an old writer and his words

  • STOP THIEF

    NOTE: TODAY’S POST FOLLOWS BELOW: Dear poetry-lovers,           Thank you from the bottom of my heart for following my blog. Some of you have been daily readers since it began 9 years ago, some are more sporadic or more recent followers.  Thank you one and all. As you can imagine, it takes a fair amount…

    Lou Faber

  • LISTENING

    We should have heardthe blasts of the trumpetsthat morning, encircling us,we caged in, imaginingourselves to be innocents. We should have heardbefore that day, but wehad chosen deafness,and the cries, the threatsof warning wereso easily cast aside. As the walls fellaround us we realizedthat we had no escapeand we cried to our Godas they cried out…

    Lou Faber

  • A SOMBER CELEBRATION

    Once again we celebrate a groupthat even most of its members wish wenever had to celebrate, wish there wasno need for, wish the very conceptof war was never realized or imagined.You have to pause and wonder why Godin his or her infinite wisdom allowedCain to kill Abel, allowed the seedsof greed to take purchase in…

    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

  • SOS

    We marched for hours, goingnowhere really, but nowhere wasthe point of the marching so weachieved the goal the Air Force set.We didn’t even think it oddthat they made us shave our heads,so we’d all look like fools,there was a war on and wewere in the military, so wehad already proven that point.We were the smarter…

    Lou Faber

  • SOLDIERS

    We marchedfor hoursgoingnowhere We satswelteringin classroomspretendingto learn Six weekslaterthey told uswe werewarriors Our haircould beginto grow back Heavensave us fromendless war,fromourselves. First published in Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, Vol. 13A publication of the Laurel Review

    Lou Faber

  • ZERO

    It begana cloudless skyand two dogs runningdown the nearly empty street.It begana sudden heaterupting everywhereblown forwardinto suddenly parched groundunable to look upat the great cloud risingIt begansweeping upwarda new suncasting the oldin a shroudof ancestors.It beganthe vomitinguncontrollablein wavesebbing, neverrecedingIt begantwisted hulksragged monumentsa screamtearing earsmembranes rupturedIt beganwith an ending First Published in Ionosphere, Vol. 1, Issue…

    Lou Faber

  • BREATHING

    Somewhere at this very momenta baby takes its first breath,a man dies unexpectedly,a fledgeling bird takes flight,a star is bornor enters its death throes,one of the last of a species is gone,a battle is fought in a senseless war,a waterway is fouled with pollution,smog grips a city,an old man clings to memories.I am still aliveand…

    Lou Faber

  • GROUND HOLD

    She sits in the middle seat of an oversold DC-9, Carhartt jacket and watch cap pulled tightly over her hair, a blond wisp slipping out the side. She cradles on her lap a tawny brown Stetson with a tooled leather and silver hat band. “It’s never goin’ in an overhead, my fiancee’d go up there…

    Lou Faber

  • GAZING

    She says that for a small fee shecan guide me through my prior lives,introduce me to former loves, let mewatch the battles in which I fought,shield me from scenes of battlein which I died or was wounded.She says I will see many I now knowin my present, recognize how wewere once connected so our presentconnections…

    Lou Faber