Writing About Freedom.com: 2022

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?

Awaken!

Even the tiniest blade of grass struggles toward the light.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Called

Fair youth’s enthusiasms
Echo distant in this quiet garden
Where I try to envision
Such thoughts as now drive my son
Out into the world,
Away from home.

I would spare him error and injury,
But cannot
Without hiding him away.
I would see through his eyes
That I could better understand,
But who can live another’s life?

That which I know is of my own universe,
And while there is much that is universal to all,
My young man now walks upon his own feet,
Called forth by his own soul,
And by the fatherless world.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Before I Barely Knew Anything

Before I barely knew anything
I awakened each summer morning
To the cawing of crows
And thought,
How very tall these trees
In which they gather to ruffle their feathers
In the morning breeze,
How tall these trees
And how much these crows must see.

I climbed an orange tree,
So frightened by the height,
So amazed at the sight of neighboring houses
And city streets
And thought about what the crows must see
From the tops of the sycamore trees
And from higher still
As they rise into the sky,
Knowing I would never know
What they know,
Before I barely knew anything.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

At Last You Begin

Reaching your destination at last,
You begin,
Because conclusions do not satisfy
Anyone but everyone,
And everyone is no one at all.

So you finally arrive at the beginning,
Exhausted,
Confused,
Worn out,
Finished with ideas of all sorts and kinds,
Ready at last.

~ 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

All The Way

We fight against the breakdown,
Trying to hold on to all we believe,
Fighting,
Fighting,
And most of us fight right up to the end,
Defending,
Defending,
And the ones who do,
Break down,
Fall so low,
So low,
It takes a long time to reassemble
The ideas,
The beliefs,
The dreams.

Some of us fall so low,
So low,
We break through the last idea,
No bottom,
Falling,
Falling,
Past falling,
All the way,
And are saved.

~ 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

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

All Day Long

A little brown bird
Sang this song:

I’ve been a little bird
All day long.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Absolution

Who is the fortunate soul
Who has not fallen
At one time or another
During this life?

How many of us have sinned
Without detection,
Yet repented without admonition?

How many suffer the consequences of sin
Beneath the guise of anonymity?

Who can say how long such punishment should last?

One might suppose death and its dominions
Washes away Earthly sin,
Yet even death does not erase all memory.

The echoes of our imperfect lives reverberate
In histories large and small,
Yet all unruly children are in the heart of God still,
Where only honest and sustained contrition will bring absolution,
The only kind of absolution that really matters.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Reverence

We are taught to revere the old ways
Of our beloved ancestors,
Their ancient wisdom,
Honed over generations
Into this perfect jewel,
Hard,
Prismatic,
Eternal,
An ornament
Worn so proudly by those who know,
Our teachers,
The guardians of all knowledge,
The caretakers of the past.

Impediments.

~ 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

The Long March

You can march to the left,
You can march to the right,
You can march down the middle
And dream of your perfect world
Where everyone knows the truth.

You can march to the left,
You can march to the right,
You can march down the middle
But as long as you believe
You are right
And all the rest are wrong
You’ll be marching long,
You’ll be marching long.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

In This Place

This is all we know,
These caffeinated mornings
And crowded freeway commutes,
These peopled places,
Marked,
Altered.

Scheduled repose,
Manufactured entertainments,
The occasional exodus to nature
With the proper reservations,
Row 32,
Space 6.

But doesn’t it all seem a little strange sometimes,
This concoction of paradise and purgatory?
And how blurred their boundaries,
How blurred within our limitless eternal selves,
Living out this highly contrived finite physical existence.

Do you long to resolve contradictions
And in so doing,
Increase their numbers?

We believe what we want to believe
Until belief itself is finally exhausted,
A small, hard thing,
So difficult to discard.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Did You Try To Sing?

Did you try to sing?

Did you try to sing but the words caught
In the bottom of your throat
And someone sitting in the dark
Said “Next!”
Before you could summon
The clear, sweet song within.
Did you try to sing?

How old were you?

How old were you when the song was frightened
Back inside
Where no one would hear or criticize,
How old were you?

Do you still sing?

Do you still sing to yourself alone,
Bold and strong
When no one’s home,
Or is your singing gone?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

A Door Opens, A Door Closes

A door that was open,
Closes,
It fades into the wall,
Becomes the wall,
And you realize
You will never be
On the other side
Of that wall,
The other side
Where everything is different,
In the land of What Could Have Been.

Or maybe you walked through that door,
And then it closed,
Faded into the wall,
Became the wall,
And now you realize
You can never get back
To the other side
Of that wall,
The other side
Where everything was really okay after all,
Back in the land of Leave Well Enough Alone.

A door opens,
A door closes.

~ 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

The Rabbit

To look for the rabbit was why I came,
To find him again was my secret game.
I’d slowly edge near him, near as I could,
Near as he’d let me, as near as he should.

