an old writer and his words

  • NIGHT AT THE PUB

    It’s a fading memory now, a hole in the wall then, CBGB’s, loud, but nothing happening at Tommy Makem’s and here the cop and his pals play angry Irish with a foot in reggae and ska. I’m too old to be here, but no one really cares as long as I buy my Bushmills or…

    Lou Faber

  • LONE STAR

    The oddest thing about Texas isn’t that nothing is really bigger, other than the imaginations and wishes of those who have spent far too much time there, no, the oddest thing is that we outsiders actually look to see if things are bigger. Well that and the fact that the locals can so easily get…

    Lou Faber

  • ANGRY, BUT ONLY A LITTLE

    You want it spicy, but just so that the tongue remembers it a moment after the mouth has moved on, a lingering sense of having been present. It should be a mantilla, a shawl, not the blanket some claim, gently caressing, lighting up the plate. Its host, freshly from the rollers, was born for this…

    Lou Faber

  • LINES

    The shortest distance between two points is the path I always discover once I arrive by a more circuitous route, but for one for whom the trip is key, the path I take is the right one every time.

    Lou Faber

  • URBANITY

    Walking down this road I would like to see a rice field golden in the morning sun with a great mountain rising behind it just around the next bend. I would settle for a town its lone Temple quiet, awaiting the morning bell, the call to sit, with maybe a cat at the base of…

    Lou Faber

  • CITY OF FORGOTTEN

    The lake in Central Park and its cousin rivers reflect the gray of a cold sky, an April afternoon. None of this is seen by the multitudes traversing the streets and avenues, a people who barely remember the sky.

    Lou Faber

  • TAKING FLIGHT

    Origami cranes lumber into flight and lift into the sky over the small, back street Temple somewhere on the periphery of Shinjuku. They know their flight will be only temporary, that their wings will grow quickly tired, that the rustling sound of two thousand wings will soon fall silent as the breeze bids them a…

    Lou Faber

  • PREPARE FOR LANDING

    And then there is the abyss where it all comes crashing back down on you and there is nothing and no one, and you grasp and find only yourself at the bottom and arise, crawl up and out, and nothing has changed except the face of one who saw you fall. You say words meant…

    Lou Faber

  • LAKE SHORE LIMITED

    The little girl-women pile onto the train carrying backpacks, pillows and stuffed animals, all they will soon leave in the rooms of childhood. In the train’s café, Gerald welcomes us back his “established customers,” he says to all, as we sit beneath the wide awning that is his smile, sipping the much needed coffee.

    Lou Faber

  • WINTER FALLS ON JAPAN

    Upon the peak of Mt. Fuji the first snow is shrouded by the mother clouds. In the shadows, rice shoots stare up in reverence.

    Lou Faber