an old writer and his words

  • TAI YRA MANO MOTINA (THIS IS MY MOTHER)

    It’s odd how your stature has grown as I dream of you occasionally staring at your yearbook picture. It was only four years ago that I knew you existed, but hadn’t the faintest idea of who you were, anything about your life, why you gave me up, and, therefore who it was I might have…

    Lou Faber

  • LEGACY

    We often believe that the best way to honor the dead is to praise them. When my time is gone, do not praise me for your praise will fall on deadened ears. If you believe in the power of the word speak aloud in my name, if you dare, commit the deed as you believe…

    Lou Faber

  • THANKFUL

    She said I should be thankful that I am not a rice farmer. She said that I should be thankful that I am not over seven feet tall, and not less than four feet eight inches, although she concedes that four feet nine would not be cause for celebration. She says I should be thankful…

    Lou Faber

  • AWAITING THE WAVES

    “Describe yourself,” she said “that I might capture you if only for this moment a footprint left once you have departed this place and time.” I am, I should think, biologically plausible though straining the bounds of reason once and again. I tend to philosophic androgyny hovering on the fulcrum of paradox. I am the…

    Lou Faber

  • FERRYMAN

    He comes to me in the dead hour of night the old shriveled man poling his poor ferry across the river of my dreams. He comes when the moon has fled and the stars fall mute and he beckons me holding out the copper coins stating his fare. He comes to me, beckoning, and for…

    Lou Faber

  • ROAD TRIP

    Two nights gone and sleep has come fitfully, and I stir each time I reach across the bed and you aren’t there, and there is only the faintest smell of bleach and cleaning solvent. I want very much to dream of you, to trace your cheek with dream fingers, to taste your lips on mine,…

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING BECOMES

    We awaken and look at each other as though we are meeting for the first time. Your eyes seem new to me, but well remembered, a place I have often been, which is always new, always where I want to go, from which I want to never return. I trace your chin, your shoulder-blade, and…

    Lou Faber

  • DISEMBARKING NARITA

    You disembark quickly a small bow to the flight crew, and walk briskly to immigration. The young man glances at your passport and embarkation card hands flying with the stamps. The baggage is offloaded onto the creeping segmented belt yours the fifth through the heavy plastic flaps hefted onto the cart. The customs agent pauses…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT CHANGES

    Night alters sound in ways we can never precisely determine. It is possible our hearing changes with the flight of the sun, but the moon scoffs at this premise. A train rattling across the landscape in the heat of day becomes a musical instrument in the relative silence of night, playing a melody that insuates…

    Lou Faber

  • CASSIOPEIA

    You sit on your self-hewn throne and stare fixedly at the night sky as the clouds gather and dissipate beneath you. Do you even recall why you were cast out condemned to your cell so vast and yet infinitely confining? Does your body remember the touch of his hand the crude hunter who set you…

    Lou Faber