I Hate Poetry.com: 2020

If I Knew

If I knew
This free-flowing bubble of time
In which I live
Was eternal,
A time machine that only advances
While all around me gently falls away . . .

If I knew
I was this ethereal being
Who would survive the ages,
Bear witness
To the unfolding destiny of the universe . . .

If I knew all this and more,
I would still want pancakes for breakfast.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Someday

Someday, they’ll look back at us and laugh:

Those glasses!
The hairstyles!
That clothing!

But most of all,
They will be amazed at what we believed.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Morning Calculation

The difference between six
And nine
Equals the difference between rise
And shine.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Zero

Zero,
Ever been there?
I hear the weather’s nice
This time of year.

I was there last fall,
Just in time to see no leaves changing no colors on no trees.
So beautiful,
Like nothing I’d ever seen before.

The trip was a little rough,
And long.
Just when it seemed like Zero was in sight,
Along came something else
And my curiosity would get the better of me,
Stopping to explore one thing after another.

But finally,
After a very long day full of starts and stops,
After I was completely worn out,
After I had just about enough of everything,
There it was:
Zero.

So beautiful,
Like nothing I’d ever seen before.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Inner Child

We were talking about the inner child,
How it never goes away,
How it’s always there,
Waiting for a chance to surface,
Looking for an opening.

O yes, we were definitely bonding,
Reaching back in time,
Shedding inhibitions.

So I spit my gum out at her
And she slapped me across the face.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Self-Serving Altruism

Let us,
The stupid inhabitants of a dying culture,
Dedicate ourselves to a new generation,
Let them stand upon our shoulders
To see what we cannot see,
So they may solve our problems,
Right our wrongs,
And not kill us
When we’re too old to take care of ourselves.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Visitors

A faint twinkle in the black sky,
A spacecraft,
Posing as Venus,
Then,
Closer,
Scanning my house,
Late,
Late one night,
Early,
Early one morning,
Hours after midnight,
Hours before dawn,
Awakening me,
The gentle throbbing of breeze-blown electromagnetism,
Rumbling subwoofers of elemental particles in my pillow.

We are here.
We are here.
The sudden realization.
Then,
Gone.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Am Older Now

It used to be fun
To see how long I could hold my breath.

My sister and I had contests
And we’d try to make each other laugh
To break our concentration,
Our determination.

Now,
It just feels like death.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Heaven And Hell

Sometimes this peaceful suburban landscape
Seems like heaven.

I am momentarily reprieved
And the people in my tiny town glow,
Translucent arcs of light
Moving about their daily tasks.

We stop and talk a while.

Hell returns.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Politics

O simple-minded hardworking soul,
Crushed by need
And greed,
I mourn for you
And I celebrate you
As I assemble these thoughts
From the refuge of my comfortable chair
In my comfortable house,
Comfortable neighborhood,
Comfortable life.

Just when you thought your hardscrabble life
Could be exploited no further,
I am here to mourn you,
To celebrate you,
To employ you as an illustration
Of my humanity,
Of my selfless dedication to your well-being,
For which I expect ample praise and admiration.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Anniversary

What is the secret
Of your long and happy marriage?
They ask.

I stop and reflect for a moment,
Furtively glancing at my watch,
Counting down the minutes
Until I will again meet with her,
My rosy-breasted, eager young mistress.

I am too old for her,
But we both have found a momentary bliss
In the forbidden.

What is your secret?
They ask again.

My mind races to find a suitable reply.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Wrought

Seeing as how this magazine
Was clearly created
For those of superior intelligence,
I figured I should be in on the game.

The pages were heavy and deep,
Filled with myriad analyzations of multifaceted topics
I scarcely knew existed.

What uses to a participatory democracy
Do these cerebrations employ
When we are governed by duplicitous morons
Who will never read these pages
Or consult the experts whose insights lie within?

I continued reading until stopped cold by the phrase:
“The predicament is multipronged. . . .”
Multipronged?
Really?

Clearly, this dialogue had pierced the stratosphere
On its way back home to some alternative universe.

Several pages ahead an advertisement
For a “Darwin Panama.”

A warm weather hat with Australian styling,
Handwoven in Ecuador from toquilla fiber.

O what “On The Origin of Species” hath wrought.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Unamused

I was immortal,

Aflame with youth,
Mad with wishing and wanting,
With joy and despair,
Running everywhere,
Lighter than air.

I shared secrets with my dog,
Whispered words of love to my cat,
Sang to sparrows and cackled at crows.

I picked my nose,
Hid my broccoli beneath the mashed potatoes,
Turned my bicycle into a horse and shot desperados.