I had some strange dream of taming the wild.
It was my best dream, the dream of a child.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

We Americans

We Americans
Speak of our founding fathers,
Our proud heritage,
As if it were all etched in stone,
Authored by God,
This young country,
This work in progress,
Fresh from ignorance and sin,
Sinning still.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

At Play

You call it freedom,
Those afternoons on your dappled horse,
Kicking up dust sparkling in wet ocean air,
Cantering round and round solitary paths
Worn around your father’s estate
Where an old Mexican woman with scars on her knees
Scrubs heel marks off the Spanish tile.

Your orange and white tomcat snags a butterfly,
Yanks off a fluorescent wing
With his needle-nose teeth.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Are You Ready To Believe?

Are you ready to believe?
Have you finally fallen,
Fallen so low,
Humbled and humiliated,
Defeated at last by your once insatiable ego,
Fallen so low
That now you are ready,
Ready to believe?

Do not despair,
For this world is chock full of gurus,
Wise ones who will set you straight
For a nominal fee,
If you are truly ready,
Ready to believe.

Surrender your small insignificant self
And join us here in this cavernous auditorium,
Our hands in the air,
Hallelujah!
It’s kindergarten all over again.
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Not Yet

Nature created us,
We human beings
Who seek exclusion from nature’s consequences,
From the balance of success and failure
Required by nature,
From which we cannot escape,
Yet.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

This Idea Of Free

I am so used to this idea of free
I forget how many in this world

Are shackled by ideas,
So many in this free country,
In my hometown,
Shackle themselves with ideas,
Rules for living,
Or no ideas at all,
Just behaviors,
Self-destructive behaviors
Masquerading as freedom.

So confusing,
This idea of free.

~ Text and photo by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

~ Photograph by Russ Allison Loar

Click on photo to enlarge

The Boundaries Of Heaven

We draw the boundaries of heaven
Around the spaces of ourselves,
Marked off by threat
And bluster,
As if heaven were a place
Unwelcome.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Imagine Your Life

If you are not living the life you imagined,
imagine the life you are living.

~ Text & artwork by Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Truth

The truth has always been here, long before it was written about, long before theology, long before philosophy.

The wisest among us are interpreters, but the truth is eternal and cannot be changed by the interpretations of human beings.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Real Horror

Another atrocity
And writers all around the world
Take pen to paper,
Knowing the real horror
Resides in the mind
And must be addressed.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Here I Sit

Here I sit at this keyboard,
Poised to type my moral condemnations
Into this computer,
A computer assembled by slave labor in China,
But first I need a bit more inspiration
And so I drink another cup of coffee,
Grown by generations of impoverished Colombians.

I pause and ponder the fate of all the world’s weary workers
Whose assembled sufferings make my life so comfortable,
As if a few empathetic thoughts and words
Could release me from responsibility.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Old Things

Civilization is a stubborn child,
Learning by accident
What was not inherited,
What was forgotten as generations passed.

Culture rises and falls
And that which is new,
No matter how low,
Inevitably supersedes the old,
No matter how noble.

Now we are technological
And our children barely know what to do
With paper and pen,
With a book,
These old things,
Falling, falling away.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Homecoming

When it all falls apart
And you have nowhere left to go,
Where do you go?

You go home,
To that little house on the corner,
In that little town,
That little room with that little bed,
Still there,
As if your parents knew
You would not make it on your own,
Out there.

They kept your room ready
For your homecoming,
Coming home to where it’s all too small
For this forsaken soul you are,
A child once more.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

This New Age

This new age,
Not as much what you should be,
But more what you are.

The older ones will gladly tell you
What to do,
Or not,
What to think,
But it’s all history
And should be consigned as such.

As always,
What is different is wrong to so many
Who forget what is right is an opinion,
Based on the past,
Based on familiarity,
Conformity.

This new age,
Where imperfection fights for recognition,
Where success and failure fall into obsolescence.

This new age,
Where enlightenment and ruin will certainly come
In subjective proportions so assuredly predicted,
Yet presently unclear.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Way Of This World

It was a tall tree,
Not majestic,
But many years old,
Having managed somehow to be planted,
To grow in a clear space,
Clear enough for sunlight,
Far enough from other, taller trees,
A space where humans found it desirable
And so left it alone to grow
All these years.
Singed by the occasional fire,
Parched by the occasional drought,
It grew.

After ferocious winds that would not let me sleep
I walked along this familiar path,
Strewn with leaves, branches and limbs,
And there in the clearing was the tree,
Lying on its side,
Uprooted,
Most of its branches torn away
Except for a line of long, leafless branches still attached,
Now pointing toward the clear, quiet, cloudless sky,
A last gesture.

This had nothing to do with sin,
With punishment
Or even destiny.
Every big wind blows a few trees down.
It is the way of this world.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Your Most Recent Revelation

When the moment comes,
Light fills the sky
And birds are everywhere in voice,
And you say:

At last,
I have found it.

It passes.

On another day,
You carefully reconstruct
The circumstances
Of your most recent revelation,
And wait.

The sky is brown,
Everywhere dogs are in voice,
A garbage truck fills the air with noise,
Laboring house by house,
Street by street.

It’s gone.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Hero

I do not want my son to be a hero,
Whose name will be read among the honored dead,
Who will be forever young in the picture that is hung
On his empty bedroom wall,
O dear God don’t let him fall
In battle and attack,
Please bring him safely back.

I do not want my son to be a hero.

~ 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 they think you are,
This person you decided to be
Who is not so crazy sometimes?

So you keep it a secret
And never let it out,
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

Wounds

Some wounds never heal.

The transgressions of youth,
The persistence of folly,
The weakness of moral resolve,
These are painful in remembrance.

The stubborn refusal to admit mistake,
The inability to yield and in such yielding change behavior.
O yes, maturity has come slow,
In fits and starts,
So easily suspended when truly tested.

These wounds are painful to the touch
But the pain does not go deep.

Some wounds never heal.

The loss of a loved one,
The cruelty of suffering,
The arrogance of evil.
These are constant in this world
And penetrate the core of my being.

I would seek an end to this pain,
Yet such an end would require forgetfulness.
I will not erase those I have loved,
Those I have lost,
For they are of my own soul now,
Of my spirit,
My essence.

This is the price I pay
For living in this imperfect world.

Some wounds never heal.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

You Are Not Hidden

I write these words to you who are cruel,
Who know you are cruel,
Who deny your cruelty.

These words are not for those who succumb to weakness,
Who struggle with weakness,
Who sincerely strive to overcome weakness and be kind.

We all have sinned.

These words are for you who are deliberate,
Who forged your cruelty through years of abuse,
No matter how you rationalize,
No matter how you repress,
No matter how conscious or unconscious you may be.

You are not hidden.
No matter how much control you have over us,
You are not hidden.
No matter how compliant we are forced to be,
You are not hidden.

You are condemned in our eyes,
And when you lose your power over us,
When you look in the mirror
And see the monster you have become,
When your punishment comes,
When you realize you have been punished all along,
When you realize each act of cruelty
Has destroyed a part of your soul,
When you have no soul left,
We will rejoice.

We who are kind will take no pleasure in your suffering,
We will not let the anger in our hearts make us cruel,
But we will rejoice when we are free from your cruelty,
When your cruelty is stripped of all power,
When you must answer for each cruel act.
We will rejoice when justice is restored.

You are not hidden.
You pay for each act of cruelty
Whether you realize it or not,
For we know you have no real joy
Because you are not loved.
You are lower than the lowest of us
Who suffer and yet are loved.
You are lower than the lowest of us
Who have died because of your cruelty,
Because we are loved,
And this love is eternal.

You are not hidden.
The eyes of the world are upon you,
The eyes of history are upon you,
The eyes of God are upon you.

The spirit of change is upon the land,
It cannot be stopped.
Lies are temporary,
Injustice is temporary.
Truth is eternal,
Justice is eternal.

You are not hidden.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Hate

If you are taught to hate,
If you embrace hate,
If you carry hate in your heart,
Then you will awaken each morning with hate,
Sleep each evening with hate,
Dream of hate.

Such a heavy burden,
This all-embracing anger,
This desire for violence,
For vengeance.

But when you dream of a perfect world,
When you imagine yourself in paradise,
Where is hate?

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

We Dream

Two handsome horses
Pacing inside their pen.
A painted pony,
A muddy mare.

I see them running in full gallop
Through grassy fields.
Without a saddle, I hold tight
To the painted pony’s mane.

They whinny and snort as I walk by
As if they know what I am thinking,
Hoping I would fling open the gate
And let them go.

But where would we go?
This is the edge of a busy city,
Full of cement neighborhoods,
Hundreds of miles from grazing land.

The skin on their backs ripple and twitch
As the evening chill sets in.

Resigned to captivity,
We dream of being free.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Battlefield

It is certainty that contends
On the battlefields of just cause,
Justifying employments of war’s less noble deeds,
Accepting war’s indiscriminate consequences,
The plight of millions,
This persistence of terror.

We fight our way through centuries,
Through millennia.
We are little changed.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Prophets

So many prophets,
How we revere them,
Study their lives,
Read their writings,
Marvel at their prognostications,
Follow their instructions,
Dismiss their detractors,
Proselytize the unenlightened,
Prepare for the promised apocalypse.

So many prophets,
Distracting us from the eternity of this moment.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

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

You Have The Gift

You have the gift
And the challenge,
The challenge to know you have the gift,
The challenge to accept the gift,
To live it.

While we are so busy complaining,
Blessings fall upon us like rain.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Untarnished

Future Past

Our past was once the future,
Many years away from the melancholy glaze of reverence,
Many years away from the hallowed ground of institutionalization,
Feared by some,
Despised by others,
A threat to sacred rituals,
The demonized specter of change.

Those comfortable now in sameness,
Defenders of static conformity,
They might be hailed as visionaries
Were they catapulted back into antiquity
With beliefs and convictions intact,
Or perhaps burned at the stake.

~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved