an old writer and his words

  • SLOW DOWN?

    She is four and you realizequickly you have no ideawhat four is like, a personlooking for herself, uncertainwhat she will find and fearlessenough not to care, always curious.You know these days cannot last,that she will progress at a speedthat is dizzying and you don’twant them to end, for memoriesoften age badly, and can slip away.But…

    Lou Faber

  • SO CLOSE AND YET

    Some say that we were oncebriefly so close you couldproperly call us one person.I know it did not last, and Igave up looking for youfor the longest time, althoughI always felt the connectionbetween us had never weakened.Years later I did get withineight or so feet of you but younever acknowledged my presenceso I moved on…

    Lou Faber

  • ENDING HERE

    I am still not certainhow I ended up hereon the other side of silencewhere words go to slowly die.It was to be foreveruntil severed cruelly by deathbut neither of us diedin manifest ways, justsmall deaths that over timesevered the bonds that still held,a death-borne parting of sorts.It was never a mistakeor an omission of logic,…

    Lou Faber

  • ACT 1

    His life was a collapsing theaterof the absurd and he was holding on tightlybut it was slipping through his fingers.It was not supposed to be this way,this was not the play he envisioned, yethe was here, in a cold table read, andnone of the assembled were certain wherethe evolving script might take them.He had imagined…

    Lou Faber

  • NO AUDITION

    It was a roleshe never anticipatednever wanted, leftto her sisters to carrythe genetic line forward.And she spentthe last half-centuryof her lifetrying to forgetthe role she playedand had to abandon.Although she now istwo decades goneon the second Mondayof May I now stopbless her and mourn herfor performing the rolethat brought me into being

    Lou Faber

  • ADVICE COLUMN

    As I have aged, I have learnedthat when I need advice and my wifeis not available or chooses not tocomment, I can turn to friendsand relatives who have diedfor their advice is usually quiteon point and needs no interpretation.I have not known them to misleador to suggest what I cannot imaginepossible, for they say and…

    Lou Faber

  • JUST IMAGINE FOR A MOMENT

    Imagine that they could see youbehind the velvet ropes, staringat them slack-jawed, at the opulenceand the excess that was ancient Egypt.We stare at the sarcophagi, at the goldthrone chair and jewel encrusted gods,imagining ourselves able to affordluxury on that remarkable scale,we more the slaves out of sightbreaking our backs to build the tombsthat would someday…

    Lou Faber

  • APP-LICATION DENIED

    I can still recall my grandmother saying,whenever she thought I should be outsiderather than sitting in my room with a book,that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Jewsdid not believe in the devil and that,in any event my hands were engagedin holding the book and turning pages.I…

    Lou Faber

  • TY NEWYDD

    In the gently aging house,replete with writersthere are endless roomsin which the muse dartsdispensing her soul.I prefer to sit with the catcurled in an overstuffed chairher head risingand falling imperceptiblyour breaths harmonic.We commune in unspoken dialoga language of silencebespeaking volumesof our shared existence. First published in The River, Sandy River Review, March 2024https://sandyriverreview.com/2024/03/30/seeing-you-again-next-stop-riding-ty-newydd/

    Lou Faber

  • ONLY ONCE

    I don’t know who decided that we,as a group would go to the jai alai frontonthat evening, but as the junior-most memberof the management team it seemedat that moment less of a request or evenan invitation and more a command performance.I knew nothing about jai alai and the namesof the players, all in Portuguese might…

    Lou Faber