This World Is Neither

This world is neither full of joy
Nor filled with hate.

It is full of us
And who we are.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Do Not Grieve

Do not grieve for me,
For I am standing at the edge of the sea,
With one foot still in this world,
The other in eternity.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Parallel Lives

I’ve always been here,
Skipping through parallel lives,
Endless variations where every alternative plays out,
Even though the “I”
As in,
“Here I am,”
Perceives a singular path.

I’ve always been here,
On the edge of memory,
For no matter how many times I have died,
Here I am,
Living still.

My parallel lives are like television programs.
I change the channel
And sometimes find myself in a life too unfamiliar.
I change the channel again
To find a more familiar episode,
Then continue.

Some of my problems are resolved,
Left behind on another channel.
Some new problems appear,
Although they are not new
To this particular history I've adopted,
Just new to this traveler.

No existence is without consequence,
I have learned.

And so I pick and choose,
Exchanging parallel lives,
Sometimes choosing badly,
So badly that in some lives I forget I can choose.
It took me a long time to remember,
In this particular life,
Where so many of us have forgotten how these things work,
Sleepwalking our way through the day.

Then something leaks through
And I remember,
I awaken.

I've always been here,
Skipping through parallel lives,
Endless variations where every alternative plays out,
But the watcher remains the same,
Accumulating experience.
Nothing is lost.

Perhaps someday I will gather all these lives together
And go home.
Perhaps I am already home.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

The Child

There is a child in me,
Surprised at what he sees,
This eternal child,
Always surprised,
Especially now,
Seeing the passage of time
Marked upon my face.

O time,
I still don’t understand,
Though I’ve changed from boy to man,
Though I will change from what I am,
The child,
Remains.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved

Questions

Why?
Why am I alive
When with every breath I take a child dies?

Am I just another ant in the ant farm?
Or am I a traveler on the road to divinity?

Am I a blade of grass reaching for the sun?
Or am I a ray of sunlight cast indiscriminately upon the world?

Perhaps I am just a man with time on his hands,
Time to think beyond bodily needs,
Time to ask questions,
Time to create questions out of madness,
A kind of madness that comes when living itself is not enough.


~ Russ Allison Loar
© All Rights Reserved