an old writer and his words

  • A VISIT

    I’ve always imagined that one of these nightsI’d see my mother’s ghost. I would welcome the sightwelcome she that bore me, not she that stepped inin a way,absolving my birth mother of her sin,while assuming adopting me would make her complete. She hasn’t visited yet, neither has done so,but I hold out hope, it is…

    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

  • Q.E.?

    Religion, he said, is inherently illogicaland the older the religion, the more illogicalit becomes, accreting absurdity over time.A corollary of this proposition is thatthe more organized a religion claims to be,the more its spirituality is buried underrules and regulations which only illustratethe principal proposition set forth above.Humans create religion not to explainthe unexplainable but to…

    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

  • TOZAN’S GOING BEYOND BUDDHA

    The greatest speechis given onlywhen the mouthfalls shut.To talk of peaceis to beat war with peace,to speak of waris to be at war.When listening disappearspeace reemerges,when peace emergesthe listener appears. A reflection on Case 12 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo (The True Dharma Eye)

    Lou Faber

  • BLUES

    He is for it or he isagainst it, and if you couldpredict the vacillations youcould develop the meansof measuring the flux of sanity. You could as easily graspthe water flowing downriverand by asking select questionsdetermine the next heavy rain, but the odds are goodyou will be outside whenthe deluge begins, andonly its ultimate weightand duration…

    Lou Faber

  • ON BEING

    They arrive unannouncedoften not seen untilthey have been among usand won’t say howor when they arrived.Some claim to have seentheir arrival as theyhave seen other visitorsvisible only to them,and predict their departurewith a certainty bornof a delusion or a sensebeyond the understanding.Others say that theare merely us in masquerade,it is we who are deludedfor there…

    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

  • ARE YOU CRAZY?

    The birds look at us as though we had two heads. They cannot, they say, comprehend how we can stand to live in boxes, to travel in metal containers, to be stuck forever to the ground. They say that food should be picked then eaten instantly, not packaged and half thrown away. They say they…

    Lou Faber