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

Cats

Why am I not a god to these cats?
They sit, long-pawed on my driveway
As I approach in the fearsome monster of steel,
Growling and hissing.
But they watch my advance with disinterest,
Half-closed eyes revealing scant concern.
They are used to my comings and goings
And will not move until the last possible moment,
When a tire threatens to brush a whisker,
When I race the engine to give them a start.
They are becoming accustomed to these things as well.

I step from the roughly idling four-door sedan
And pull open the great wall of aluminum garage door,
Letting it fly upward and crash against the frame.
A few furry heads turn in slumberous response,
Then mechanically turn away.
O what will roust them from this languor?

It is the clack and pop of punctured metal,
The grinding drone of the kitchen can opener
That does the trick.
In an instant they have gathered,
A felonious mob at the back-door stoop,
Meowing in feigned, pitiful supplication,
And God will walk among them once more.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Indifference

O the unclipped nose hair,
The unchecked gluttony,
The wrinkled plaid Bermuda shorts,
The black socks and penny loafers.

O the pasty white skin,
The mounting corpulence,
The open-mouthed unconscious stare,
The arrogant indifference.

O what have you surrendered?
And why?


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Our Waitress Exploded

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood . . . .

~ The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Late one evening of joviality

With our favorite coffee shop waitress,

She remarked: “You’re here more than I am.”

How could she know?

Only if she were actually in two different places

At the same time,

Home watching television

While simultaneously working the night shift.

“How could you know?” I queried.

A sudden realization washed over her

Like a subatomic particle

Racing around the Large Hadron Collider.

The two waitresses became aware of each other’s existence

And sought to unite the matter and antimatter of their beings.

A mistake.

The waitresses’ subatomic particles and antiparticles

Touched and exploded.

They were annihilated,

Thrust into a Parallel Universe

Where they emerged from a Black Hole,

Transformed into Hawking Radiation.

One minute she was here,

Standing behind the cash register

In front of the display case of assorted pies and cookies,

The next zeptosecond—Gone!

While ravenous coffee shop patrons searched for her in vain.

That was the last anyone ever saw of her,

Except for the developmentally challenged busboy

Who swept her leftover protons into a corner.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

If

If life were a metaphor
Then the incandescent epiphany
Could rise,
Bloom,
An evening cactus flower,
Jesus alone in the desert
Wrestling with demons.

I awaken,
Late for work.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved