an old writer and his words

  • CZERNY IN HELL

    Mrs. Schwarting lived in a small cottage. Mrs. Schwarting taught piano in her living room. Mrs. Schwarting had no first name, even checks were to be made payable to “Mrs. Schwarting.” Mrs. Schwarting grew suddenly old, some said, to fully fit into her name, no one could remember her ever being young. Mrs. Schwarting said…

    Lou Faber

  • SHE SAID

    She said that we are little more than clay to be molded by God and carved by fate and we count on nothing more than this day. It’s but a week since she has slipped away, we expect our sense of loss to abate. She said that we were little more than clay, just so…

    Lou Faber

  • NOW LISTEN UP

    I read a poem today, about a cat and it reminded me, actually the memory of my last cat came to mind, that cats have an innate sense of people, that people utterly lack. It may be that cats are completely unfooled by the masks we wear, or simply that they could care less how…

    Lou Faber

  • TRUE MEASURE

    If you ask me the true measure of a passing moment, I will tell you it is at once invaluable, and by equal measure useless, lost in the detritus of time’s wave, now receded. Do not try and cling to it for your memory is all that is impermeable, and then only in a moment…

    Lou Faber

  • FROM BEYOND

    My grandmother speaks to me from time to time, in a voice that sounds remarkably like my own, but the dead borrow voices, it is so much easier than exercising their own, and there is so little need for words once they leave. She hasn’t changed all that much, still opinionated, still ready to have…

    Lou Faber

  • ISAN’S TIME 鐵笛倒吹 十六

    A cold day — how many other winters can you remember, how many future winters can your mind grasp? Can you hold yesterday in the palm of your hand can you wrap tomorrow around your thumb? Between the palms in gassho lies all life and being. A reflection on case 10 of the Iron Flute.

    Lou Faber

  • ERATO’S NIGHTMARE

    That one summer I worked in the plant I could hear them whisper in the break room, with its always empty Coke machine. They’d get real quiet when I came in some would nod a hello and quickly leave. At first I thought it was because I was only there for the summer, but once,…

    Lou Faber

  • RESURRECTION

    In the picture he is young, wearing a uniform that fits him, has his name over the breast, but his hair is longer. The picture is a bit askew, there is a clock on the wall but the time does not matter. He knows it was the radio studio but others would not, the mic…

    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

  • AS THE CROW FLIES

    Leaving the fields of the countryside for the city, it is the birds that tell you when the invisible boundary has been crossed. There are usually signs along the roads bolted to steel poles but the birds know better. In the country, birds sing long arias to the day, to cornstalks making the slow green…

    Lou Faber