an old writer and his words

  • REMEMBERING CHILDHOOD

    There isn’t much to write about,not much recalled, now brief glimpseslike aged photographs, black and whiteor color but so time faded they bleednow into sepia, fragments, his face herehers never appearing as if she, not satisfiedwith how she looked, purged my memory.It may be a factor of age, but there areother contemporaneous moments stillin clear…

    Lou Faber

  • FINAL ASSIGNMENT

    It is a rather simple assignment.Take a sheet of notebook paperand, staying within the lines,on one side of the page writea summary of your lifeup to this moment.You may not use extra sheetsnor may you write so smallas to get two or more linesbetween each of the ruled lines.Say what is important, saywhat needs to…

    Lou Faber

  • AMETHYST DREAMS

    He leans on the barin the pose of the Thinkerlost in a reverie of Bourbon,odd bits of foolscapscattered about, coastersfor peanut shells,and the odder jotsof the unbegun epic.In the hazeof another cigarettehe fingers the violetworry beads.“Amethustos,” he muttersas if calling fortha god or a musebut his callgoes unreturnedby the unrepentant grain.He imagines himselfa bishop to…

    Lou Faber

  • ON AGING

    It is not the aging that is hard, he said. Aging is easy, you don’t have to do anything except keep breathing, eating and sleeping when you can. No, aging is not hard at all. What is hard, he added with a grimace, is looking in the mirror and realizing that your body has betrayed…

    Lou Faber

  • OUT FOR REVISION

    Someone, I cannot remember who, suggestedto me that I write the story of the world,not that the world needs another edition,but perhaps because it would occupy meand I’d stop sharing my poetry that so fewreally want to read and do so out of politeness.I thought about this and it is an intriguing project,for I would…

    Lou Faber

  • EXPOSURE

    Now we choose to love in the dark,our minds unwilling to see whatour bodies now so willingly expose.It is not that our passion has wanedor abated, only that it has elongatedand our concept of time must be suspended .The mind now must concedeto the heart for it understandswhat the body can no longer do.Maturity allows…

    Lou Faber

  • TOKYO SNAPSHOTS

    In the small yardof the matchbox housethe lone Ginkgotwisted by timefeels the barrennessof winter’s tongueand mournsits solitude. The apartment building looms upover the tracks of the Narita Expressthe balconies are deserted, savefor the laundry which flapsin the morning breeze,slapping with the gustsinto the small satellite dishesbolted to the railings. The ancient trees are twistedand gnarled,…

    Lou Faber

  • FROM HERE TO THERE

    It is a marvel of engineering,miniaturization taken to a new level.Once it was a pound of coffeewhere sixteen ounces became thirteenbut they knew we would growused to the new quantity afteronly a short period of complaining.That there weren’t other optionsall but guaranteed they would win.But now they’ve miniaturizedthe inside of airplanes, your seatnarrower, you knee…

    Lou Faber

  • FALLING APART

    In my minds eye, whichfortunately for it cannot hopeto see the mirror, I am sixteen.No, cancel that, at sixteen Iwas still chubby to be kind.So let’s make me 18, evenif I had almost no hair thanksto the U. S. Air Force, but Iwas as fit as I would ever be.No, that won’t work either,for I…

    Lou Faber