Writing About Love.com: 2021

Phantom Pain

I never quite understood
The stories of amputees,
How they still felt the presence
Of a missing limb.

I never quite understood,
Until I lost you.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

O circumstance,
Enemy of dreams,
Unyielding wall
That keeps us apart.

Circumstance like science
Cannot be wished away,
Will not be denied,
Only overcome by those
Who allow desire to overcome reason,
A perilous course,
Full of grave consequence.

You and I weighed such consequences
And turned away from love’s unreasoning madness,
Wounded,
Scarred,
Yet saved from eternal sorrow by the words:
I will always love you.

It's almost enough.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Hardest Part

The beautiful place in my heart
I never knew,
Filled with the light of you,
The blinding joy . . .

The hardest part,
When the light turned off.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Think Of You

When I grow weary of you,
Thinking of you,
Longing for you,
Resigned to exhaustion and defeat,
I think of you.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Think Of Me

Years from now
When your hair begins to gray,
Think of me.

Remember the sound of our laughter,
The color of my eyes,
The warmth of my hand.

Years from now
When your cheeks are wrinkled,
Think of me.

Remember my awkward mistakes,
My overzealous pronouncements,
My prayers.

Years from now
When time has washed all the hurt away,
When you no longer understand old age,
Be young and unblemished again
And think of me.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Enshrined

The light in her eyes when she sees her love
Illuminated beneath a streetlight,
Knowing their evening of romance has just begun,
Believing it has no end . . .

How quickly they come together,
So tightly embrace,
Looking deep into each other’s eyes,
A long kiss without caring who sees . . .

Their fingers entwine,
Their bodies stay close walking down the sidewalk
Into the enchanted night,
Arm in arm,
Heart in heart . . .

When I see them I think of you,
Of our eternal moments together,
Alive within me still,
Enshrined.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Death And Love

O majestic death,
Rattling around in my bedsprings
Like an old man’s cough,
You are too easy and obvious
For poetry.

O mercurial love,
Rising in my chest
Like opening night stage fright,
You are too easy and obvious
For poetry.

Yet somehow,
After all this writing,
Death is,
Still profound,
Love is,
Still precious.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Professorial

He may actually believe in philosophy,
That a systematic philosophical argument can prove

God exists,
That the mysteries of the heart are susceptible to reason,
That he will awaken from distress

By way of intellectual inquiry.

So much to consider as he continues his search,
Wandering through the labyrinth of postulation
So late into the night,
Alone and wide awake,
Missing her.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

No Small Thing

I have tried being realistic,
Accepting the fact
You probably do not love me,
But I fail to see the benefit
Of discarding my beautiful dream.

Some other, more possible love
May appear,
But my only choice at present
Is unrequited love
Or no love at all.

When faced with this reality
And this illusion,
I must hold on to my illusion,
For to possess a beautiful dream
Is no small thing.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Love Is A Vibration

His pocket is vibrating,
On and off all day long
With messages of love
From his eager new girlfriend,
Vibrating with urgency
On his cell phone.

But he is at work
And cannot stop.
Besides,
The words don’t matter.
The vibration is enough.

~ 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

Remember Me

Years from now,
When I can no longer find your address,
When your hair is gray,
Remember me.

~ 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

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

Beautiful

When we touch,
Illusion enfolds
Our naked bodies,
Erases our imperfections,
And within our bliss
We become
Beautiful.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Wounds Of The Heart

Yes, the wounds of the heart
Will heal,
In time,
But they leave scars,
Some so sensitive
That the slightest touch
Awakens memory.

The pain returns.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In The Eyes Of A Beautiful Stranger

In the eyes of a beautiful stranger
There is a kind of paradise,
A release
From a life full of things
Too familiar,
Worn out from overuse,
Exhausted by constancy.

In the eyes of a beautiful stranger
There is another life,
Different,
Fresh,
Unknown.

Ah, to awaken one morning
And not know
What the new day will bring.

~ 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

Giving Up

Easier to give up on love,
Forget about love,
Than to wake each morning
With an ache.

I’ll start tomorrow.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Animal Force

There is an animal force
That moves me toward you
But I resist,
For there is no heart in it.
It is all accident,
An accident of time,
Circumstance,
Genetics.

I admit all manner of impulse
For honesty’s sake,
And for the same reason
Withdraw consent.

Conditioning and confinement,
So much to blame
For our transgressions.
We look to all available drugs
To ease what cannot be so quickly cured.

~ 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

Love Songs

You’re way too sophisticated for love songs
And roll your eyes at all the familiar phrases,
The clichéd expressions of romantic euphoria,
The saccharin melodies of longing and desolation.

