an old writer and his words

  • ALL BETS ARE ON

    It is a game, of course, and one you cannot win. The question is how much will you lose if you buy into the game. The odds favor the house. There would not be a house if the odds did not favor it. But you know you must play the game. There is no other…

    Lou Faber

  • THAT VOICE

    It is often little more thana faint whisper, distant, butnagging, on occasion in the voiceof a parent now long dead.You can strive to ignore it,may have momentary successin that endeavor, but it willrecur when you think that ithas finally been banished.It is persistent and that, morethan anything, is what makes itso irritating for you know…

    Lou Faber

  • JUST IMAGINE

    Just imagine that you would be immortal.How would this affect your life, how wouldyou act differently, which relationships wouldyou end, which of those you have avoidedwould you try to begin, or take up again,Interesting thought isn’t it, easier thanthe real question that hangs over all of us,what would you do differently if you knewthat you…

    Lou Faber

  • SIR, YES SIR

    The hardest part wasn’t the marching,wasn’t the godawful food, although almost so,wasn’t the heat and humidity of San Antonio.It wasn’t the thought that I had nearlyflunked out of college under the sway,or was it swaying away with, recreational drugs,until I cut a deal with the Dean, my futurefor producing a DD-214, an honorable discharge.It wasn’t…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT AGAIN

    It is well past midnight and outsidethe birds and frogs in the wetlandannounce the rain, unnecessary really,as it beats a steady rhythm on the roofand windows, pierced onlyby claps of thunder and the lightningwhich gives them short announcement.The light dances through the closedwindow blinds on what ought to bean ink black night, and I knowthe…

    Lou Faber

  • DOWNSIDE UP

    For just one dayI want to look at everythingfrom the opposite side,the back or the bottom only.The coffee cup from whichI have sipped a thousand cappuccinoshas initials and I now wantto know who shaped it,how they did the glazeand what they saw in its pattern.So many things will tell mewhere they are from, eventhose who…

    Lou Faber

  • THE FINAL SCENE

    For far too long he had beena marionette dancing to a tunehe could not hear, always staying silent,lost in a kabuki theater of the absurd.But he had grown tired of performingat their every demand, his life livedperpetually on call, no time truly his.He was drained by them, empty,not that they cared for they knewthe adulation…

    Lou Faber

  • THIS IS NOT: AN APOLOGY

    This is an apology I never wantedor thought I would have to write butnow, my grandchildren, it is necessary. This is not the world I wantedto leave to you, what I had hopedwas a world at peace, a world whereyou could be anything without beingjudged or shunned, where wordshad meaning and books were treasures. Instead…

    Lou Faber

  • A TROIS

    Each night I crawl under the sheetscurled against the woman I loveand beside me slips your ghost.For sixty years you were no morethan a fleeting dream faceless, nameless,an infrequent visitor to my galleryof hopes, desires, and wishes.You never had a face, did Ihave one you could remember beforeI was plucked from you too soon, youlurking…

    Lou Faber

  • GOOD?

    She used to ask me if I had a good day.It was a loaded question for there wasno good answer in her view, it was reallyjust rhetorical, something you saidto avoid talking about your ownfeelings and emotions at any given moment.She expected me to complain about allthat did not go as planned, whereuponshe could roll…

    Lou Faber