THE BLEEDING EDGE

We are lovers of novelty, we want
all that is new or clinging
to what we imagine are our roots.
It has long been this way,
you need only look at the map.
Hampshire, York, Jersey, and
for that matter Brunswick and Mexico.
We crave innovation, we always
want to be on the cutting edge, forgetting
that all too soon it will become
the bleeding edge, and we will curse
its failures, its shortcomings.
So ask yourself if those who live
in Hampshire, York, Jersey, and
Brunswick, Scotia, and Mexico
think they live in a place that is
no longer new, left behind in
an endless search for something
other than what we have right now.

CALLING

As I age, I more willingly accede
to the sirens call of sleep
for as night washes over me
pulling up its blanket of stars
she takes me on a voyage
to destinations she will
not disclose until our arrival.
The journey may be pleasant
or the seas of night can be
roiling, but her grip is firm.
But in her never certain world
age can slough off, fall away
until my body and its increasing
frailties and limitations slip away
and my youth is no longer
a memory, but on this night
or that, it is my new if transient reality.
But I dare not cling to it, for
the sun will intercede again
and drag me back to the body
I so willingly escape each night.

JUST LIKE THAT

“And just like that,” he said. “Just like that,” she replied. “Are you certain, I wouldn’t want to go off half cocked?” he asked. “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t almost certain, would I,” was her retort. “But almost certain isn’t absolutely certain,” he noted. “As you well know, nothing is absolutely certain until it happens. And it hasn’t happened or we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” She walked toward the door and he said loudly, “so you’re walking away from this conversation. Just like that?” Looking back she said, “just like that.”

NO HARRY

There is no Houdini today, no
master of escapology, only sleight
of hand that cannot provide
a release from our self-
made shackles, for we have
failed to learn the secrets
that might have saved us.
We were stubborn, figured that
we could solve the problem later,
read a book, looked to a new master
but those new masters have only
perfected the art of illusion and that
was our delusion, that we could
magically escape from the prison,
the ecological and natural prison
that we have created for ourselves

EULOGY

In a perfect world it would be
a requirement that every person
upon reaching the age of 40
would be compelled to write
a draft of a eulogy in the voice
of each lover or partner whose
relationship he or she chose to end,
one that the spurned lover
would deliver at his or her funeral.
The task would come
with the caveat that one or more
such exes would be asked
to deliver a eulogy,
and it would be their choice
to write their own or read the one
the departed had prepared for them.
It wouldn’t take all that long
to realize how interesting
these funerals will likely be.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT

The fortune cookies of my childhood
were far more interesting, or so
my memory would have it.
The cookies offered wisdom
of the East, or so it seemed
to a 10-year-old, but perhaps
it was the same mumbo-jumbo
in the bulk print today, now
that the cookies, which once
tasted good, unlike today’s
origami cardboard, were
folded by hand, and there
were no lotteries then, so
there was no need for lucky numbers
nor did they make a foolish
attempt to teach me words
in Chinese that I will
never have a reason to use.

THE WEIGHT OF MOURNING

The weight of mourning defies precise measurement,
and all of the rules of mathematics fail in an attempt.
Grief rejects being placed on scales, there is never
a moment of pure equilibrium, only a teetering
that always threatens to bring it all down in a heap.
A million who are nameless and faceless is an agony
and yet eighty thousand with names on white walls
of the ancient synagogue in Prague seem
to weigh as heavy or heavier on the heart,
and the youngest of those taken are the heaviest
a burden almost too great to bear,
no lighter for our freely flowing tears.
And yet a woman, nameless, faceless
and dead a dozen years, who I knew as my mother
but nothing more, save odd facts that insured
it would be all I would ever know, that woman
was a crushing burden, but one I had to bear alone
and did, if barely, until the moment
when by twist of fate and DNA, she had a name
and soon thereafter a face, and as I stared at her,
as I stared, too, at the mirror, the hole she left,
that emptiness grew vast and heavy, and I
must now struggle not to collapse beneath it.

First appeared in Peacock Journal, February 2017
https://peacockjournal.com/louis-faber-three-poems/

STILL

Someone once told me that pain
is a good way of knowing
that you are still alive.
I did want to kill that person,
but thought better of it,
why not simply smile and
leave him in a life of pain.
More recently I was told
that I would get used to
my chronic pain and
over time it would seem
to hurt less if I just live with it,
accept that it is always there.
So now I have an always
angry roommate who speaks
only in single words, who
explains nothing when questioned
but appears when I least
want to see him, jabbing
and stabbing until I
want to scream “I’m alive,
so go to hell, you’re needed there.”

HOW OLD?

People say that dogs can live
to well over 100 dog years,
but each of our years
is seven of theirs, so
our self-delusion feels complete.
We want old age for our dogs
to feel they have lived a full life,
something we also want for ourselves
and so we project on our pets.
The odd thing is that as we age
we wonder if our pets will
outlive us, and the older
we get, the more it begins to feel
that time is attempting
to behaves like dog time
the years seeming to pass
ever more quickly.