awaken and begin again
In hopeful imperfection.

Think of all the friends and family you love,
Who are still here,
With you,
Who is still here,
With them.

Yes, you are still alive,
In your life,
In this world.

Now, embrace the grandeur of the greatest gift of all,
Another day.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Each And Every One

Life wears on us all,
Wears us down,
Wears us out,
Makes it hard to sleep,
Hard to get up in the morning
And do it all over again.

Long after it has worn out its welcome
The familiar calls us back,
Demands our attention
To the same old things,
All those things we thought we wanted,
An immortal monotony of routine,
The daily routine we've made.

Bored and burdened we are,
Full of complaints
In this garden of prosperity,
Just beginning to understand
That prosperity is never enough,
That each and every one of us,
No matter how high
Or low,
Each and every one of us
Must struggle against the slumber of the soul.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Exceptional

Whatever your ambitions,
The Guardians will say,
You Must!

Their years of experience,
Their successes,
Their failures,
All coalesce into certainty
About what Must be done.

Our libraries are full of certainty,
Centuries of prescriptive certainty,
Countless pages full of advice and warnings
You Must accept,

As if there were only a single path to each destination,
As if anyone could confine free will,
As if life were not,
At its very core,
Exceptional.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Drowning

If We Choose

Now we know,

We know what will kill us,

If we choose,

If we choose to stare down our genomes,

So comprehensively tabulated,

As if life were nothing,

Nothing more than a roll of the dice,

The genetic dice.

Now every newborn,

Every newborn comes with specifications.

Now every new parent,

Every new parent can look into baby’s eyes

And know what could close those eyes,

What could still that soft and fragile breath,

If we choose.

Dream-Killer

Take this dream,
Go ahead,
Take it and break it.
That’s what you’re good at
Mister Real World.
You take little dreams
Before they have a chance to grow
And scare them back into dark places
With your swagger and bluster.
You flail them with reason
And bludgeon them with precedent.

Scorn,
Derision,
Intimidation,
Unleashed!
Until at last the little dream,
Stilled and silent,
Dies.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved