Luck
It’s not always easy to tell
How the luck is going,
The way it works,
Not always easy to see.
Sometimes,
When the luck seems so bad,
It’s setting you up,
Getting you ready
Without your knowing
Until years later
You look back and see,
The luck was good,
Starting right on that first morn
When you had the luckiest luck of all,
You were born.
~ Russ Allison Loar
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Love Is Hard
Love is hard.
Sadness is easy,
You can do it all by yourself.
Love is hard.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
How Deep Do You Go?
How deep do you go?
How far?
Where are you now?
You find a word in the dictionary
And in the definition,
Another puzzle,
Within each answer,
Another question.
How deep do you go?
How far?
Where are you now?
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Lost And Found
I was upset,
I was angry,
I was afraid,
The sound of children playing was threatening,
The sunlight tired me,
The darkness worried me.
A man rang my doorbell,
A Jesus salesman,
Sent to my house by God
With the answers to my torments.
He read some Bible verses,
We got down on our knees and prayed,
I purchased a ninety-day, no obligation, trial subscription.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Loose Change
Look around the house of a wealthy person
And you will find loose change.
Thirty-seven cents under the sofa cushions.
No one who lives there really cares.
I remember the poet Charles Bukowski,
Talking about what it meant to be famous,
To have money
After living most of his life
In hunger for the extra dollar,
Then,
After all those hungry years,
Loose change in a drawer,
In his pocket,
Scattered across the kitchen counter
As if it didn’t mean anything at all.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Little Sheep
I am a little sheep
With headlights and a beep,
A horn and a job,
I am corn on the cob.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Listening
Just when I thought I was full of poetry,
Full of things to say,
Couldn’t write them down fast enough,
Just when I thought it was me, me, me,
You took the words away
And left me sitting here
With this fountain pen and white sheet of paper,
White, white, white,
With nothing,
Nothing left to say,
Unable to write a single word
Until,
Humbled,
Humiliated,
Asking for your help,
Listening once again.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Like Emily
She has decided to be an artist,
A sculptress of words,
A poetess.
Her tribute "To the Hungry Children of Planet Earth,”
Read in somber tones to her reluctant friends,
Such a moving expression of television-inspired grief.
But what do they know of art?
They are lost in contemplation
Of the rise and fall of her breasts,
So invitingly ripe,
While they feign appreciation of her nobler qualities.
She knows they only half listen to her words
And her thoughts are drawn back to Emily Dickinson.
She prepares herself
For the many years of indifference
That will most certainly come.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
You Think You're The Only One
Do you feel so crazy inside sometimes
You’ve gotta keep it a secret
Because your friends and family are counting on you,
Expecting you to be a normal person,
To be this person you decided to be,
This person you feel comfortable being,
This person who is not so crazy inside sometimes?
So you keep it a secret
And never let it out in public,
Never let it out with people who know who you are,
But it’s right there behind your eyes,
Buzzing in your ears,
On the tip of your tongue.
You think you’re the only one.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Lights
Without love,
Some kind,
Any kind of crazy love,
The lights are out
All over town.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Lighten Up
Finding fault,
Our national pastime.
Blame,
Judgment,
Condemnation,
Punishment.
We are good,
They are bad.
Yes, intentional evil exists
And there are saints among us
And sure,
Your brother-in-law is a jerk,
But life is short,
Give him a break.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
A Light Burning
My secret love comes home.
I see her from my window.
She parks her car and opens her trunk,
Unloading,
Bags of things
For her secret life.
I walk by and say hello.
She says hi and smiles,
A long smile,
Watching me slowly walk away.
My secret love leaves a light burning,
Late, late into the night.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
I Will Mourn, Sooner Or Later
When you die
I will mourn for you.
I may even mourn for you
Before you die,
Now and then.
But I’m more likely to judge,
Rather than mourn,
While you’re still alive,
Knowing once you are dead,
The mourning will come easier.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
This Cat
If I didn’t have this cat
I would be reading about the perilous state
Of geopolitical affairs,
Uninterrupted,
Pondering the decline of participatory democracies
Engineered by religious terrorists and dictators,
Too often aided and abetted by a brainwashed populace.
But because I do indeed have this cat,
I must put my reading down
And extract the rubber spider from beneath the couch.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
He Did Not Fall
As my earthly span decreases,
My past increases,
Filling my thoughts,
Haunting my days,
Replacing the illusion of eternity
With the certitude of temporality.
My life,
Fixed in time,
An immutable chronology,
Yet not without hope,
Some spectacular finale:
At age 103
He stepped out of the boat
And stood upon the water.
He did not fall.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Life Is Too Beautiful
Life is too beautiful
To be written down on paper,
Printed in books,
Read in small darkened rooms
By merciless scholars
Too eager to impose their will
On those who still believe
There is an answer.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Life After Death
You want to believe
But faith is not enough
For your rational, scholarly mind,
And so you spend your evenings
Searching through ancient texts
For the meaning of life,
Surrounded and infused
With the souls of the dead.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
A Corner Of Light
Certain paintings are only beautiful from a distance,
The natural tendency to criticize,
To overanalyze the smallest detail,
Tempered by diffusion.
In this subway window I look beautiful
In the dark tunneling light,
A surprise after close-mirrored inspection
Revealed so many flaws this morning.
How I look to myself at any given moment,
Something on the outside,
Something on the inside,
Has no certainty.
With something like hope,
Something like courage,
Something like acceptance,
I find solace in this corner of light.
~ Russ Allison Loar & Christopher Andrew Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Letters
I love these little letters
That so freely flow
From my big black fountain pen,
O’er the waves they go.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
The Length Of A Day
With each thing that you add
One thing you must subtract.
You can't add an extra hour
And keep the world intact.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Legions
At 12:18 in the smoggy afternoon air
Eating lunch in my car parked
In an abandoned parking lot
I suddenly realize:
This is the rest of my life.
Maybe in a different parking lot
On another day
With another dirty windshield sky
I will again forget
I am no one in particular,
Again dream of great honors
Awarded me for great things
I could never really do,
Not even in a hundred years.
I am out of the running.
My children are growing up poor
Without me
While I give little that matters to the world,
Working into the night,
Earning money
Which is not and never will be mine.
I am legions.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Always
How will you grow old my princess?
How long will your youthful elegance endure?
I would have you impervious,
Fearlessly facing mirrors,
Accepting the inevitable,
Fueled by grace,
By joy,
Knowing in your heart of hearts
There is one who will always see
The beautiful young woman you are,
Will always be.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
All I Know About Love I Leave
All I know about love I leave
Outside the door to your room.
Inside, raw passion will do,
The electric feel of skin touching skin,
Wanting yet waiting,
Teasing,
Playing.
Like the blind our fingers have sight
As we move in love’s rhythms,
Tossed by the sea of night.
And all that mattered a few hours before
And all that waits outside your door
Matters no more.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Infested
A middle-age man is kneeling
On his front lawn,
Carefully leveraging out every weed.
Each invader must be delicately extracted
With roots intact.
Near the end of the day
When the light is too dim
He considers how much lawn is left,
Knowing by the time he reaches the end
He must start again.
His knees ache and his back is sore.
He falls asleep on the couch
With the television on
And in his dream
He sees an infinity of lawn,
Infested.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
A Language
The mind says,
Listen to me, I will explain everything.
The heart says,
I understand, but my feelings are unchanged.
The mind says,
This is God and this is life,
All is explained.
The heart says,
I speak a language you do not understand,
A language without words.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Rooming House
Landlady,
I don’t hate you,
I just sort of dislike you,
Which in itself makes me feel at home.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
A Safe Distance
At dinnertime,
His dinnertime,
This old black cat
Comes to the back porch,
Sits calmly,
And waits,
Knowing his supper will come.
But when I bring him food
He backs away,
Keeps a safe distance,
Though he must know me well by now.
Was he born wild,
Or abandoned young?
I don’t know.
But I too was once a homeless child
And so understand.
I have sheltered many strays
And know he will not be tamed,
Though after his meal
He often sits with folded paws,
Looking through the glass-paneled door,
Wistfully it seems,
Wistfully,
At the alien world of my indoor cats,
Watching them stretch out on the sofa
In the flickering firelight,
Watching me,
Wanting to be part of something,
Wanting to be near,
But never,
Never,
Without fear.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
Glimpses
Even the tangible is rooted in imagination,
Which breaks down now and then,
Revealing the artifice of ideas,
However noble they may be.
Glimpses of the face behind the mask.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
The Arrow Of Time
Scientists are scratching their heads
Over the arrow of time,
Why things persistently move forward,
This journey from the womb,
Where along the way
We learn what the word “forward” means,
A word we made up
To describe this perception of progression.
“Why always forward?”
The aged scientist asks,
As the repression of his regression
Slowly reverses everything.
~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved
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