an old writer and his words

  • THIS YEAR I

    It is a day set aside for resolutionsalthough there is no reasonyou cannot make a resolutionany day of your choosing. Perhaps it is a day for thoseresolutions you might nototherwise make, the boldor daunting, more likely a dayfor the resolutions you knowyou will abandon as too hardor simply utterly impractical. This year I have resolved…

    Lou Faber

  • MAY DAY

    We marched for hours, goingnowhere really, but nowhere wasthe point of the marching so weachieved the goal the Air Force set.We didn’t even think it oddthat they made us shave our heads,so we’d all look like fools,there was a war on and wewere in the military, so wehad already proven that point.We were the smarter…

    Lou Faber

  • LESSONS

    The most important lessons he taughtwere in those moments when he wasabsolutely silent, the smile acrosshis face shouting across the backgrounddin of everyday life, his eyes widewith a sort of childish awe that I hadlong since given up as adolescent. The child sees everything for the first timeregardless how many times she hasgazed at what…

    Lou Faber

  • BANZAN’S A BETTER CUT

    At the butcherbe careful what you askfor if it is a better cutthe wise man with the knifemay slice off your handand present it to youwrapped neatly in paper. But will it beyour rightor your left? A reflection onCase 21 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo (The True Dharma Eye)

    Lou Faber

  • IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

    It is all well and good to believethat you will know it when you find it,that it will be so obvious you could not miss it. You’ve been down that road before,and on several occasions were certainthat you’d found it in her face, or hers,in her smile, or her laugh, or oneof their soft touches…

    Lou Faber

  • DEFLATED DREAMS

    when did youthful dreamsslip awayerodeget consumed byparentsteachersor simply abandoned reality, yourstheirs a poor substituteall edgesand pointspiercing hope love once (a) givenrendered faint hopeworse, impossible dreamdelusion? you wantto think notwant so muchcan’t havebad for youwe know goodwhen we give itnone for you timepast sogrow up

    Lou Faber

  • THE MISSING KEY

    You said you’d leave a keyunder the mat on the front stoop,or was it taped atop the light fixturejust to the right of the door jamb top? Well I checked both placesand there was no key to be found,so perhaps it slipped out, got kickedand someone absentmindedly took it and saved it meaning one dayto…

    Lou Faber

  • INSIDE, UNSEEING

    I’ve been trying to discover howit is that those inside the beltwayelected to office, or workingfor those who were elected,have all sense of irony (andin some cases. civility) erased. How else to explain that for manythere can be no climate changewhile the nation they serveis bearing its cost, climatologicallyand in discourse and diversity,and still they…

    Lou Faber

  • DEFINE-ITELY

    It takes only moments for someoneto ask for a definition of poetry. That task is at once terriblysimple and equally impossible, a poem is many thingsbut not now or ever: a paean to a self-aggrandizingleader without soulor sense of direction,moral and literal; a rant on howall are conspiringagainst you despiteyour stable genius; a Jeremiad decryingfacts…

    Lou Faber

  • TOO WAY BACK MACHINE

    Platform shoes, velourNehru jackets, what the hellwere we thinking, and pinkvelour, seriously, for men. At least it was Hendrix, Byrds,and not Pat Boone and AndyWilliams, almost the deathof music as we know it. Reefers were evil, told us so,and when we figured out it waspot, we begged to differ, frequentlybetween hits on the bong, after…

    Lou Faber