I believed in dreams,
That they would lead my aching heart
To some kind of earthly heaven,
A life filled with joy
And love.

Yes,
I still sometimes belch,
Sometimes fart,
This inextinguishable little boy.

My wife is not amused.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

#Alone

No sound,
No voice,
No laughter,
No eye contact,
No tears,
No facial expressions,
No body language,
No appearance,
No touch,
No skin on skin,
No embrace,
No kiss.

It’s the new friendship,
Texting and posting,
Liking and sharing,
Friending,
Friending,
All day long,
#Alone.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Contestants

Just another species
We are
The manipulators,
The malcontents
We are
The controllers of an uncontrollable world,
A world that will rise up against us someday
And end all this tinkering,
Making room for the next
Contestants.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

All I Ask

All I ask is a tall ship
And a star to steer her by,
Food and drink enough to last
My wayward wandering eye.

A mate or two to hoist the sails,
To swab the deck and sing
A rousing song of seven seas.
What quahogs we will bring!

O we will be a happy ship,
Connected to the net.
When whales are few and seas be calm
Our email we’ll beget.

We’ll chart our journey on a blog
For smartphones all to see,
And keep up with our favored shows
On satellite TV.

We’ll gather in the hot tub steam
When starry nights turn cool,
And when we take on lobster hue
We’ll dive into the pool.

O the call of the open sea,
The smell of briny foam,
O the lure of uncharted lands
That draw us far from home.

All I ask is a tall ship
And a star to steer her by,
Some island girls for pleasure,
And a global positioning system in case we get lost.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

O Poets

O poets,
While you are busy being so clever,
So imaginative in your reconstruction of language,
So worthy of literary praise,
An aging woman returns home late from work
And finds no joy in the things she owns,
The things that own her,
The husband who does not really love her.

O poets,
While you are busy being so clever,
A young man rises early and fights traffic
To be on time at a job that means nothing to him,
Working all day long without meaning.

O poets,
While you are busy being so clever,
Thousands upon thousands suffer quietly,
Quietly suffocating and not knowing why.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I've Changed

Oh my darling,
I was so foolish,
Such a selfish, weak and unfeeling bastard.
Can you ever forgive me?

I’ll do anything to make it up to you.

I hope you can find it in your heart to understand.
I never meant to hurt you.

Oh my love,
I’ve made so many mistakes,
Won’t you give me another chance,
Now that I’m pretending to be apologetic, contrite and sincere?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Cats And Dogs

The old couple had a cat
And a dog,
Their constant companions for so many years.
Loyal,
Affectionate pets.

The aging dog still played fetch,
Still wrestled tug of war with a piece of rope,
Always eager to go on a walk,
Loved to ride in the car with his tongue hanging out in the breeze.

The aging cat still played with her catnip mouse,
Still leaped at the dog from hidden places,
Defiantly pulled her claws on the forbidden chair
Then skittered madly down the long hallway.

After the old man died
The dog lay listless in his bed
Making soft groaning noises,
Keeping an eye on the front door
Just in case the old man came back.
But deep inside the dog knew the old man was gone forever.

After the old man died
The cat began each new day as before,
Begged the old woman for food each morning,
Meowed at the door to be let out into the garden,
Chasing after lizards,
Chirping at little birds,
Back inside stretching out on a soft bedspread next to the window,
Soaking up the morning sun without thought of past or future,
Perfectly satisfied to be immersed in comfort,
Her eyelids half closed,
Keeping watch for the occasional lingering sparrow.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In The Wilderness

The plaintive cry of the jackalope
Echoes
Through my open motel window,
I cannot sleep.

Who?
Who will lube my aging motor home
Way out here where I wander
In this desolate land without movie rentals?

I wonder,
Not much.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

A Little Nudge

The stench!
What an intolerable stench!

Awakened to the alarm of a foul, sulfurous odor,
I step outside.
The air is thick with decay,
Stinging the senses
As if I’d awakened in some extraterrestrial miasma,
Some netherworld.

People lining the street,
Looking to the sky for some kind of answer,
Grimacing to one another,
Holding their noses.

Talk on the radio,
On the television,
Speculations about accelerated decomposition
From climate change,
Solar radiation,
Polar shifting,
Oceanic reconstitution,
Tectonic deformation,
Apocalypse.

No one really knew anything.
Months later,
No one really knew much more
Except that the change was permanent.

We adjusted,
Redefining words such as:
Fragrant,
Sweet,
For there was no more sweet
As we had known it,
No more fragrant.

We changed our aesthetics,
Our taste buds,
Our culture,
Reprogramming old orientations.
Old ideas of pleasure and pain,
Changed now by our weary planet,
So weary of who we were,
Giving us a little nudge.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Playground

We are the little children of God
Who decided we want to do things on our own.

