an old writer and his words

  • WRITING MEMORY

    It is well past time I wrote a poem about the great joys of my childhood, for memory should bubble up like lava through the crust of time, they should rain in flashes as so much matter dropping into the atmosphere in their ultimate light show. This isn’t going to happen, of course, whether because…

    Lou Faber

  • THE GIFTS

    They brought him myrrh on a flaming salver and all he could do was say “This is something I would expect from a butcher or a carpenter, and the camera angles would never work, so bring me napalm or punji stakes that we have proven to work.” They brought him ripe oranges and the sweet…

    Lou Faber

  • ER

    They are arranged like so much ill-stacked cordwood, pressed against walls that are indifferent to their presence. They watch the double doors leading to the examining rooms with trepidation, wanting to be next, wanting more not to be here at all, knowing that the options are none or fewer. He isn’t bothered by it all,…

    Lou Faber

  • JUST WATCH

    It has been said, wisely, that all children speak a common language, regardless of what adults believe they are hearing. The proof of that proposition is simple enough, pause and watch a parent make demands of a child in the presence of other children, see the reluctant child glance at his foreign peers and gain…

    Lou Faber

  • WHEN I GROW UP

    It has taken 67 years, but I have finally arrived at what I want to do and be when I finally grow up, which should happen any day now, but please don’t hold your breath. In this modern age, there is an ever present and growing need for euphemists, and I am perfectly suited for…

    Lou Faber

  • THE GROVE

    She walks slowly, the streets she once knew well, so much changed by time and memory released into the fog. It is hard going back when back is no longer there, where the store you owned, a place where you spent countless hours is now a sandwich shop, and so many others gone altogether for…

    Lou Faber

  • WAITING FOR TEACHER

    It should come as no surprise, for both Buddhism and Hinduism grew out of the same fertile soil. An older Hindu man said, “do not look for your Guru. When you are ready, your Guru will find you.” I knew the Buddhist equivalent, and its corollary, when the student is ready, the teacher disappears. My…

    Lou Faber

  • LITTLE LESS THAN GODS

    It hardly seems all that long ago when we were immortal, when we measured our days by the number of dares we undertook, each with its own level of stupidity which we took, mistakenly, for courage. We are older now, we would like to think far wiser as well, but the line between truth and…

    Lou Faber

  • REMEMBERING ANOTHER FATHER

    It was scrawled on the back of a grocery receipt, barely legible. Charles H. Boustead Tunnel, fryingpan river. The river is lower case, its capitals dangling by serifs in one of the tunnel grates that constricts the water’s flow. Outside the full moon is ensnared in the gnarled, barren branches of the white birch. She…

    Lou Faber

  • DEAD OR JUST RESTING?

    Some people say religion is dead, or at least mortally wounded. In my generation, closer to death than puberty, there is some truth to that thought because God seems a whole lot less responsive these days, our peers beginning to fall like lemmings from the cliff. But the young clearly have found what has gotten…

    Lou Faber