It’s been a long time since you fell in love,
If ever,
The kind of falling that has no end,
No reason,
No control.

You think yourself too mature for such adolescence,
Such fairy tales.

But if you’ve loved a princess
And lost a princess,
Only the inarticulate language of a love song
Can speak to your broken heart,
And every word rings true.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

How Soon We Let Go

How soon we let go of love
For more practical pursuits.

A discarded hobby,
Love leans against a corner
In a dark closet,
Gathering dust.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

You Are With Me In The Dark

You are with me in the dark,
Though we're many miles apart
I can see you with my heart,
You are with me in the dark.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Finger Speaks

~ for William Michaelian

I don’t ask the question,
Are you happy?
It seems too intrusive,
Too personal for most of my friends.
It’s a question reserved for my lover,
Used sparingly.

But of course I can tell,
Even in the e-mails of distant friends.
Joy infuses their words,
Oozes out from even the briefest missives,
Such as this morning’s message from my old friend,
An entranced grandfather,
Too encumbered to reply with more than a short explanation,
No doubt typed with a single finger:
“Baby on lap!”

~ Russ Allison Loar
~ Poet and author William Michaelian's web site
© All Rights Reserved

Enchanted Princess

She is glowing
And her light penetrates me,
Fills me with unexplainable joy.

She dances playfully around my soul
And I am awakened,
Enchanted.
All is love beyond love.

She has placed a diamond in my heart.

I do not understand the blind
Who cannot see her,
Who see only another pretty girl,
An object to possess,
To label and put into some convenient category.

It weighs on her fragile heart
That anyone should expect her to live
An ordinary life,
This enchanted princess,
Surrounded by so much that is ordinary,
This enchanted princess,
So ready for the magic to begin.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Consequences

You have not said,
I love you,
And I fear you never will.

I have not said,
I love you,
And I fear I never will.

But my greatest fear
Is that we love each other
And are too afraid of consequences to speak.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Will Sing

I could write about a flower,
How it embodies my soul,
The blooming,
The withering away,
Or perhaps a thermometer,
The inconstant mercury,
Any metaphorical device would do,
But not today.

Today I am flesh, blood,
A thousand thousand things.
Today
For some unnameable reason
I am happy.
No more speaking.
Today
I will sing!

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Suburban Twilight

Suburban twilight,
Punctuated by porch lights
Welcoming weary workers home.

“Hello darling,”
She says,
“I missed you,”
Her bare shoulders
Framed by the thin straps,
Too loose,
Of her tiny, translucent dress.

This never happened to me.

A bunch of soccer ball boys,
Too young to go on a date,
Stand together in a jagged circle
On a grass-dirt field
While their parents lie to each other
About nothing in particular,
Waiting for the game to begin.

Back on the boulevard
Commuters swim upstream,
Fighting their way back
To the suburban spawning grounds
For a few hours of fun
Before it all shuts down in sleep,
And regret.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

This Muse

When it happens,
Whatever you call it,
Love,
Lust,
Infatuation,
Temporary insanity,
This muse pushes all others aside.
She is possessive,
Demanding my full attention,
Even when I’m exhausted and trying to sleep.
She is the muse of desire and will not rest.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Seasons Change

The long days
Filled with sunshine
Seemed eternal,
But this morning,
The rain.
It will be dark
By early afternoon.

The longing in my heart
Knows no season.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

When You're In Love

When you’re in love,
Surrounded and infused by love,
When it’s all so new and electrifying,
Commanding your thoughts,
Changing your habits,
Making you forget to do all those things
You were doing just to keep busy,
Inspiring you to buy little gifts,
Write confessional messages,
Work so much harder on your appearance,
Memorize romantic quotations,
Speak personally to angels,
Forget to breathe,
Fall asleep dreaming,
And each morning the first thing you think of
Is your loved one’s name.

When you’re in love,
No one can explain it away.
No one can tell you it’s only infatuation,
For whatever name anyone may call it,
It’s a reason to live.

~ 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

The Part Of Me

I love you,
She said.

But I know what she really loves.

She loves the part of me that loves her,
The part of me that becomes the whole of me
When I am with her.

Yes,
I do indeed love her love of the love I too love to love.
Yes.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

I Saw Her Yesterday

It’s been over long enough now,
Long enough to go through an entire day
Without the ache of memory,
The stab of loss,
Long enough.

I saw her yesterday.

I could not approach her,
Not even a passing smile,
Just a quick retreat,
Acting against every impulse of my soul,
Starting over again.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Drowning

Drowning in love.
Worse yet,
Dry land.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Courting

If he only knew
How hard she worked to be pretty for him,
Eagerly awaiting his arrival each morning,
Watching the parking lot through the office window,
Then walking down the hall for nothing in particular
So he would see her when he walked in,
See her long, ebony hair
Falling in graceful curls and waves over her shoulders
Across her finely sculpted collarbones,
See her all the way down
To her exquisitely proportioned pale pink toes.

It was meant to be.

She’d been on his busy, distracted mind
More and more lately,
When this morning she walked down the hall
Blurring past busy cubicles,
Fast enough to ripple her diaphanous plum and apricot dress
Just as he entered the office,
Struck by this sudden vision,
This annunciation.

Awakened by her focused, concentrated beauty
Washing over him like a wave,
He speaks,
And it all begins.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Safe

First comes passion,
Then all the talking,
The explaining,
The rationalizing,
The figuring things out
While passion is silently put
Into the small golden box
With the other keepsakes,
Safe.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Riding

How alive this young girl
As she tenses lithe legs
Against her strong black stallion,
Shining with the sweat of speed.

Through the windy twigs of distant trees
I watch her pull against the reins
Stiff-backed,
Long hair streaming into the wind.

Now riding faster,
This chestnut-haired girl leans in close.

Pulsing together in full gallop,
They are ecstasy.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Procreation

Yes,
Your parents were in love.
Well,
At least in lust.
Believe it.
No matter how ugly and ill-suited to romance they now seem,
There is a reason you were born.
Well,
Perhaps not so much a reason
As an emotion,
Drawing them together,
Fulfilling their destiny to create a new human being,
The latest version of evolution,
You,
The dream made flesh,
You,
You snot-nosed ungrateful twerp!

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Hungry

Nature has made us hungry,
The necessary motivation for procreation,
Assuring perpetuity,
Even when reason resists.

By design or accident,
Or design of accident,
Over and over again,
We are born.

Modesty shames our unchecked explosions of lust,
So we attach the appropriate fig leaves
And walk out of the garden,
Into the world,
Imbued with socially appropriate decorum
Disguising our baser animal instincts.

Yet secretly,
Or not so secretly,
We cast the wandering eye,
Hungry.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Given Up

This portly, stubble-faced, middle-aged man
With uncombed random remnants of hair,
Hastily dressed in laundry hamper attire,
Wrinkled and stained,
In semiconscious disarray,
Blunders his way through supermarket aisles,
Searching,
Searching,
Finally finding the dessert section,
The gallon of strawberry shortcake ice cream
Which he cradles in hand
While making a mad dash for the quick-check lane,
Stumbling past summer’s bronzed young woman,
All curls and curves,
Home from college and ready for fun.
She is a stunning vision of youth and vitality,
But he does not notice,
Having given up the idea of romance so long ago.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Another Day At The Office

The black-winged fungus of death
Would like to have a word with you
And is holding on Line 2.

Take a message,
Say I,
For the splintering semen of rebirth
Is Miss Ledger’s hand on my thigh.

Encountering my limitless non-self
I give her nothing but love,
Baby.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

My Love Turns Off

My love turns off the radio
She doesn’t watch TV,
She will not listen to the news,
She doesn’t want to see
The awful things that people do,
Depraved humanity,
That’s why she’s smiling all day long,
She leaves the world to me.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

My Love Asks Nothing

My love asks nothing of you.
My love is its own reward,
And punishment.

If you do not love me
My love will leave you alone
And I will continue to feel great pleasure,
Great pain.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Love Is Hard

That One Precious Word

Dear one,
When your life is full of tears,
When love is ripped from your heart
And there is no one,
No one you can tell,
Really tell,
Know you are not alone,
For I too have cried,
I too have stumbled and fallen
When the weight of the world was too great to bear.

Dear one,
Let us join in spirit,
In recognition,
And give each other strength.

We are the wounded ones of the world
Yet we must endure,
We must hold on to that one precious word,
Hope.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Hugs

It was a friendly hug,
A hello hug,
A nice-to-see-you hug,
For her.

For me,
It was love,
It was touch,
It was lust.

O this vast desert,
O this oasis,
These few drops of water,
Keeping me alive.

~ 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

The Gift

The aged Chinese woman walks past our house

Every afternoon,

When the weather is warm.

Her turquoise capri pants and garishly flowered blouse,

Her floppy lime-green hat,

A collision of color,

Thrift shop couture,

Worn,

But serviceable.

I always say hello and smile

And she smiles in return

But never speaks.

Once I called out “Lovely day.”

She smiled.

I suspect she does not speak English.

No matter.

A heartfelt smile

With a slight tip of the head exchanged.

We embrace the gift.

On Christmas Day

Whose birth do we celebrate on this day?
The living embodiment of God?
The only one?

What about you?
What about me?

Even the tiniest blade of grass struggles toward the light.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

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