So God said, “OK,”
And put us here in this playground.

We’re still learning how to play together nicely.

We’re a bit slow.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Morning

When I first woke up I thought it was going to rain,
Upside down,
Each raindrop a single, singing voice,
Assembling into a drenching choir,
A requiem of weather,
But then, I woke up a little more.

I thought I was a spy who must deliver documents,
Secret documents,
To my communist overlords
In order to maintain the lifestyle
To which I’d grown accustomed,
But then, I woke up a little more.

I thought my cats were whispering to each other,
Speaking English,
Complaining about their accommodations,
Casting furtive glances about the room
While pretending they couldn’t really speak,
But then, I woke up a little more.

I reprimanded my furniture,
Intimidated my toilet,
Put my walls on notice that containment was not an option,
But then, I woke up a little more.

All that I’ve ever done wrong spontaneously flew about my head
Like buzzing houseflies,
Each, in turn, flying close to my left ear,
Accusing me of human frailty,
Reminding me of missed opportunities,
But then, I drank a half cup of warm coffee.

One by one my demons evaporated
Like mist into steam into air on a hot summer morning,
And for another day,
Absolution,
Reprieved by the will to live
And a little caffeine.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Anguished Soul

Your anguished soul cries out
Because your dreams of fame and fortune
Are only dreams
And evaporate like dew at sunrise,
Just a little daylight
And the real world takes over.

But you persevere,
You work on those dreams
In all your spare moments
Until one day
You finally get a break
And the Company decides
Your Anguished Soul
Is the next big thing
And it happens:
T-shirts and coffee mugs,
The Anguished Soul Tour,
Television talk shows.

You become the voice for all those anguished souls
Who watch television late into the night
And dream of being you,
Not realizing
They already are.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Wolf, Wolf

Wolf, wolf,
Burning bright,
First wolf I see tonight,
Wish I may,
Wish I might,
Old black joe.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Sometimes When I Sleep

Sometimes when I sleep
I go so far away,
When I wake up
I have to remind myself
I cannot fly
And 11 is a number.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

If I Were A Little Badger

If I were a little badger
I tell you what I'd do
I'd help all the other badgers
Escape from the L.A. Zoo.

We'd go downtown for coffee
And chat the night away
Around the sidewalk tables
At the badger espresso cafe.

We'd have existential rages
And geopolitical despair
Then we'd sneak back to our cages
And pull out all our hair.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

For Schopenhauer

Show me your sun-drenched sprigs of winter,
The juniper bug as he howls,
The rise and fall of oatmeal
In the misty dawn of a burgeoning wahoo!

Show me these things,
My sweet, bare-faced darling,
And I shall inherit your property
With the gay abandon
Of love’s lost moth at eventide.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Mysterious Ways

Thinking about the mysterious ways of the Lord
And all,
I came upon a squashed bug,
Some kind of beetle,
Swarmed by ants,
And realized
I was standing on the line of ants
That led from the dirt
To the hot cement sidewalk
Where I stood,
Doing the Lord’s bidding,
Somehow.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

As If

O this revolving world,
I am dizzy with all this spinning,
Cumulative now in my later years.
I feel the solar winds
Tugging at my sleeves
As we hurtle through space,
Madly erecting shopping centers
As if there were no tomorrow.

~ 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

Over My Dead Body

If you happen to stumble over my dead body
Someday,
Do not grieve,
Unless it’s mayhem,
And yet you may then
Envy
The way I have taken
My leave.

For if you happen to stumble over my dead body
Someday,
Know I preferred death that way,
Like the swatting of a fly
In the blink of an eye.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Call It Poetry

Go ahead,
Call it poetry,
I suppose you’ve got to call it something,
But I’m just talking,
Talking to you,
Telling you as sincerely as I can
What is in my heart
And in my mind,
Trying to strip these words and thoughts
Of pretense,
As best I can,
Not concerned about literary theory,
Just concerned about this life,
This life we are actually living,
Day by day.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

How Lovely Is Thy Mexican

How lovely is thy Mexican
Who keeps your garden green,
Who plants the flowers in the spring
Yet who is seldom seen.

Your friends and neighbors never fail
To praise your bounteous bower,
With butterfly and robin’s wing,
You pay five bucks an hour.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Without

Nothing At All

Just when I thought my little calico cat
And I
Had reached a meeting of minds,
An unspoken understanding
As she sat on my lap,
Joining me in early morning contemplation
Of life’s distractions and essences,
Winnowing away illusion,
Hearing without sound,
Seeing without sight,
Knowing without thought,
Then,
Finally,
That eternal absence that embraces all,
Then,
Kitty leaps from my lap,
Pads daintily across the room,
Sits on her haunches
And stares at the corner of a wall,
Staring,
Staring,
Staring,
At nothing at all.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The News

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

Stepping On A Rat

It was a day full of lizards,
Then,
Early that evening,
I stepped on a rat.

The day’s warmth foreshadowed summer,
Bringing out multitudes of sunbathing lizards,
One doing push-ups as I walked by,
Signaling his claim to a particular brick atop the garden wall.

I stepped cautiously around the basking reptiles,
Intentionally scaring some from the center of the sidewalk
To warn them of the peril from passing pedestrians.

As evening came on I forgot about the lizards,
Now surely in retreat as temperatures fell.
I walked more confidently,
Free from concern for lounging lizards underfoot
When I saw a sudden shadow,
A brief glimpse of a furry young rat,
Startled by my footsteps,
Dashing errantly toward me as I put my foot down,
Ever so gently,
Feeling it underfoot.

My reaction time was acute as I quickly withdrew my step,
A day of stepping lightly around lizards
Having trained and prepared me.
The rat scurried off with no apparent harm,
Knowing now what so many lizards had learned
Just a few hours before.

~ 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,
Incomplete phrases whole,
Hoping some great dark muse
Will speak.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Wearing Thin

Some folks say
They want to live
Forever,
But as for me,
This particular person
I am
Is wearing thin.
I can think of few things
Worse
Than an eternity
Chained to this one particular person
I am,
This soul attached,
Forever beset
By this particular concoction
Of insecurities and doubts,
Addictions, duplicities
And genetic happenstance.
Gotta wipe the slate clean,
Someday.

Be somebody else for a while.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

We, The Creative

We of the large-brained variety
Are the creative animals.
Survival is not enough,
We must have reasons to survive,
Philosophies,
Theologies.

And just to prove
How creative we really are,
We pretend our imaginings
Are the work of God.

~ 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

Trash Day

I hear the truck lumbering down my street,
Creeping around the cul-de-sac,
Transmission torquing,
Short bursts of brakes screeching.

The side loader clamps and lifts
And shakes empty the black containers,
Metal clanging,
Hydraulics hissing,
The packer compacting trash in the hopper.

The diesel engine groans toward my house
And I run outside.

I invite the garbage man in for coffee and coffee cake
And we talk about his family:
Aging parents from Slovakia
Who still call themselves Czechoslovakians.
“It is from where we were born!”
A tattooed son who will not go to college,
A daughter still young enough to play with dolls
But pretty enough to cause him worry,
A wife who works at the hospital.
“No more night shifts!”

Driving the big truck
“Is a good job now.”
Sitting sky high in the cab.
No more lifting like the old days.

He goes to church each Sunday.
The stained-glass windows are midnight blue and apple red
And fill the air with color.

I offer to warm up his coffee
While my next-door neighbor looks out his window,
Wonders what in the hell is going on.

~ 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

Not Hats

Yippy

It is the time of baby birds and lizards,
Of pollination and persistent sun,
Of rebirth and renewal.

I can hear the tug of Spring
In the spirited barking of Yippy,
The dingy, bedraggled cocker spaniel next door,
Aroused now by every passing dog,
Every wandering cat,
Each exploring squirrel,
Each backyard human.

I remember last year
When Yippy was so full of Spring,
Barking throughout the night at every rustling leaf,
It seemed to Al,
Big Al, we called my neighbor,
A large man bedeviled by barking
As he revisited the ritual of the backyard barbecue.

“God damn that dog!”
I heard him flare across the fence,
Stopping short of formal complaint,
Not one to be outwardly unneighborly.

Perhaps it was all that barbecued red meat that felled Big Al,
Dropping dead at work one chilly day last winter.

Spring has returned
And though old Yippy is clearly a canine in decline,
His barking still carries loud and clear,
And somehow I sense Big Al is near,
Cursing this aged dog who still survives
While human beings drop like flies.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Artist

O what reward
For lifelong labor
To make a beautiful sound,
To see the man in the front row
Fall asleep
While you so delicately evoke
Bach’s most ethereal passages
From your cello,
The instrument of your breathing,
The whisper of your bow
Across the strings.

Respiration from the front row
Works against the composition,
Keeping time in some asynchronous meter,
Growing steadily louder,
Until,
You have lost the reverie Bach intended
And your playing becomes rote,
Labored,
While the man in the front row
Snores,
While the stone-faced woman four rows back
Unwraps a peppermint candy,
Filling the hallowed air
With the crackle of cellophane.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved